The Facebook Show

“The Facebook Show” Summary

The OTM show about Facebook starts out by describing “Facebookistan”, an idea of Facebook represented as a nation, and comparing it to China. Facebook has a larger (online) population than the U.S and economically holds more power than many actual nations. Similar to China, Facebook requires you to reveal private information, although on a completely different level. Facebook requires users to use their actual names on the website in exchange for using the service, and other than that any other info you enter in to facebook remains private unless you choose otherwise. However, that changed in 2009 when this “private” information became public.

On the subject of privacy, an Austrian man came on to speak about how he got Facebook to provide him with all of the information they have on him. As he explained, he received over 1,000 printed pages and there was still a lot of information he said was not even there. He went on to say that Facebook collects information you wouldn’t even think of, like the exact coordinates of the computer you last logged on from. This information gathered by this man and the awareness it raised led to a few changes in Facebook as well as the Internet as a whole in Europe. For one, Facebook changed the way it recognizes photos when trying to match the face in a photo with a previous one. Also, shadow profiles (external pages that Facebook gathers information through) cannot use the private data that is stored. And, most importantly, Facebook has now made it possible for all users to download their own content and private information. In Europe, new laws were created indirectly stemming from this case to demand websites be more transparent and allow users to have more control.

The show also attempted to put into perspective the size and importance of Facebook, as well as the value of the “like” button. They describe facebook as a utility- something you need to get along, and say that whatever new social media service is launched will have no competition to facebook. Social networking as a whole is something people feel as though they absolutely need to get by, similar to cell phones now, and there is no foreseeable demise for Facebook as the dominant service. The “like” button is a large contributor to this, as 93% of users click that button as least once per month. The pod cast uses Coca-Cola as an example, saying that they have received over 38 million likes and they receive about 90% of the comments within an hour of posting something. They still cannot put a monetary value on the like button, but they can put it into perspective. Facebook is worth over 100 billion dollars and the like button keeps people on the site for long enough for ads to contribute a lot of money to that.

Lastly, a woman came on the show to discuss how the man who raped her when she was a young teen sent her a friend request. She messaged to speak to him, but instead he wanted to speak on the phone so there could be no record of it. She said that he verified what had happened even though he seemed to be in denial about exactly how it occurred. Either way, she said that she is grateful for Facebook because it allowed her to process the information and move on with her life.

Responses

I feel as though I have found a great balance in using social media. I have a Facebook profile to stay connected with my friends and family as I feel it is a great tool to stay in contact and share fun information and links. However, I do feel as though as Facebook continues to grow in size and power that people need to stop being so careless with what they post. I am generally very careful with what I post because I know future employers can see it, even though I feel like I don’t have anything to hide. I see a lot of people posting obscene or frankly illegal things on their Facebook and that just is not smart. The podcast makes it obvious that a lot of our personal information that we are unaware of exists on the Internet, so everybody needs to be extra careful about what they make available. Personally I do not plan to change the way I participate in social media because I use it very carefully as is.

I typically don’t like to just “join the crowd,” and hop on the latest social media craze with the rest of the world, so I was one of the last of my friends to join Facebook. You come to realize that it’s a way of the world now and it really has become the norm; if you want to stay connected, it is something you have to familiarize yourself with. I have since created a Twitter and a Tumblr, two things that I still do not completely enjoy, solely for business purposes. With the world revolving so much around the Internet and social media, it is crucial (especially for me doing graphic design) to connect and share your information and sample work through social media.

As we progress into the future, social media is only going to become more prominent. Many news and sports stories stem from people’s “tweets”, TV broadcasts and radio shows now take comments through Facebook and Twitter more so than over the phone it seems, and so many businesses and companies use social media to learn about their prospective, or current, employees. As time goes on, these are only going to become stronger and as technology advances, so will social media. People would be wise to learn all they can about it now as I think it is going to become a near-necessity in the foreseeable future.