Facebook 240 : The Business of Facebook

Since somebody wanted to stake claim with Facebook 101, I have to put up with 240. oh well.....

My case study for LGST : Corp and Eth last week touched on the issue of Facebook and the business of social networking. Here's a few things which u may find interesting :

History :
Facebook was established by a few students from harvard primarily for social interacting and networking. It was first limited to college students, with the requirement of registering their school's official email addresses (some still do today) to protect the school's privacy. But in the early 2000s, when MySpace was sold for a few Billion dollars, Facebook turned into a business equity as well and was opened up to the public.

The Business :
Facebook is now worth a few billion dollars compared to probably a penny 7 years ago. The business of social networking boomed in the early 2000s as corporate companies realized the enormous resources for information in these webpages. This resulted in the sale of MySpace, which marked the beginning of the business of 'trading' private information for cash.

How Does it work :
The users ( you and I) are very inclined (for whatever reasons) to include personal information in those webpages. Corporate companies (or individuals) are sold to the idea of obtaining this information (and all the other details that is written on your wall, your superwall yada yada yada and whatever you wrote on your friends' page) by 'buying' various applications that are programmed by the employees of facebook. Notice that every time you add an application, there's a clause which requires you to agree upon. This 'statement of consent' gives full access to companies, who 'bought' this application, to extract whatever information on your page regardless of your privacy setting. The price of the 'application' is determined by the potential of the application in penetrating the vast users.

The culprit ?
Basically, nobody will ever know (besides facebook and the private firms that are involved). But according to hearsay, prominent employers such as Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan, yada yada yada and firms dealing with national and private security (eg CIA , FBI, Fed yada yada yada) are scouring facebook constantly for background checks on their employees, potential employees etc.

Cases in the past :
In early this year, there's a case where a student was denied a scholarship after the scholarship awarder discovered pictures of the student 'drinking' on facebook. There are many others instances especially on potential employees failing to attain employment.

Bring them to court !!!
Before you start pointing fingers at everybody, I'll let you know that nobody can be blamed/sued/prosecuted for this state of affairs.

If you think that facebook should be the ones facing the charges, then Marlboro should be sued for causing all the lung diseases suffered by its loyal customers (ie the smokers)

If you believe that those corporate firms should be hold to their statutes and be accountable for discretely spying on you, then i suggest you to sue the police for keeping and collecting information on criminals (of course, this is done stealthily as well). After all, facebook IS a business of trading information with money in mind. If thats the case, you can summoned all the businesses in the world to court.

Now, Is it YOU ? Well, are you going to blame yourself if Goldman Sachs rejected you for an I-banking position because they actually found out that some of your friends are obscene and vulgar through the comments posted on your wall in facebook?

Happy Thinking !!