About-Face

Facebook was thrust into the spotlight once again this week after statements revealed the company's intent to take the site public. Soon, Facebook is expected to announce that membership, originally limited to college students (though later expanded to include high school students and employees of some companies) will now be available to the general public. Soon only a valid e-mail address will be required when registering for an account, with new users being grouped by region.\nSo will Facebook's massive following forsake it in anger over this matter? We think not. Even though talk of this change has already raised allegations that Facebook is "selling out" and stirred fears that the site will turn into MySpace, it's highly doubtable that the reaction will be so harsh as to halt the site's growth or put a damper on its popularity.\nWhile speculation has arisen about what going public will mean for the site, the situation has not yet elevated to such a level as the controversy over the introduction of Facebook's "live news feed." In response to numerous messages, and, most likely, to head off suspicions and rumors, the site posted a statement reassuring users that Facebook "shouldn't change much" for them and asking for feedback as to whether profiles in college networks should remain "completely invisible to people who aren't in a college or high school." Meanwhile, Facebook has also stated that it is "not letting people put random HTML in their profiles." Altering the HTML allows MySpace users to loop music, change the colors of features and backgrounds and make other alterations to their profiles -- it also makes many of them eye-scorching, cacophonous disasters. Hence, Facebook profiles should remain (mercifully) readable. \nThese preventative measures are precisely what should keep the Web fad from taking any major hit in its membership. We hold that the majority of Facebook's users (an estimated 3.85 million) will not renounce their membership and deactivate their accounts based on the company's decision to go public, especially since an estimated 85 percent of all college students now belong to the network.\nEven in light of going public, it still remains to be seen exactly how this will affect the initial purpose of the site, which has always been "about increasing information flow and connecting people." The fear of being tracked by future employers, professors and parents seems to be the main opposition to this proposed change.\nHowever, students are essentially the ones making themselves vulnerable by tagging and displaying incriminating, embarrassing and otherwise obscene pictures. If nothing else, the upcoming changes should prompt students to do what they should have already been doing: posting with precaution. Quite frankly, if students didn't want other people to see things, they wouldn't post them, and if they didn't want a certain user to see those pictures, they certainly wouldn't add that person as a friend. \nLong story short, this is a big fuss over a small change. Life in cyberspace will soon return to normal -- or at least until Facebook gives the nation something else to talk about.