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He said that he did not even know what Facebook was until he received an invitation email from a friend. Much to his surprise, a lot of his friends were already part of the phenomenal Facebook and within one week or so, friends request numbering to 50 flooded his account.

Facebook, a recently-developed social network platform, successfully entered the market with its new approach: the introduction to the industry of embedded applications. When I first joined Facebook, there were not so much applications as there are now and I randomly added as much as I can, ranging from iLike (music playlists), Superlatives (“most” adjectives, ranking application), Mesmo TV (TV trivia), What Color are You (personality test), Greenbook (an environment advocacy) and others. At start, I was personally having fun with these applications. With Superlatives, I get to vote for my friends as the Most Likely to Be Addicted to American Idol and the Most Likely to Get Out of Trouble By Smiling while also getting votes as Most Likely to Be Creative and Most Likely to Pass Out After Midnight. Mesmo TV is addicting and got me answering trivia questions about popular TV shows until around 3 in the morning. You get to see your standing and scores as compared with other people in your network probably that’s why it gets more exciting.

All About Applications

I came to know about all of my applications through invitations in my Facebook inbox from friends, recommending a certain application. For instance, Haikoo Zoo, allows its users to adopt a virtual pet which can interact with your friends’ pets. Upon clicking on the accept button (or a more personalized button saying “Adopt a Pet!”), you will be transferred to an application page on which you can modify settings on that specific application. You can choose whether such application will be visible on your profile page, in your Mini-Feeds, and so on. Applications are added to your account and can be accessed through your profile page whenever you feel like updating them or whenever you’re running out of fun things-to-do-online.

In the Philippines, especially among the teens, Facebook is just one of the many social networking sites that got them hooked. Social networking started during the early years of the internet. Even before Friendster, MySpace, and Multiply, there were the basic forms of social networking such as instant messaging, message boards and forums. These were the media through which people online interact with each other. Social networking has now taken a more creative form, more popularly through personal account and profile pages, offering the ability to meet new friends and connect with existing ones, blog, and share photos which made these sites a major online force for teens and college students. Just like the typical social networking sites, Facebook offers to its members the option to choose the degree to which they wish to interact with others or to which others may be able to interact with them.

Facebook opened its doors to third-party developers, giving them the opportunity to promote their applications and products within Facebook. For example, there were these India-based brothers, Jayant and Rajat Agarwalla, who first created a web site for playing an online version of the word game Scrabble, just because they love the game. This web site attracted about 3,000 regular players and one user suggested that they launch a Facebook version of the game, which they did 10 days after. With their computer skills and without actually wanting it in the first place, the brothers were suddenly owners of one of Facebook’s biggest hits: Scrabulous. More than half a million Facebook users play this game daily.

Free May Not Be Really Free

Most, if not all, of these social networking platforms offer free membership. I don’t recall myself joining something that I would have to pay to be able to meet new friends across the globe although there are platforms, allowing its users to opt for a premium membership. Livejournal, for example, is a social networking site with its primary features such as blogs and discussion forums. Years back, membership was only open by invitation or by purchasing an account, hence it was a really limited network. Having a Livejournal account then was like having an elite status among the internet users. When Livejournal finally gave access to the general public, I registered for an account and that started my “blogaholic” days and nights. It was virtually unlimited; you can post as much as you like, with or without pictures, with our without sense, embed other items such as videos. Practically, just like any other social online networks, it is an express-and-advertise yourself site. For a free service, it was actually great. For those really addicted, Livejournal has given them the opportunity to buy a premium account which, in the basic sense, allows the user to embed their Livejournal page in an outside server. There were more page templates available to premium members. There was a point in time when I wanted to have a premium account out of sheer boredom with the “regular” account.

Facebook is primarily “a social utility which connects you with the people around you.” Giving free memberships, it has attracted an overwhelming number of teens and students, most of whom depends on their parents and family relatives for financial support. Because it implies no financial obligation on the part of the members, this social networking site (and other similar platforms, like Friendster) immensely became a part of the lives of teens.

But being free is not good at all. Though you reap some benefits for free, you are being a source of revenue for these sites, without you actually wanting it in the first place, much less knowing about this. A web site, like Friendster and Facebook, certainly needs revenues for site maintenance and other business expenses. Where do they get this, considering that they don’t ask for membership fees? That’s where the third-party developers come in, along with the advertisers.

The X Deal

Facebook launched a new platform to give advertisers a deeper level of free access to its, according to Facebook’s press release, more than 67 million active users by providing them the ability to write applications that can be shared from person to person. What Facebook hopes is that the advertiser applications will generate more traffic, adding ad inventory for Facebook’s paid advertising through the pages generated by the apps, which will cost nothing to the companies adding them to the site.

