If Facebook decides by arbitrary fiat that they wish to keep the information on users and perhaps feed it to advertisers, this leaves open plentiful possibilities for abuse in the future. The reason why any laws or regulations exist is so that - on principle - potential abuses of the system cannot occur. There is always some level of responsibility involved in a mishap, but the aim should be to prevent the more unsavoury consequences that could follow from this resulting from human error or profit motives. The point should be not whether the individuals should have been more careful about what they posted, but rather whether all users can be assured that at no point in time will the information that they have posted be used other than for the reasons that had been originally intended, i.e., principles over profit for a responsible society!
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Facebook Grows Up
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Meanwhile, some in the college community—the company's most passionate users—are not happy that Facebook is welcoming swarms of people whose absence was previously appreciated: older people. "Facebook is becoming a different place as it attempts to mass-market itself," says Fred Stutzman, a University of North Carolina grad student who researches social networks. "Do I want to be friends with my uncle?" Robert Putnam, author of "Bowling Alone," a book about the disconnectedness of contemporary Americans, worries that the site is becoming less useful as it reaches a broader audience and adds applications. "Facebook was originally a classic 'alloy,' bonding the Internet and the real world," he says. But now he says it feels less rooted in real life.
Zuckerberg and his team feel certain that the Facebook idea will trump all these concerns. He's built a superhigh-IQ engineering team (after three years of living on Facebook, top grads desperately want to work there) who drift in late and stay much later at the cheerfully cluttered Palo Alto Facebook headquarters. "Absolutely yes," says Facebook's COO, Owen Van Natta, to the question of whether it will change the world of 30-, 40- and 50-year-olds the way it has on campus. He then amends the question to conform to the company's new unofficial, and weirdly defensive, motto: it's not just students. "Facebook did not change college life, but it changed the lives of the early adopters ... many of whom were in college. We're entering a phase where every single day we have more people over 25 entering Facebook than any other demographic. So, absolutely, yes."
Expect a lot of poking.
With Karen Breslau in Palo Alto, Jennifer Ordoñez and Tara Weingarten in Los Angeles, Temma Ehrenfeld, Charlene Dy, Brian Braiker and Nick Summers in New York and Sam Stein in Washington, D.C.
© 2007
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