Facebook Opening Up For The Public

Krishna Dagli writes to mention a BusinessWeek article about a move by Facebook to open up to the public. Up until now, in order to join Facebook you had to be an alumnus from certain High Schools, Colleges, or companies. Soon, individuals living in any one of 500 'geographic regions' can sign up. From the article: "People who joined Facebook because it was primarily a school-focused network may feel that it's losing a key distinction. As with the 'news feed' announcement, reception to this overhaul will come down to how well Facebook communicates. For the average student at New York University, for instance, little changes. The only people who can browse his profile before were other NYU students and that will stay the same. The change simply allows for 500 new groups to form that all operate independently on the Facebook platform. No one can browse all 9 million registered users." Update: 09/12 16:29 GMT by Z : Fixed latin conjugation. Mrs. Tomlinson would be so proud.

Comments

Biggest problem with facebook

[falcon5768]

was the fact it NEEDED my university email to allow me to join. My school doesnt allow allum to have free email addresses, only students. While its cheap to get it, I saw no need to have a 5th email address. But facebook refused to let me sign up as a allum without one, so I said fuck it. Maybe if they would understand that not all schools allow thier students to keep emails then maybe more people might sign up to it.

College students also join regions

[ZachPruckowski]

I'm a college student on Facebook (yes, I'm sure you can find the profile if you look, there's nothing bad on there). I know that I, and many of my facebook friends are in these geographic regions networks as well as college networks. I'm in the Washington, DC one, for example, so that means that now people who just live in DC can view my profile, not just college or high school students from DC. I don't think most college kids realize that.

Re:No more open than it was before

[Jacer]

It's true... I have a friend that finished school two years ago. His employer asked him to create a facebook account and check the profiles of a handful of applicants from my school. Scary prospect.

Re:Replace Facebook

[dorango]

http://www.replacefacebook.com/ -- it seems the Digg link is down.

Soon?

[liryon]

The writeup says soon, but facebook has been allowing sign-ups for geogrphical regions for months now. Old news, move along.

Re:Soon?

[tmjr3353]

You can join regional networks once you're already a member, but you can not sign up through a regional network yet. The drop-down box still only lists: college, high school and work as candidates.

No one?

[TheSeventh]

> No one can browse all 9 million registered users.

Except of course, for the site owners, and the government. Thanks to GW and the DHS, the government has access to all of Myspace, facebook, friendster, etc. Because you know terrorists are big on facebook. They like to create groups like "Facebook is for infidels" and "I just started a jihad 5 minutes ago".

Consider anything you put on there easily enough open to anybody. It's not difficult to create university email addresses, which is why places, fake celebrities, and even people's pets and "Delicious Beer" can create profiles on facebook (although facebook has been removing pets and inanimate object profiles).