After reading the article, “How Mark Zuckerberg Turned Facebook Into the Web’s Hottest Platform”, I was astonished to find that the fastest-growing users of Facebook are over the age 35. I truly thought this site was primarily for the twenty-somethings where they could display pictures of themselves in possibly compromising positions. I was wrong.
I was intrigued by Zuckerberg’s “social graph” concept in which making new friends and acquientances weren’t the primary goal, but to map out connections between existing friends similar to a word-of-mouth search engine. Facebook users would be getting information from people they know and trust instead of major media outlets. For users of Facebook, the new service didn’t seem like a means of easing communications; it appeared as though Facebbook was manipulating and spreading their information without permission. Although Zuckerberg posted an open apology for this, it is reminiscent of what Vaidhyanathan discussed in, “Naked in Nonopticon”.
With news feeds in place, Facebook became a model social hub where users could connect with one another for various causes, share music and video interests, and potentially an online identity for recruiters. Even though this social hub sounds ideal, it still makes me weary of privacy issues.
I am not a Facebook participant and, although I like the idea of a social hub, for me there seems to be too much personal exposure. If I subscribe to a certain news feed, do I want that feed attached to me as an individual? It could be something that I might be interested in following for a short time, just of casual interest, not representative of which I am. That’s the part of the social hub that concerns me most.
