Your Stance on Facebook
By Harry McCracken | Wednesday, September 16, 2009 at 2:33 pm
In a blog post yesterday, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced that the social network he founded now has 300 million members. That’s worldwide, but it also happens to be roughly the same number of people who live in the United States–give or take a few million. For a service that’s only slightly over five years old–and which has been open to non-students for less than three years–it’s a lot of people.
Facebook doesn’t seem to inspire the controversy, passion, and hype of oh, say, Twitter: It’s just part of the air that a lot of us breathe these days. The single thing that I like best about it is that it’s put me back in touch with old friends from every stage of my life, including pals I had before I was able to walk.
Which doesn’t mean that everyone’s on Twitter–I know smart folks who are still thinking it over, or who have intentionally steered clear–or that everyone who’s tried it is a fan. T-Poll time:
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September 16th, 2009 at 2:41 pm
I use facebook almost everyday and LIKE it (I wouldn’t say love it, since there are some things that really annoy me about, mainly the facebook flash apps and spam they send).
The thing that put facebook apart from other social entworking sites is the fact you’re not meant to add people you don’t know: your profile, pics and info is hidden for everyone except your friend by default, which was a real change from all the myspace-rip-offs that hyped having a zillion friends. In contrast: facebook still has a ‘limit’ of 5000 friends.
September 16th, 2009 at 2:44 pm
It’s like Wal-Mart. The utility/convenience factor cannot be discounted no matter how much you disagree with most of what they do. In the case of Facebook, it’s because that’s the easiest place to find old friends.