Bogdan’s Blog

NEWSWEEK COVER: The Facebook Effect:

The August, 20-27 double issue of Newsweek (on newsstands Monday, August 13), “The Facebook Effect” looks at how Facebook, the wildly popular networking site is growing up and facing new challenges to become a fixture in the digital age; excerpts from the Newsweek/Kaplan “How to Get Into College Guide,” the “25 Hottest Schools;” and a look at what schools across the nation are doing to beef up security and improve student mental health. Plus: how IEDs are changing modern warfare. (PRNewsFoto/NEWSWEEK)
NEW YORK, NY UNITED STATES

Facebook has Revolutionized College Life and now it is out for the Rest of the World A Growing Number of Users are no Longer in College, but Facebook may not be the Perfect Tool for Non-Students Just yet

NEW YORK, Aug. 12 /PRNewswire/ — Facebook revolutionized the way college students communicate with each other since its creation in 2004, but it has also become a tool for people who are no longer students. Facebook officials claim that more than half its 35 million active users are not college students, and that by the end of this year less than 30 percent of Facebook users will sport college IDs.
(Photo: http://www.newscom.com/cgi-bin/prnh/20070812/NYSU001 )

For the cover package featured in the August 20-27 double issue of Newsweek (on newsstands Monday, August 13), Mark Zuckerberg, the 23-year-old Harvard dropout who started the site, recently met with Senior Editor Steven Levy and explained that Facebook is (1) not a social-networking site but a “utility,” a tool to facilitate the information flow between users and their compatriots, family members and professional connections; (2) not just for college students, and (3) a world-changing idea of unlimited potential. But the nub of his vision revolves around a concept he calls the “social graph.”

As Zuckerberg describes it, the social graph is a mathematical construct that maps the real-life connections between every human on the planet. Each of us is a node radiating links to the people we know. “We don’t own the social graph,” he says. “The social graph is this thing that exists in the world, and it always has and it always will. It’s really most natural for people to communicate through it, because it’s with the people around you, friends and business connections or whatever. What [Facebook] needed to do was construct as accurate of a model as possible of the way the social graph looks in the world. So once Facebook knows who you care about, you can upload a photo album and we can send it to all those people automatically.”

Newsweek reports that 1 million people a week are flocking to Facebook. And the international push is only beginning. Zuckerberg told Levy that Facebook is the top Web site in Canada, and that the geographic network with the most Facebookers is London. While the site is now available only in English, Zuckerberg says that versions in other languages will appear soon, making his goal of having Facebook become the center of online life, appear possible. But the question remains, can Facebook be as much a presence in the life of graduates and geezers as it is to college students? Zuckerberg can’t see why not. “Adults still communicate with the people they’re connected with.”

Despite the need to communicate, Facebook may not be the perfect networking tool for many non-students just yet. At this point, much of the grammar of the site (as well as much of the first wave of applications) are still tilted toward student life. David Rodnitzky, 35, a San Francisco marketing executive, was having a fine time on Facebook until he installed a widget called “My Questions.” Unbeknownst to him, it sent out a query to people on his friend list, specifically: “Do you kiss on the first date?” “Here I was, asking some of my company’s venture capitalists, along with some of my guy friends, if they kiss on the first date,” says Rodnitzky. “Probably not the best way to interact.” Nor is it clear whether grown-ups embrace the new SuperPoke third-party application: instead of a mere poke (the equivalent of saying “hey you” online) you can bite, slap, bump, spank, lick, grope or head-butt friends, acquaintances and, uh, business colleagues.

Zuckerberg and his team feel certain that the Facebook idea will trump all these concerns. He’s built a superhigh-IQ engineering team at the Palo Alto, Calif., Facebook headquarters. “Absolutely yes,” says Facebook’s COO, Owen Van Natta, to the question of whether it will change the world of 30-, 40- and 50- year-olds the way it has on campus. He then amends the question to conform to the company’s new unofficial, and weirdly defensive, motto: it’s not just students. “Facebook did not change college life, but it changed the lives of the early adopters … many of whom were in college. We’re entering a phase where every single day we have more people over 25 entering Facebook than any other demographic. So, absolutely, yes.”

The cover package also includes the debate over why people love and hate Facebook. Correspondent Kurt Soller who has been a member since his last year in high school says he loves Facebook because the site has allowed him the freedom to build new relationships while still remaining in touch with old friends. On the opposite side of the love/ hate debate, Correspondent Sarah Kliff writes that although she understands the value of Facebook, she hates it. Kliff writes that the constant monitoring and updating takes up too much time that can be spent on more important things and it forces users to obsess over “dull details” rather than focus on connecting with others.

Probably as any other person reading this blog, I don’t have much free time – I mean in between my job and my social ‘duties’ (to call all activities with my friends), quite frankly I barely have time to breath.So when I was first told about Facebook, I thought: “well, yet another ‘social’ networking tool – in other words, sign up, make a profile, write about yourself something that would probably stop representing you in 2 months … quite headache – besides at the time I was a huge LinkedIn fan (still am, don’t get me wrong).

But soon, I’ve been pulled into the Facebook whirl and have been religiously using it ever since. But I always get one and the same question from my less web-savvy friends – what’s all about? Why is Facebook that great? And there is one word to describe it: engagement. I mean, unlike any other site, Facebook allows communication taking into account not only the verbal occurrences (written messages), but also signs – I would even dare to say they built it ‘semiotically’.

A real example would be a person whose acquaintance you made years back. Somehow, you like the person, but you can’t really interact by email – you’re not that familiar to know exactly what to say all the time so you can maintain a relationship, the same goes for instant messaging. The professional networks are out of question, as you may not even know where they work. And for the first time, we have Facebook, the perfect tool to ‘poke’ o say ‘hi’, share picture, send a drink, take a quiz to find out your friends’ affinities, play games (my favourite is ‘vampires’) and so on.

Basically, what Facebook brought new was the non-verbal communication pattern, something we’d all do in real life and on what human interaction is based, small gestures to help us discover other people and maintain relationships.

A smartly built human application where the user is the generator and the intended.