I Spoke Too Soon

Open Facebook
Rachel Rosmarin, 09.11.06, 5:30 PM ET

They'll let anyone in to Facebook these days.

Once the exclusive online stomping grounds of college students, social networking site Facebook.com is throwing open the doors to rest of the world. The site is slated to announce in coming weeks that anyone can gain access to the site, simply by affiliating themselves with a particular city or region.

The company had planned to announce and launch this expanded registration Tuesday but has delayed the expansion as it sorts through the backlash from changes it made to the site Sept. 5.

"Last week, we learned we need to do a better job communicating on launches," says company spokeswoman Melanie Deitch. "We are going to think through how to better inform users, and we don't want to risk expanded registration being a big issue on the heels of last week's changes." Deitch said the company might communicate with users in coming weeks about the site's growth pace via blog postings and comments in user groups.

The growth move is fraught with risk for the company, whose more than 9.3 million registered users are intensely attached to the site because it lets them connect to a select group of peers. But the nature of social networking sites makes it easy for dissatisfied users to migrate. Facebook executives must try to expand the site's reach without diluting its appeal. If they fail, the company risks being viewed as a second-rate version of MySpace, the famously open social network that now receives more than 46 million visitors per month.

"Facebook could be hurt when users start drawing comparisons to MySpace," says Fred Stutzman, a graduate student at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill's School of Information and Library Science, who studies Facebook's use among that university's students. "There's a backlash with every change at Facebook--but this is now the point of no return."

Last week, the company created a furor when it tweaked its model to show users updates to their "friends" activities as soon as they logged on. Facebook fans squawked, citing privacy concerns, and hundreds of thousands joined online petitions threatening to boycott the site.

"The Facebook users feel like they have ownership in the company," says Stutzman. "When they realize that they're not the ones in control, it's a real slap in the face."

Facebook executives initially dismissed users' worries, but within days the company backtracked somewhat, allowing users more control over who sees what. On Friday, founder and Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg posted a public apology to his users on the company blog, outlining where he went wrong and what he has done to make amends.

Zuckerberg helped create the company in 2004, when the Harvard undergraduate wanted to find a way to let fellow classmates connect. The company later broadened its user base to include all Ivy League schools, then all universities, then high schools and eventually corporations. Would-be members had to demonstrate affiliation with one of these institutions, via a valid e-mail address. But as soon as the new look kicks in, users will be able to register with a generic e-mail account and join a group associated with one of 500 cities and towns, whether or not they live there.

Though group members can customize their security settings to include or exclude specific people from seeing certain personal details--such as photos, contact information and comments left on friends' profiles--default settings allow anyone within a network (such as a school, or now a city) see everyone else's profile details. The wealth of personal data available to large groups of strangers on Facebook has never been richer.

Comparisons to the much larger and more open MySpace--purchased by News Corp. (nyse: NWS - news - people ) in July 2005 for $580 million--are inevitable. But if Facebook truly wanted to emulate MySpace's success, it would have opened up its registration policy a long time ago. But until now, the site's restrictions restrained growth.

Now it seems ready to expand. The company has collected $38 million in venture funding collected since 2004; in August, it secured an advertising deal with Microsoft (nasdaq: MSFT - news - people ). The site's non-student population already appears to be growing. Between May 2005 and May 2006, the percentage of Facebook users older than 34 grew to 37.3% from 32.4%, according to eMarketer and ComScore Media Metrix.

Yet Facebook still has less than half the users MySpace had when News Corp. bought the company last year, and revenues are still small--an estimated $30 million a year compared with MySpace’s roughly $180 million--says eMarketer senior analyst Debra Williamson.

And perhaps because of the limited advertising real estate at Facebook, limits ads to sponsored profiles, banners on the side of the page and above a user's profile. "Facebook doesn't have that sexy glow as an advertising environment, as compared with MySpace's advertising buzz," says Williamson. "That could be a negative for Facebook unless they redesign their pages."

This year, U.S. advertisers will spend only $280 million on ads through social networks, according to eMarketer, but that will increase to $1.9 billion by 2010. Worldwide, that figure will reach $2.5 billion. Those numbers, coupled with the continued success of MySpace after News Corp.'s acquisition last year, have fueled rumors that Facebook is a likely acquisition target.

At the time of the company's last round of funding, the Silicon Valley rumor mill pegged the company's value at around $600 million. But the "why not?" logic of the latest tech boom has fueled reports placing even higher price tags on the company--someone purportedly attached to the company even managed to attach a $2 billion price tag/trial balloon last spring.

"We have to correct that. The $2 billion price tag reported in the media is so far out there," Zuckerberg said during an Aug. 17 interview. Zuckerberg, who admitted on a company blog that Facebook "really messed up" the launch of news feeds, wouldn't take interview requests about the delays in expanding registration. "We're not holding out for a price because we're busy building and growing the site." But Zuckerberg must tread carefully: Growth that scares his core could wind up hurting his young company's value.

article from Forbes.com

Facebook Kisses and Makes Up

If only politics worked this way...

An Open Letter from Mark Zuckerberg:

by Mark Zuckerberg 4:48am Today

We really messed this one up. When we launched News Feed and Mini-Feed we were trying to provide you with a stream of information about your social world. Instead, we did a bad job of explaining what the new features were and an even worse job of giving you control of them. I'd like to try to correct those errors now.

When I made Facebook two years ago my goal was to help people understand what was going on in their world a little better. I wanted to create an environment where people could share whatever information they wanted, but also have control over whom they shared that information with. I think a lot of the success we've seen is because of these basic principles.

