By Brendan O’Reilly
It was organized, exclusive and it had all the fun of MySpace, sans the stalkers, the promos, and the phony profiles. However, as the popular social network site,Facebook, opens its doors to anyone with an e-mail account, fans fear their online community may be threatened.
Facebook was originally only accessible to people with e-mail addresses ending in “.edu.” The Web site later expanded to allow high school students and people with workplace e-mail accounts to become members. As the exclusivity of the Website deteriorates, so does the customer satisfaction of the original target demographic,college students.
“I think it defeats the purpose of Facebook,” student David Winchell, an undecidedfreshman, said. “Facebook is meant [for you] to meet people at your college and lettingeverybody use it gets rid of that whole vibe.”
Facebook says the reason for expansion is to allow users to connect with their friendswho graduated college “pre-Facebook” or entered the workforce right after highschool.
When the plans for the expansion became public, some users protested, creating groupswith names like “Dear Facebook, if I want to be stalked I’d be on MySpace” and “Official Petition Against Opening Facebook.”
Within the description of the petition group, which has over 50,000 members, the creatorasks Facebook users, “Do you want your mother seeing what you were really doing at that party last weekend? How about employers looking at the friends you keep? Or worse, stalkers (non-students anyway) tracking you down? None of these convince you? What about…the spammers?”
Facebook has privacy features to meet these concerns. “Only people in your networks and confirmed friends can see your profile,” according to the official Facebook blog. When users poke or message someone, it allows that user to temporarilyview their profile. By adjusting privacy settings, users can block people in other networks from finding their account by using the Web site’s search engine.
According to the blog, the expansion will not compromise privacy.
“Your profile is just as closed off as it ever was,” wrote Carolyn Abram, Facebook blogger.
“[W]e’ve built out a bunch of tools that will help verify new users and prevent spammers from bothering you,” Abram wrote. Authentication procedures, such as verifying the creation of an account via e-mail or mobile phone can prevent “bots” from making accounts and sending out friend requests and messages.
Confirming that users are real people and not computer programs is not the same asassuring users are who they say they are.
Most users of another popular networking Web site, MySpace.com, have received friendrequests and messages from people they never met before. After perusing the profiles ofthese strangers it may have become apparent that it was all just a ploy to get people to join a pornographic site.
“With more people comes more problems,” freshman Travis Franklin, a video, televisionand business major said of the expansion. “You’re going to encounter a lot of spam, a lot of just creepers on there too. Like the same sort of sexual predators that you get on MySpace, you’re going to be getting on Facebook as well.”
“I don’t even know why I look at my MySpace anymore, and Facebook is going to become that,” added Franklin.
If he receives as many unwanted advertisements and solicitation on Facebook as he is accustomed to on MySpace, Franklin says he may stop using the Web site.