By Wren Culp
Staff Writer
The new trend in social networking is to update your information to stay in touch with people easier. But the popular site Facebook has taken things to an entirely new level.
Back in February of 2004, Facebook was available to just Harvard students as a way to talk and communicate across campus. The man behind the site was Harvard sophomore Mark Zuckerberg.
Zuckerberg launched Facebook on February 4th, 2004 from his Harvard dorm room. The idea for Facebook came from his days at Phillips Exeter Academy, which has a long-standing tradition of publishing an annual student directory with headshot photos of all students, faculty, and staff known as the “Facebook”.
From its days at Harvard, the social networking site has more than 350 million active users worldwide, had over $350 million invested in it and ranked the most used social network by worldwide monthly active users by “Complete.com.”
Since then, the site has gone through major layout changes almost frequently. Users have seen many different layouts from the team based in Palo Alto, Calif. But according to users, the latest “update” seems to be the worst of them all.
“It seems to be making it easier for creeps to find you”, said freshman Adam Carnahan. “Your friends are also at risk, too, it would seem.”
The latest change occurred on December 9th, 2009. In short the update, gives more information to the public if they are not your friend and more than just your network will be displayed now.
Recently, the user could make their “Friends list” private for only that person or their friends to see. At first, the new setting did not protect your friends list. Then, a new privacy setting described in a blog post sent to all users was added to protect the lists, though they were still considered “public” information by Facebook.
“They seem to keep making things to complicated than they need to be”, said sophomore Haley Greenia. “They need to keep it simple.”
So why is Facebook constantly bugging its users with updates and layout changes? In a recent blog post sent out by Facebook, the company addressed the complaints and questions with a statement that said “we are trying to make Facebook a more user-friendly environment by making it simpler.”
It’s the same story users have heard ever since the site started updating. Some past updates have included new applications for the user, enhanced security measure, and simple things such as posting stuff on your “wall” such as photos and links.
But lately the enhanced security has been revoked for more “freedom” to users. But to some users, freedom is not what they want.
“Freedom is great but not like this. Security is just as important if not of greater importance,” said Greenia.
Privacy is definitely an issue when it comes to any social networking site. One of the perks about Facebook and a topic that has caused many controversies is the issue of people deleting or “de-activating” their account.
However, any information the user has entered into the website and on their profile remained on the website’s servers. For people who left rather embarrassing pictures behind on the site, it is little comfort to know that the Facebook staff can pull up anything and everything they once posted.”
It is almost a violation of trust,” Carnahan said. “It kind of defeats the purpose of having privacy options.”
With security risks at an all time high on the internet, Facebook has good intentions but they seem to be going about it in the wrong manner.
