Content Analysis Draft

          After a hard day of classes, the first thing I do is calm my brain by spending some quality time on Facebook catching up with my friends’ lives.  The minified keeps me updated as to who’s dating who, how everyone’s days went, and what embarrassing pictures from the weekend have been posted.  My little sister has updated her profile, so I spend a few minutes harmlessly stalking her by going through her wall posts, pictures, and recent actions.  This way, I can keep tabs on her despite being 80 miles away at school.  Facebook, the newest internet start-up, is a social networking site that originally targeted college students, but has now expanded its audience to include anyone with an e-mail address.  Users can belong to different networks based on the college they attended, where they live, or where they work.  Facebook is unique in that its owner, Mark Zuckerberg, has decided to keep the company independent, despite offers from corporations such as Yahoo for as much as $1 billion.  With over 50 million members, Facebook is enormously successful, but has created its fair share of controversy.  Twice recently, Facebook users opposing new additions to the site successfully petitioned to have them removed, saying that it was imposing on their privacy.  Colleges and universities, the thriving ground of Facebook, have also begun to wonder whether Facebook causes privacy issues, with threats and other disturbing information appearing on the different profiles. 

            Perhaps the most prominent controversy surrounding Facebook is whether or not it has the tendency to invade its users privacy, or be used as a means to invade someone’s privacy.  While some say that people who are willing to post personal information on a website have given up their rights to privacy, where is the line?  In Cristian Lupsa’s article “Facebook: A campus fad becomes a campus fact”, a large concern that college students have is whether potential employers use Facebook as a means of making hiring decisions.  Lupsa sited a recent study done at the University of Dayton in Ohio which showed that 42% of students believe that employers use of Facebook in hiring decisions is an invasion of privacy.  Images of potential staff members drinking underage and participating in other activities, legal or not, often deters potential employers from hiring what would otherwise be a probable candidate.  Lupsa points out that a generation gap currently exists between college students and the people deciding whether or not to hire them.  In the same survey, 40% of employers questioned thought it was okay to use Facebook in hiring decisions.  Lupsa writes that students are not the only ones concerned with whether their privacy is being invaded; college officials are as well.  The article points out that school administrators have grown increasingly aware to the potential problems Facebook creates, and are actively working to provide students with information that will allow them to make appropriate decisions.  Some have signed themselves up and monitor their students online.  Lupsa lists different approaches, including the one taken at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where a “dummy profile” was created under the name “Lloyd Unemployed”, and “brags about doing nothing and hopes to find a job that pays him to drink beer”. 

            Facebook has also recently introduced some programs that have had users in an uproar over the invasion of their privacy.  Most recently, as reported in the New York Times by Louise Story and Brad Stone, Facebook users were appalled by a new advertising program called Beacon.  Story and Stone explain that other online companies like Google, AOL, and Microsoft use the program to track what sites their users access and then sent them ads based on the sites or searches they have done.  Facebook, on the other hand, takes this to another level, sending users’ friends news alerts about good and services viewed or purchased on the internet.  The authors validate the invasion of privacy, offering a story about how one Facebook user found out what she was receiving for Christmas because it was advertised as being purchased by her sister at another site.  Stone and Story also provide Facebook’s defense, quoting owner Mark Zuckerberg as saying the new ads are like a “recommendation from a trusted friend”.  Users disagree, the authors point out, describing many users as being outraged at the program’s use. 

            Another concern that Facebook creates is the issue of internet stalking.  Social networks like Facebook allow users to post personal information such as phone numbers and addresses on the internet for anyone to access, and many do not consider the possible consequences.  In “This 23-year-old has Google sweating”, Abbey Klaassen and Andrew Hampp mention that on Facebook, users will only connect to a profile if they know the person, unlike its biggest competitor, MySpace, where phony profiles are the norm.  This does not provide safety, though.  Lupsa talked to college officials that have seen Facebook used in disputes to threaten or stalk students.  He tells the story of the associate dean of students at Purdue University, Pablo Malavenda.  After catching a group of students selling cocaine and removing them from campus, the angry students started a Facebook group called “We Hate Pablo” to retaliate.  The group contained directions to his home and instructions to hurt him.  While instances like this are rare, it proves the possible danger that Facebook enhances.  Malavenda also described stories of couples ending relationships because they had read their significant other’s “wall” and realized he or she was seeing someone else. 

