Facebook: The Good The Bad And The Ugly

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By Alex Blaken


It is interesting to think that Facebook was unveiled in February 2004 and has increased to more than 500 million members, it truly is an extraordinary achievement. It is a feat of epic proportions and a tremendous success story which also reflects the increasing popularity of social networking.

You will find people whose career is now dependant of Facebook. There is a daily battle between independent application developers and development firms for instance Zynga, around the world including web design London.

Zynga is a fantastic illustration of success with Facebook. After being in business for nearly three years the business has an annual income of more than $100 million dollars and are accountable for some of the most well-known applications on Facebook, specifically Farmville and Mafia Wars.

However, within the interest of fairness and objectivity, an individual may claim that Facebook is a bit like Marmite. You either love it or hate it. My fourteen year old niece for example will gladly spend hour after hour on Facebook, in contrast I might invest maybe five to ten minutes on it just about every day or two.

Just how many times have you been out with close friends, maybe you had a few dozen too many beers and made a comprehensive fool of yourself, which would probably have been alright pre 2004 because even if your close friends did have cameras and took pictures there was basically no website which could humiliate you in the same manner Facebook can.

The effect of Facebook has also passed on to businesses and could now impact careers. It is widely reported that employers will try and find your profile on Facebook, just to see if there's something you possibly forgot to bring up. You have the ability to share with the world absolutely everything that you like and dislike, your favourite music, food, movies and your political and religious affiliations.

For some, the volume of information and facts has gone too far. It's commonly claimed that knowledge is power, and if that's the situation Facebook is all powerful since they have knowledge of more than half a billion users. Some might question just what possible harm might come from all this knowledge?

Well a whole lot really. Firstly, businesses will go to extreme lengths to accumulate information on consumers and Facebook is a giant and rich data source of consumers. Since 2004 marketing has come to be more and more substantial for the company because it brings in income. With Facebook businesses can create highly targeted adverts, so one might argue that at least users aren't swamped with random advertising. Through localizing the website Facebook is sending out a strong message of willingness to improve their service which is certainly encouraging.

There is also a substantially darker side to personal data and information which was demonstrated during World War 2. In Germany and in other places in Europe, as the Nazis grip spread to Poland, France, Holland and Belgium the census' of the nations were used to hunt down Jews and other political enemies. Certainly this is a rather extreme example with the dark side of data but it did happen and does show how data might be used in the most unfortunate possible way.




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