A Facebook free-for-all
By Becky Martinez, staff writer
Posted on September 21, 2006

Campuses across the country are riddled with a fierce addiction that consumes its students. But soon, thanks to the crafty minds behind Facebook, everyone with an e-mail address will be able to get in on the habit.

Originally, only students within the network of their college could join Facebook, meaning anyone without a “.edu” e-mail address was barred from viewing member pages. Last September, high school networks were allowed to join, followed by work networks in May. Now, Facebook plans to extend its user database to regional networks and anyone with Internet access will be able to log on.

Facebook intended to launch regional membership last week, but because of user backlash regarding the new “news feed” and “mini-feed” features, which display each user’s online activities to friends in the form of headlines, the company’s efforts turned toward creating privacy controls for those features, according to a Sept. 11 USA Today article. There is no set date for the expanded registration, Facebook spokeswoman Melanie Deitch said in the story.

In the wake of the site’s consistent expansion, students, who make up an enormous portion of the 9.5-million-user database, meet Facebook’s loss of exclusivity with mixed reactions. A primary concern among JMU students includes the availability of personal information to unfamiliar, non-student users.

Sophomore Jason Kopp compares the new Facebook with MySpace ­— another networking site that allows users to view the pages of other members, even without invitation.

“It shouldn’t be exactly like MySpace,” Kopp said. “MySpace has really creepy old men trying to talk to younger girls, guys who claim that they’re 20 and turn out to be 55.”

At last Thursday’s CPNewsLink conference for college journalists on Thursday, Facebook spokesperson Chris Hughes said that while regional users can maintain mutual friendships with people they know, the site will only connect members with other users within their region and allow them to change their declared region every few months. These conditions, he said, are intended to curb deceptiveness among strictly regional users.

Senior Alex Meador, who does not have a MySpace account, is not bothered by Facebook’s expansion because her non-student friends might join and she would be able to keep in touch with them through the site’s profile-viewing and messaging capability.

“I like that the profiles are basically limited to your school [network] unless an outsider becomes your friend,” Meador said. “That protects me as much as I want. I also don’t put up information that I don’t want other people to see.”

Cimmaron Craig, a sophomore at Blue Ridge Community College and co-manager of the Honors Lab at JMU, has accounts on both Facebook and MySpace. He said he is not bothered that Facebook is becoming less exclusive in its availability.

Craig said MySpace allows users to do a lot with HTML and changing the appearance of a page, and is “scene-inclined” because a lot of bands have MySpace pages.

And, he said Facebook limits creativity with a user’s profile. Facebook is school-inclined, dealing with information about off-campus parties; who’s doing what and where. He added that it allows users to connect with people they normally would not see.

Because he sees a separate niche for each site, Craig does not think Facebook is changing its style to compete with MySpace. Instead, allowing everyone to join the site will prove to be more of a hassle for the Facebook company.

“I think it’s unnecessary,” Craig said. “They’re just creating more work for themselves to put more restriction between groups. [Non-students] can use MySpace or another Internet community. If I were Web manager of Facebook, I would just leave it.”