In the March 2010 issue of the magazine Fast Company, there was an interesting article on the social networking site Facebook. Facebook was co-founded by Mark Zuckerberg (who is the face of the company), Dustin Moskovitz, Eduardo Saverin, and Chris Hughes out of a Harvard dorm room.
From these humble beginnings, Facebook has developed into the behemoth that it is today. Facebook currently has over 350 million users (according to Wikipedia), with hopes of surpassing Google's 800 million users in the future.
How do they do it? Facebook finds employees who are driven by their love of innovative technology and they encourage interaction amongst their employees. They also put each employee through a six week "boot camp" upon hiring to teach them the ropes of the various parts that make up Facebook, and require all (generally) employees to attend an all night meeting about every other month. This allows employees to feel free to throw ideas on the table, interact with coworkers, and helps each employee realize and understand how hard their coworkers work to bring ideas to fruition. Also, Facebook staff are required to work on every part of the site at one time or another so that they become familiar with different areas of coding, and how it all ties together.
What are some of the potential problems associated with Facebook use? There is the obvious one - content that you post on Facebook can be seen by potential employers who may decide not to hire you because of views expressed in your posts, or pictures that you upload to your profile. So beware of what you put on Facebook! There are also issues such as the recent malware problem that some users of the application "Farm Town" experienced. According to an April 12, 2010 article in PC World, a Shockwave Flash advertisement has been redirecting users to a site that sells fake antivirus software. Then today, ironically enough, I personally had an issue with Facebook. I received a request from a friend to go to an application that claimed to have riddles. So, trusting my friend and being curious, I clicked the "accept" button, and it immediately sent the same request to all of my Facebook friends without my permission. Then, it took me through a series of never ending advertisements, never providing an answer to the opening riddle. Here's hoping that it was simply annoying and not dangerous to my computer, or the computers of any of my friends (I did post a warning, so hopefully they will catch that before being dragged into the same farce as I was!).
Despite these issues, I will still continue to use Facebook. It has allowed me to reconnect with several friends that I had lost touch with, and even with a cousin who put me in touch with my biological father who I had lost touch with 20 years ago. I will simply try to use caution and common sense when utilizing the site.
