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

This is differnt?

[Siberwulf]

How is this different than MySpace now? other than the fact that now sexual predators know that a majority of the memebers are coeds?

Re:This is differnt?

[keyshawn632]

Eh, besides the ability to make your profile really tacky by having a god-awful color scheme, flash, and a music stream; only noticible difference [between facebook and myspace] that I see is that you must 'friend' the other person in order to see their entire profile.

However, If you're not their 'friend', their name still comes up in the search engine and you can still see their name, school, a profile picture/avatar, and who they have listed as their friends. Although the information coming up in the search engine seems like a bit much, you can configure it so that your information does not come up in the search engine.
The caveat with that, though, is that no one outside of your school network can make a friend request to you. You would have to initiate all friend requests.

As a college student and facebook user, Facebook jumped the shark a long time ago .
(adding high school, companies onto there, the status updates...)

I'm not looking forward to having random middle-aged men sending me friend requests on facebook (I got these even as a male on myspace, and the college ladies will have their inboxes filled... *shudders*)

Re:This is differnt?

[Garse Janacek]

Well, facebook generally doesn't make the backs of my eyeballs feel like they're on fire, the way the page design on myspace usually does...

Re:This is differnt?

[dfghjk]

Didn't know the victim had to be underage for someone to be a "sexual predator".

No more open than it was before

[finkployd]

People, if you have no caught on to this yet, a lot of employers have people at a lot of schools pulling facebook profiles for their HR dept. Some undergrad they pay, nephew of the CEO attending classes, a staff member, whatever. Your facebook profile WILL be seen outside of the fantasy restrictions you think facebook puts on it. They are under no obligation to honor those restrictions anyway, they could open up the whole thing tomorrow to the world and there is nothing you can do about it. The content you put on it is theirs, not yours, and they can license it to whomever they want or distribute it as they see fit. Read the ToS agreement.

Finkployd

Re:No more open than it was before

[garcia]

This goes for anything that you post publically including your blog, your gallery, your Slashdot posts, your old usenet posts, your random Dodgeball history, etc.

Be aware of what you are posting out there and that it is likely that it will be archived *forever* in some way for others to look at.

We're not all going to get off as scott free as Arnold, Bill, and George when we're looking for a job and someone has evidence of our past history in hand.

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:No more open than it was before

[aussersterne]

Ahhh, once again someone suggests that we should all hide our personhood behind the facade of "vanilla-flavored, grey-colored worker" in order to sustain a living. Well you don't live forever, folks. So if you make nothing to leave behind you now but the pinstripes on your suit, that's all that will remain of you once you're gone.

I got on the subway this morning with just such a pack of yes-men. I couldn't tell them apart. Suits, hairdos, shiny little shoes, bland ties. They are all dead, unimportant, lost to history, no matter how big their bank accounts. They don't even matter to their friends or families beyond being "breadwinner." They could just as easily be any other hollow suit.

No thanks. If you want me to be a hollow suit, I don't want to work for you. Take your money and go rape the third world somewhere.

"An alumni"?

[Simon Garlick]

Latin, motherf*cker, do you speak it?!

Re:"An alumni"?

[operagost]

Not only that, but you don't need to be an alumnus-- you can be an undergraduate. It was my impression that most of the Facebook users are undergrads.

We don't need another Myspace

[thoriphes]

There are already sites like MySpace and Friendster in the scene, we don't need Facebook to become one of them. The beauty of Facebook was that it was somewhat of a closed community where people were on the same level, if you will. College is a society on its own and Facebook allows the sharing of a lot of commonalities and close-knit ties with people in your campus as well as others. If you open the floodgates for the public, you'll just bring in an onslaught of stalkers (the newsfeed only makes things worse). There's already been quite the resentment for allowing high-schoolers to sign up for Facebook, what now for the common public?

Re:We don't need another Myspace

[OakDragon]

The beauty of Facebook was that it was somewhat of a closed community where people were on the same level, if you will. College is a society on its own and Facebook allows the sharing of a lot of commonalities and close-knit ties with people in your campus as well as others.

I think you hit the nail on the head here. (I know you're right; you agree with me!) This is the way I have observed college students using Facebook. (I haven't been a student for a few years, but I know some.) I think this might actually hurt Facebook in the long run. Call it over-reaching, feature creep or what have you. Companies often kill the golden-egged goose because they begin to want silver and ruby eggs, too.

Coming soon:

[shoptroll]

I bet there's going to be a merger at some point. Coming soon: FaceSpace!

Re:Coming soon:

[andphi]

And then, a few merger-generations later, we'll find the weblog ecology split down the middle: FaceSpaceLiveXangaBlogFriender and .Mac.

Humor

[SirLestat]

Look at what I found just this morning, what a coincidence: http://www.collegehumor.com/video:1707663. That is also why I try not put any personal information on the web.

Let the Stalking Begin

[Deinhard]

I'm much removed from the social networking sites such as FaceBook (by time) and MySpace (by desire) but it seemed to me that the main advantage of FaceBook was that it was a relatively safe place for HS and College students to meet and interact.

Now, with the addition of millions of potential users, it seems (as others have said) that the site should become MyFaceBook.

Why can't site operators (even those that pay millions for established market share) realize that they can make a reasonable profit within niche markets? That was the entire purpose behind the original "Virtual Community" concept of the late 90s. People can belong to multiple niches and can receive targeted messages based on the site they are currently visiting.

I could keep moaning and bitching, but it would just lead to a rant...

Replace Facebook

[dorango]

A group of students decided to replace Facebook with a student built and operated site... If Facebook really has lost touch with its userbase, perhaps these guys can offer a decent alternative to MySpace/Facebook for students. http://digg.com/software/Outraged_Students_Replace _Facebook I signed up, it's a little low on features, but they've only had a week. I think it's something to keep an eye on. -Dorango

Re:Replace Facebook

[dorango]

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

Townies...!!!

[DeusExMalex]

Great. Now I get to be harrassed by townies on the Internet, too. Profile = private.

Re:Facebook's lost touch with its users

[ceejayoz]

That's like saying that something better than Slashdot is coming, and then posting a Geocities link.