Most web sites generate revenues from online advertising. Advertising has taken different forms in response to the highly modernized communication medium: the Internet. Basic forms of online advertisement took the form of advertising banners and pop-ups. At some point in my online experience, these banners and pop-ups implied nuisances and sources of scams and computer viruses. Since transfer and distribution is really fast online, it was rather difficult to monitor and regulate what is legitimate advertising and what is not. Anti-virus softwares and internet browers provided solutions to these issues: block pop-ups and virus scanners. However, what if these are legitimate advertisements? They are altogether lumped with the scams and they never reach its target audience. The advertising industry then has to come up with another tool and Facebook was just in perfect timing.

In a nutshell, Facebook allows advertisers to create applications and launch it on the platform. Why would advertisers do that? What do they get from it? Well, technically, our private lives. Probably most social networking users don’t know that they are giving away their personal information, for advertisers to locate their correct target market and for Facebook to increase its traffic, increasing its possibility for more advertisers. What is really at stake for the users is their privacy.

To specifically illustrate, Facebook offers an application called “Top Lawyer.” Upon adding this application, I already gave out my preference for the law profession and interest in the legal realm. Advertisers are then automatically notified of this and ad banners on my page will consist of anything related to law, for example, law schools, law books, legal services, and so on.

Even without these applications, these social networking sites still strip off a part of its members’ personal information and preferences. Every member on a social network has a profile page wherein you can browse personal information about him or her. A typical profile page includes age, location, and status. Additional information may be provided by the user, like school, hobbies, interests. Filling out these fields is equivalent to allowing advertisers to know who you are. User demographics are very vital to advertisers because this is where efficient and effective advertising takes place.

Working Together

Users post their personal information on their profile page, primarily for their family, friends and co-workers to locate them online and connect with them. These information are made accessible (or if I may put it, sold) by the social networking sites to advertisers. Advertisers then place their ads accordingly on certain pages depending on the personal information they have obtained. Advertisers are paid by the number of clicks, meaning that for every click on the banner link, they get paid a certain amount of money.

Advertisers get their revenues from sales, social networking sites get their revenues from advertisers, users don’t get revenues but they do get free membership in these social networking sites. It sounds like a balanced working relationship, everyone being content with their share. But keep in mind that most members are not familiar with this set up. Most of them just enjoy the privileges offered by the social networking platforms, connect and interact with other people, without any knowledge that their personal information are being “used” to generate profits for the social networking sites and advertisers. This poses a serious privacy issue because members give out information on these platforms primarily to locate and connect with other members, and is not in any way similar to answering a marketing survey or attending a focus group discussion. In the traditional advertising industry, giving out personal information and preferences, and even giving comments and suggestions, are highly compensated. In a social networking utility, members advertise themselves and their preference in exchange for membership privileges and other online benefits.

Protect Your Character

Another danger related to the influx of these social networking sites is identity theft. Back when Friendster was still at its heightened popularity, I have friends who discovered they have another account aside from the one they personally signed up for. This usually happens to celebrities and public personalities but a private individual is not at all free from the possibility of identity theft. A novice freelance female model, searching for job opportunities, posts numerous of her solo pictures in the hope of meeting a talent scout who would help her land a print ad contract. She also puts up in her profile the music or food she likes, her favorite movies, her educational background, and even her hometown. All her pictures were being downloaded by a random girl, who has frustrations over her weight and to get that satisfaction of being admired by other people, she creates a fake account, posing as that freeelance model. All of these attained without any difficulty, without any barrier, without any limitation. Random girl remains unknown. If freelance model finds out about this account, what really is her remedy? How does she prove she is the real freelance model? At the very most, she can ask the site operators to disable the fake account but personally going after random girl, maybe for damages or lost earnings, is quite an impossibility.

For every account holder, it is important to keep in mind that once you sign up and login, you are opening yourself out for the public to see and know you. Default setting is accessibility to everyone. Make sure to immediately modify this setting depending on what you think would be best for you. Don’t post information that is way too personal such as your home address, phone number, mobile number, places where you hangout, credit card information, etc. Be wary before adding, accepting, confirming anything that pop-ups on your screen. Remember that things may be really different from what you see from the monitor.

It may seem that a social utility such as Facebook would not create such danger to your personal life but there are real-life cases where it has been the means of perpetuating crimes such as prostitution, child abuse, rape, theft, and so on. A simple poser would really tick you off when it comes to that point where he or she literally copies everything from you everyday. Maybe it’s about time to be careful in dealing with these social networking sites because there are ethical implications involved. Before publishing a blog, whether raving or ranting, it’s better to think twice first. Law professors, after all, have indeed invaded Facebook as well.