            While Facebook is most commonly known as a social networking site, it is attempting to move beyond this title in many ways.  As previously stated, Story and Stone argue that the invasive Beacon program was supposed to be like making recommendations to friends.  While many sites that provide goods and services have recommendations available, the Facebook “recommendation” is coming from a friend instead of an anonymous user, making it more personal and reliable.  After all, if your friend is using the site, it must be okay. 

            In a further attempt to move away from the label of “social networking”, Facebook owner Mark Zuckerberg has opened his site to other corporations.  Vauhini Vara reports in the Wall Street Journal that Zuckerberg has begun allowing other companies to provide services through Facebook.  Klaassen and Hampp recount the same information in their article in Advertising Age.  The two inform that developers will now be able to create and monetize applications on the site.  Vara verifies, explaining that companies whose application service a user adds will then be able to link into the user’s network of friends.  She then claims that this move has the potential to turn Facebook into a web hub such as Yahoo, but one that also allows the user to connect to his or her friends.  For example, if a company built an application that allowed Facebook users to recommend music to their friends, their friends would not have to go anywhere else to access that information.  While Google and Yahoo can give a user access to the content, those sites do not have the ability to connect users to their friends.  Klaassen and Hampp suggest that because there is already a connection between users there, it would be more personal to search for content on Facebook than on another site. 

            The only way for Facebook to remain a success is to keep its user base of over 60 million people satisfied with the site.  While the site was once directed mainly towards collegiate students, Vara informs that in the fall of 2006, Zuckerberg opened the site to anyone with an e-mail address as opposed to just university e-mail addresses like it had previously been.  However, college students are still the major audience that Facebook reaches.  Klaassen and Hampp offer that a recent college graduate, when asked to think of her friends that were not on Facebook, could only come up with one name.  It has become obvious that the best way to reach college-aged adults is through Facebook, and Lupsa reports that politicians have started using it as a means to campaign towards students.  He also writes that at the University of Iowa, campus organizations have started using Facebook to advertise events instead of the conventional flier method.

            Unfortunately for Zuckerberg, when Facebook users are unhappy, they are not quiet about it.  Facebook’s users have an extreme about of sway in decisions made by the owner, which can be seen through recent actions taken by the executives in reaction to users want.  Most recently, as mentioned by Story and Stone, Zuckerberg had to respond to the outcry over the Beacon program.  In the first ten days after the program was introduced, over 50,000 Facebook members signed a petition to have it removed.  Because of such a massive objection, the program became optional, with an opt-out box available in the settings.  However, some of the other participating websites such as Overstock.com had already pulled out of the program, not wanting to deter potential clients.  This was the second time Facebook had faced criticism over implementing a new program that was extremely invasive.  Story and Stone follow by accounting as to when the Newsfeed on Facebook was first introduced, over 700,000 users protested, leading to Zuckerberg publicly apologizing for some aspects of the program.  Facebook’s users obviously play a huge role in decisions made by the company, and are true testament to the phrase “the customer is always right”. 

            In a web-based world like the one we live in today, social networking sites allow us to keep in touch, and Facebook is well on its way to becoming king.  However, several patterns have emerged in the publicity Facebook is getting, and all question users’ privacy.  True, Facebook does allow others to keep closer tabs on one another, but is it too much?  Whether it is an invasion of privacy or not, Facebook users are still logging in, making some question the value of privacy in this day and age.  As long as users are content, Facebook will remain engraved in society as an essential part of college life.