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Everyone Knows – the Dangers of Social Networking Websites

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Everyone Knows – the Dangers of Social Networking Websites Andy Van Zeeland Phil 308 10 Dec 2010 Everyone Knows – The Dangers of Social Networking Websites As of March 22, 2010, over one-third of all Americans have a Facebook profile and visit at least monthly (Hepburn). More than three billion photos are uploaded to the website each month, and more than 60 million status updates are posted each day (Hepburn). Facebook has pervaded the life of global culture in a way never seen before. This is a problem because Facebook is very apathetic about their users' privacy. Facebook has a history of changing privacy settings without actively alerting the user base, and even preventing users from hiding certain information from the world. This paper will provide a quick introduction to social networking and how it has evolved over the years, the rise of Facebook, and how Facebook has been continually exploiting the privacy of its users. When someone thinks about social networking, the ideas come to mind of posting a message on a group wall, inviting that old high school friend to join your friend list, and sharing that beautiful nature picture with all of your friends. But it hasn’t always been what we consider it today. Wikipedia defines a social networking service as “an online service, platform, or site that focuses on building and reflecting of social networks or social relations among people […] who share interests and/or activities” (“Social Network Service”). Social networking has been redefining itself ever since the term was coined. To be able to truly understand where it is headed, we have to first examine its past. The idea of 'social networking’ started with the BBS – short for Bulletin Board System (Nickson). BBSs were the precursor to the Internet and functioned similarly to the cork-and-pin bulletin boards often found in entrances to public places, where people can post information (“Bulletin Board System”). People would connect and log on to the system using a terminal program, and once logged on, the user would be presented with an array of actions that could be performed, such as 1 uploading and downloading programs, writing and reading messages to and from other users, and reading public message boards (“Bulletin Board System”). BBSs provided users with a rudimentary means to communicate with each other over phone lines before the Internet existed. They were quickly phased out with the rise of the World Wide Web, which brought about a lot of change in how social networking sites would operate. Finally, there were websites dedicated to the idea of social networking. One of the first of such websites was SixDegrees.com. It was revolutionary in the way that it allowed its users to create profiles, invite friends, organize groups, and surf other user profiles (Nickson). All of this was great, and with 3.5 million registered users at its peak, it seemed that SixDegrees would continue to grow and expand on the idea of a social networking website (Prall). Unfortunately though, SixDegrees did not last very long, and it certainly didn't leverage the popularity or support that a site such as Facebook has today (Prall). The biggest reason for its demise was the fact that the online advertising industry, which is Facebook's main source of income, wasn't as strong and mature as it is today (Prall, Parr). The fact that the economy was also entering a recession around the time the company peaked didn't help the low revenue numbers it was receiving from online advertising (Prall). So with SixDegrees crumbling shortly after the turn of the millennium, the online world found itself searching for the next answer to its new social networking need. In the year 2002, the answer appeared: Friendster (“Friendster”). Friendster took the ideas presented by SixDegrees, reapplied them in a newer technological age, and was able to flourish. Friendster grew and grew, and after a mere six months it had already hit three million registered members (Simon). However, its quick growth unfortunately led to its downfall. As its CEO was focused on further expansion and growth into the future, the website's servers were struggling to handle the increasing traffic. Users, bogged down with long load times, ended up searching for an alternative, and thus Myspace entered the scene. Myspace was created several months before Friendster started having problems. A few of its 2 members saw the great potential in this newly untapped market and began taking bits and pieces of its ideas to start their own version. They were employees of a company called eUniverse, which provided them with all the startup technical infrastructure required, greatly simplifying their entrance into the social networking business (Stone). This meant that the Myspace team was able to focus almost completely on business strategies, which allowed them to really thrive. One of the great differences between Myspace and other modern social networking sites is that Myspace allows a very high level of user page customization. For example, Myspace users can embed custom cascading style sheet (CSS) code into their user page. CSS is a way for the user to quickly and easily apply design changes to the website, such as adding background images, changing fonts and colors, or adding borders around certain parts of the page. Users can also embed a media player into their page that will play music or video when a user navigates to it. This is one of the reasons for Myspace’s appeal to the younger generation, who tend to be less interested in usability and more interested in creative expression. Unfortunately for Myspace, there was a bigger fish growing and competing with them after their debut in 2003: Facebook. Facebook was created in a Harvard dormitory in 2003. It has been widely successful because it expanded on a lot of the ideas from other social networking sites. Users can do all of the standard actions such as create profiles with photos, make lists of personal interests, and provide contact information and other basic personal information. What makes Facebook so successful now is the fact that it continues to stay ahead of the competition by adding brand new functionality, continually innovating and giving users more reasons to regularly log on. Facebook was revolutionary compared to other social networking sites, and it was able to edge out Myspace for several reasons. Facebook pages were designed with a much cleaner interface. Without all the user-added bells and whistles that Myspace boasted, Facebook was able to keep a much cleaner and more uniform layout and design. Because of this uniformity, users were able to find 3 information much faster than when forced to dig through a cluttered Myspace page. Another reason is that there was less advertising on Facebook. Also, Facebook encouraged you to register with a real name instead of with a username. This made finding and connecting with other users easier, as you could search by their full name instead of having to know their username. Moreover, Facebook was coming up with new innovations at a faster rate than Myspace, such as the creation of the wall and user groups, both of which were extremely popular. All of these reasons pushed Facebook to the lead, but probably the most important was the fact that Facebook was exclusive. It originally started as a website for Harvard students to network with other Harvard students and required a Harvard email address to register. Seeing the great potential in growing the user base, but being very careful not to alienate their original users, Facebook opened its doors to Stanford University as well as other universities in the Ivy League besides Harvard. After expanding to these schools, Facebook began offering membership to students at thousands of additional universities. Shortly thereafter, they opened membership to any person affiliated with a high school or high-profile company, and eventually welcomed anyone over the age of 13 years old. While they might have drifted away from their original user base, it was clearly worth it. Facebook has grown to be the supergiant of social networking sites, boasting an active user base of over 500 million people. To put that into perspective, that's around 32% of the active internet user population and there is no sign of slowing down. You might be thinking, so what? What's the big problem with Facebook becoming the de-facto standard for social networking needs? Well, his name is Mark Zuckerberg. Mark Zuckerberg, or “Zuck,” is the CEO and co-founder of Facebook. As such, he is able to lead the company in any direction he sees fit. In Vanity Fair’s 2010 list of “most influential people of the Information Age” Zuck is listed as number one. Thus, his past and beliefs deserve to be examined to determine if he’s someone we can trust with our personal information. 4 Zuck grew up in the outskirts of New York City and is the son of a psychiatrist and a dentist. He started programming at a young age and began learning software development even before attending high school. There he wrote a program called the Synapse Media Player that used rudimentary artificial intelligence to learn the user's listening habits. It was a widespread success. After being offered employment at such companies as Microsoft and AOL and receiving purchase offers, he released the software for free, turned down the job offers, and went off to Harvard to study psychology and computer science. As a sophomore at Harvard, his hacker persona really began to shine. In October of 2003, he wrote what some call the predecessor to Facebook: Facemash. Facemash was similar to the website “Hot or Not,” where females' pictures were paired up against each other and voted on to determine the “hotter” user.
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