Less than two years ago, an online community known as Facebook trickled its way onto the web, serving as a network that connected about twenty colleges through personal profiles and a solitary picture. Today, nearly four million college and graduate students from hundreds of universities across the country are logged in as Facebook members, and about half of these members sign into their account at least every 24 hours.
Feeding this monstrous popularity is the introduction of a new photo album feature. The feature allows users to create photo albums for their online friends to see. When uploading the photos, there is the option to label the people in each photo by name. Then, if a labeled person is a Facebook member, that photo will be linked to his or her profile, unless this person has specified otherwise.
This gives a whole new dimension to online people-watching. By posting photos, a Facebook member is giving their friends permission to take a glimpse into their recorded social life, while at the same time, linking the pictures to friends who may have not given this same permission.
“There have been some really bad pictures of me that are linked to my profile,” said Becca Seely ’06. “It’s a little weird.”
Once a photo has been linked to a profile, that person may choose to remove the tag. It can get tricky, however, because there is no notification that a photo has been linked to your profile, so it may take some time (especially for those less-addicted Facebook members) to realize that an unflattering, or worse, incriminating picture has been posted. And even when a picture link has been removed from that profile, it is still visible on the original poster’s photo album.
This has raised certain issues. Pictures that show under-age students drinking could be dangerous to people keeping eligibility on sports teams or specific student groups. One sophomore said that a picture of him with a forty-ounce beer was posted by a friend. Then, through one of his Facebook friends from his hometown, it somehow got back to his mother.
“She didn’t care that I was drinking,” he said. “But she didn’t want pictures on the internet that showed me drinking when I’m not 21.”
Sarah Covey ’06 talked about another troubling aspect of the new feature.
“It makes me feel bad because the number of tagged photos of me hasn’t changed since the feature started,” she said with a laugh. “It makes me feel like my friends don’t want to put pictures of me online.”
This feature, despite its concerns, has been a welcome addition to most Facebook users that may cement Facebook’s lead over competitor sites such as Friendster and CampusMatch. For example, because Friendster is more of a “post-college thing,” according to Covey, members are connected to people who may have very little in common with them, and thus may be less willing to reveal certain personal information. “Stalking is not okay if you don’t have a context to know them,” Covey said.
Both Covey and Seely noted another aspect that deters people from Friendster browsing. There is a feature that shows who has recently looked at your profile, an embarrassing prospect for the most ardent of online people-watchers. The chief executive of Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg, noted this as well in an interview with Silicon Beat. According to Zuckerberg, the popularity of Facebook can be attributed to the level of privacy in comparison to other online communities. It does not allow people from other schools to see a member’s profile, and it does not track how often you look at others’ profiles. This relative anonymity has been vital to the success of Facebook.
Despite the popularity, there is a certain indulgence of Facebook that is admitted by many students. Some refuse to join at all, while others will admit that it serves no purpose, yet still take part. And most students who do take part did not feel comfortable saying just how frequently they logged on to Facebook.
“We should all be very embarrassed that we like Facebook so much,” Seely said. “And I think most of us are.”
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