Facebook gives us a place and sense of belonging online, while keeping us socially informed. One can create multiple accounts on Facebook and be a completely different individual on each account. Users can meet all different kinds of people, keep in touch with friends and family, upload pictures, share links, and much more.
This site has progressed from strictly college students to children, the elderly, and every age in between. It is simple to find out what’s new and happening not only with our friends, but with complete strangers. We can say whatever we want whenever we want and be whoever we want, and only crave more of it.
People addicted to Facebook tend to check their page two to three times per hour, or anytime they have access to a computer, to get the new “update.” This is a waste valuable minutes that quickly turn several hours throughout the day. According to A Vision of Students Today, “Students spend roughly three and a half hours online everyday. A student who only writes forty pages in a semester may be writing about five hundred pages in e-mail.” Sometimes we don’t realize how much time is passing while chatting online until it is too late.
Just when we think our problem can’t get any worse, it does. This week Facebook is expected to release a upgraded set of communications services that will include a type of “E-mail messaging system.” It took about fifteen engineers and fifteen months, making it the biggest engineering project Facebook as ever taken on. Their goal is to go from a social network to one of the greatest communication systems ever created.
Mark Zuckerburg, chief executive of Facebook, states “This new messaging system allows people communicate with one another on the Web and on mobile phones regardless of whether they are using e-mail, text messages, or online chat services. These facebook messages will now have something that can be thought of as “social in a box” which means that it will narrow people down from friends to acquaintances in hopes of saving the user search time.” Right now it will not require getting a facebook.com address, but if you don’t you will not be able to receive outside messages. The service is only available by invitation, however soon it will open up for all users to try out.
Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s chief executive, on Monday in San Francisco. He announced details of a new messaging service.
There is no doubt the new addition will be popular. Right now 350 million users use the messaging services and exchange an unbelievable four billion messages each day. The concerns other webpages have is that once people try it, they will delete their e-mails and never turn back.
Jeremiah Owyang, an analyst with the Altimeter Group, says “All of the e-mail vendors should be worried – Google, Yahoo, MSN. The new communications services are an opportunity for Facebook to spend more time with consumers. The more they own of our digital day, the more money they will make.”
I think all of us can agree that Americans spend more time on Facebook than any other website, and this new system will take even more time from their days. Has Facebook taken it too far by stomping on other sites for their own egotistical reasons? I can only imagine what the powerhouse will come up with next.
A VISION OF STUDENTS TODAY
New York Times Article on the topic:
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/16/technology/16facebook.html?_r=1&ref=technology
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