Facebook

Facebook
Recently facebook reached 350 million profiles and shows no sign of slowing down. Facebook has provided an accessible and easy way for people to keep in touch with friends and family, for parents to become involved with their children and to get to know them better, and for business and associations to open communications with their clientele. Facebook has created an entire new way to search for information or recommendations by using word of mouth type of collaborations. And finally facebook is experimenting with advertisement and endorsements by monitoring products purchased on the internet and reporting that to the purchasers ‘friend’ list.

Facebook was created by Mark Zuckerbert in 2004 while he was a college student at Harvard University. Facebook is designed to be a social networking site, but it has become much more than that, it is a worldwide social phenomenon. Facebook started out for Harvard University Students only, its popularity was immediately evident within the first week. Within a few months demand was so great, facebook was available to other Ivy League Colleges, and soon after that, all colleges. Students found the networking so addictive soon the eligibility was expanded to high school networks. In 2006 the network was opened up to adults and a whole new purpose came to light – finding old school friends. Parents also discovered they could ‘communicate’, monitor, and network with their own children. The newest use of the networking site is companies and club setting up networks amongst their clients and members.

Search sites such as Google and Yahoo could be compromised by facebook in the future. The article by 60 Minutes goes on to give an example that if you search for information about a specific vacation, you will come back with a list of hits, most likely more than necessary and not all relevant to your search. However if you post a request on facebook, you would get word of mouth responses about personal experiences. This most likely would be far more helpful and personal to your inquiry than hits generated by search engine.

Facebook has also experimented with advertising and sharing with friends what people purchase. This is an interesting approach to product endorsements. Basically by showing people what people they know are actually buying. Culturally this provides personal assurances and you can get personal feedback for confidence in selecting an item. There have been drawbacks to the initial program called “Beacon” which inadvertently revealed purchases intended as surprise gifts, however they are working on new privacy options which will help offset some of the initial drawbacks.

Bibliography

Common Sense Media. (2009). Facebook. San Franscio: Common Sense Media.
TopTenREVIEWS. (2009). Social Networking Websites Review. Ogden: TopTenREVIEWS.
Zuckerberg, M. (2008, January 13). The Face Behind Facebook. (L. Stahl, Interviewer)