In My World

If you haven’t been following the recent happenings with facebook, you may be out of the loop. To catch you up, basically, facebook released a new feature which organized the information about your friends in one central location. Many people were offended, scared, and just worried about what their “precious” website had turned into. There were groups upon groups that were made to protest this new feature.

Now, I’m not here to talk about this, that’s not the issue. That problem has been talked about to death. It seems that facebook will allow open registration. This means that anyone would be able to sign up.

Before I start into my rant, I would love to quote a dear friend of mine.

Fuck it. Let everyone join, then it will become the usual whored out to porn site crapbook where every three days some ‘chick’ named Candy will ask me to check out her pics and watch her live web cam.

With that said, there are many problems with this. First, imagine all the spam. Facebook was never a popularity contest. Okay, a few people did use it as a way to make themselves sound better. However, most college students used facebook to keep track of their friends. Albeit, the new features throughout this year have been useful. (Mainly Pictures, Events, Groups, Private Messages, and recently, Notes.) But opening up registration will open up a huge stream of UNWANTED information that students do not want.

Second, facebook was a secluded area for college students and only so. Call us whatever you want. Elitist; sure. However, facebook was something that students looked forward to when entering college. It’s like a drivers license. Not everyone has it, and it’s a privilege.

Third, facebook is trying to get into the MySpace market. Sure, enjoy your growth, but you’re going to lose your popularity. Facebook used to be like that hot underground club with the tight DJs where only you and a few select individuals knew about. Now, it’s like going to the mall and partying. It’s just going to get whored out. Be careful what you wish for.

Facebook is a company. They will do anything for profit, but there is a right and wrong way of doing it. Tom, I mean, Mark, do us a favor and roll out your features gradually. Stick to your original views on things. Don’t let money blur your views on how it was as a student.

Update:

Around 45 minutes after I posted this little rant, facebook published this.

Reminder: Privacy Controls

Since we started adding high schools and companies last year, pretty much everyone has been able to use Facebook. As the site grows, we’re constantly adding more privacy controls like the ones we added last week in response to your suggestions about News Feed. You can expect to see more soon, but in the meantime we want to highlight some things you may not have known.

How do I control who sees my information?

• Show different information to different people using privacy controls.
• Hide info from specific people (even friends) using limited profiles.
• Make yourself invisible to someone on the site by blocking them.

Who can see my profile now?

• Your friends.
• Other people at [removed].
• We will never allow any random person to see your information.

Who can get on the site?

• College students with a .edu email address.
• High School students with an invitation or a school email address.
• People can register for a company using their work email address.
• In the future, people will be able to register for regions. But not yet.

What does this mean for me?

• Probably not a lot since privacy has always worked this way.
• Still, make sure your privacy controls are set the way you want.
• If you have suggestions for improving privacy, send them to here.