We made the site so that all of our members are a part of smaller networks like schools, companies or regions, so you can only see the profiles of people who are in your networks and your friends. We did this to make sure you could share information with the people you care about. This is the same reason we have built extensive privacy settings — to give you even more control over who you share your information with.

Somehow we missed this point with Feed and we didn’t build in the proper privacy controls right away. This was a big mistake on our part, and I’m sorry for it. But apologizing isn’t enough. I wanted to make sure we did something about it, and quickly. So we have been coding nonstop for two days to get you better privacy controls. This new privacy page will allow you to choose which types of stories go into your Mini-Feed and your friends’ News Feeds, and it also lists the type of actions Facebook will never let any other person know about. If you have more comments, please send them over.

This may sound silly, but I want to thank all of you who have written in and created groups and protested. Even though I wish I hadn’t made so many of you angry, I am glad we got to hear you. And I am also glad that News Feed highlighted all these groups so people could find them and share their opinions with each other as well.

About a week ago I created a group called Free Flow of Information on the Internet, because that’s what I believe in – helping people share information with the people they want to share it with. I’d encourage you to check it out to learn more about what guides those of us who make Facebook. Tomorrow at 4pm est, I will be in that group with a bunch of people from Facebook, and we would love to discuss all of this with you. It would be great to see you there.

Thanks for taking the time to read this,

Mark

But seriously...
Could you imagine the kind of world we'd live in if Washington worked this way; (the way it's supposed to) listening to the people instead of the "sponsors", recognizing mistakes and realizing that's a good thing, acting with humility instead of arrogance, working from conviction instead of self-protection? Hell, the world might even change. I'm impressed, facebook. Well done.

Facebook Backlash

Inside the Backlash Against Facebook

Time/CNN Reports:
Users of the popular site are angry about a new feature and are organizing their protest—on Facebook

By TRACY SAMANTHA SCHMIDT

Posted Wednesday, Sep. 06, 2006
Generation Facebook is taking action — against Facebook. On Tuesday morning the popular social networking site unrolled a new feature dubbed the "News Feed" that allows users to track their friends' Facebook movements by the minute. For many of Facebook's 8-million plus student users, it was too much. Within 24 hours, hundreds of thousands of students nationwide organized themselves to protest the new feature. Ironically, they're using Facebook to do it.

The feature in question appears on the user's home page and looks like a glitzy laundry list. It chronicles every action a user's friends have recently taken on Facebook. These include the mundane: Sally befriended Joan, the boring: Tim now likes The Daily Show, and the juicy: John and Beth broke up. And in case it matters, each action is time-stamped to the minute.

By its nature, News Feed is intrusive and that's what upsets students. It's one thing to casually check out a friend's updated profile between classes. It's another to be unwillingly inundated with each friend's latest Facebook antics. The News Feed does not have an off switch, although users can block or limit non-friends from seeing their profiles, which feed directly into the News Feed. At the very least, the aggrieved students want the option of a News Feed off-switch. Some want Facebook to do away with it completely.

Since Tuesday, a handful of anti-News Feed groups have sprung up on Facebook. The largest has 284,000 members and is called "Students Against Facebook News Feed (Official Petition to Facebook)." The group was created yesterday morning by Ben Parr, a junior at Northwestern University, who was disgusted to find the News Feed when he logged into Facebook. With a meeting to get to, Parr quickly created a group, told a few friends about it and left his computer. When he came back a few hours later, the membership was at 13,000 and the numbers climbed steadily throughout the day, reaching 100,000 at 2:00 a.m — at which point Parr called it a night.

He isn't certain why his is the most successful anti-News Feed groups. "It's might be that mine was one of the first groups," said Parr, 21. "That, and my group acts as a petition directly to Facebook." Included on Parr's group is a link to Facebook's customer support page where users can email Facebook administrators directly. Parr also linked to a formal online petition which asks Facebook to either remove or modify the News Feed. It currently has more than 28,000 signatures.

Several college newspapers also picked up the story this morning. Headlines include "Facebook is watching you," "Furious with Facebook" and "Facebook fumbles with changes."

Despite what may be Gen Y's first official revolution, Facebook is holding firm. Yesterday afternoon, Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg posted an entry to Facebook's blog titled "Calm Down. Breathe. We Hear You." Zuckerberg acknowledged that many users are not "immediate fans and have found them overwhelming and cluttered. Other people are concerned that non-friends can see too much about them." He did not announce any changes to the News Feed, but rather reiterated Facebook's privacy features and promoted the News Feed as a cool way to "know what's going on in your friends' lives."

Like it or not, Facebook's face may be changing for good. The social networking site, which was originally an exclusive web site for college students, has expanded to include high school students and corporations. Sponsors now spend thousands to advertise on the site and politicians are also tapping into Facebook. For Zuckerberg, the News Feed allows Facebook users to better keep up with each other. "All the most interesting stuff that's going on is presented to you," Zuckerberg told TIME recently. "The analogy would be instead of an encyclopedia, it's now news. We're emphasizing what's going on now."

That level of intimacy may be too intense for even today's college students, many of whom have infamously posted pictures on Facebook of underage drinking and drug use. Or it could be something much simpler than an alleged invasion of privacy. "Every action I take on Facebook is now time stamped," says Erik Ornitz, 18, a Brown student who formed his own anti-News Feed group. "It's a little strange because everyone will now know that at 10 o'clock I updated my Facebook profile and that I wasn't in class." Regardless of its intentions, one thing is for sure. Gen Y has unexpectedly found a way to organize.

link to article

A Day Without Facebook
A call for Facebook users to boycott Facebook on September 12, 2006
http://daywithoutfacebook.blogspot.com/