Joe Comras: Post 1

Facebook.com is a social networking website that was started in the dorm room of (the at the time) Harvard University student Mark Zuckerberg in October 2003.  Three of his friends and fellow computer-science majors helped him develop and launch the website. Now, almost exactly six years later facebook.com is connecting 100’s of millions of people from all across the world. On September 16, CNN posted an article titled “Facebook population nearly as large as the US population”. According to the article facebook’s population is crossing 300 million users. The US population is currently about 307 million people. For the first time facebook generated a revenue this past quarter. Facebook.com is now a privately owned company, but because they started making a profit will probably become a publicly traded company and not have to sell out to google or another internet mogul of that type of status. 

Facebook.com’s success is due in a large part to its advertising. Sheryl Sandberg, the COO of Facebook.com says that target advertisements account for a large increase in revenue. For example, a movies can advertise to specific users inviting them to its premiere. 

Facebook.com’s network stretches far beyond the boarders of the US. Another CNN article titled “Facebook gets caught in the middle of Golan Heights Dispute” describes the controversial question, which is: if a person lives in Golan Heights should they register as an Israeli or Syrian citizen. This territory was acquired by Israel in the 6 days war. Golan Heights is “internationally classified as Israeli-operated territory”. However, up until recently residents of Golan Heights who were members of the facebook network could only select to be citizens of Syria or no-network. In response to a petition from a pro-Israeli website and a “facebook group”, a facebook spokeswoman said that “we currently have a dual-listing option for the [gaze strip], which is listed in both Palestine and Israel”. The Syrian government has already worked to ban social networking sites because they are popular among Syrian activists. 

With a population of approximately 300 million and 120 million views per day there is a lot of information on a lot of people being shared online through facebook everyday. Issues of privacy is an ever growing concern from a lot of people. Most users aren’t even aware of how much of their information is available online through facebook. Third party applications like personalized quizzes makes users information available to the creators of the quiz. Also, facebooks default privacy settings allows complete access to a lot of personal information such as sexual orientation, religion, and political affiliation. Groups like the ACLU are working to raise awareness of this invasion of privacy so that users are not as vulnerable to having their personal information collected. Also, the office of the Canadian Privacy Commissioner called a press conference in order to address this subject also. Facebook is apparently working on their privacy levels in an attempt to protect its users. 

Works cited: 

http://www.cnn.com/2009/TECH/09/21/israel.syria.facebook/index.html?iref=mpstoryview

http://www.cnn.com/2009/TECH/08/27/cnet.aclu.facebook.app/index.html#cnnSTCText

http://www.cnn.com/2009/TECH/09/16/facebook.profit/index.html