Facebook Lets Users Interact In Small Groups

This article starts off by describing a new feature that Facebook has recently come up with. This feature allows you to talk to old classmates, family, friends, and co-workers. This seems like a feature that already exists. As I read on they’re plan is to make groups of your friends that can view certain parts of your profile. This feature lets you privatize particular parts of your profile to different people. You don’t want your mother seeing the same pictures and statuses as your friends that you go to the club with. You also don’t want your wall posts of “last night was unreal, crazy party” to show up on your boss’s news feed. This new add on to Facebook has the potential to let individuals become more free and upload more pictures. The overall experience and advancement of Facebook would be changed. This new Feature called “Groups” helps to make individuals be more free with themselves on Facebook with the option to hide photos, videos, and written posts with ease. It is explained that this was not the first attempt to make Facebook more selective. This idea was simple in thought but technically very difficult. If a family member made an album of your family he or she could invite just family to the group. Maybe few would use it, but in the end those few will involve many in their groups. So in essence most Facebook users will use this application. Another part of this application is that if everyone in the group is signed on they can chat simultaneously, the idea being similar to a chat room. Many say that this would only give Facebook more information so that they could eventually sell it to marketing companies. This is not the idea Facebook has. Also some say that all of that private information could be shared if a disgruntled group member sabotages the group by adding a random person. This is true, but in response to this Mark Zuckerberg, the co-founder and chief executive of Facebook, responds that this is true, but this application would realistically police itself. This could happen, but is unlikely and all of the group members are notified of a new group member. This makes it easy to police and be aware. Many are very skeptical about how this application will be used. The biggest worry is if Facebook is going to use this information in a negative way. In my opinion this application can only be double-edged if you let it be that way. This addition to Facebook has potential to expand the use and positive response of many users. Also Facebook on Wednesday introduced two more services to their website. The first gives Facebook users the capability to download all of their Facebook information into one file. The other would give you the opportunity to monitor how third-party applications gain access to their personal data. These applications have no negative influence. If an individual is worried about their privacy they would either not be using Facebook or keeping their personal information off of Facebook as much as possible. I am positive that Facebook doesn’t wish to upload pictures of you, your mom, father, and sister to marketing research companies. These applications are great advancements and achievements in social networking websites.