The Facebook Project, Revision 1

Consider this page out of date and potentially inaccurate!

Publications

I'm posting Revision One here for now. It's not completed and needs a lot of editing and revision. The most interesting areas to student readers will probably be everything past the results section. 05.13.06

Navigation

1. Introduction
2. Theory
3. Features and Components
4. Research Methodology
5. Results
6. Who Are You? Identity and the Facebook
7. Who Are Your Friends? Social Webs and the Facebook
8. Get In the In Crowd
9. Privacy and Trust in the New Age (prelude to a fully developed editorial paper)
10. Who Do You Trust? Privacy and Trust on the Facebook
11. Conclusion
12. Outline for material to be added for revision 2
13. References
14. References for Revision 2

Facebook.com

Social Computing Phenomena

Jeff Ginger | Revision 1 | Senior Seminar in STS

ABSTRACT: The coming of the information age has inspired the birth of new inceptions in the world of Social Networking.  New mediums have caused a paradigm shift in the way we communicate and view each other as more and more individuals become part of global networks.  The dawn of a maturing yet dynamic and wildly successful Social Network known as the Facebook has quickly become a fundamental defining point to how undergraduate college students all over the country interact on the internet.  So much influence has this service had that social norms of privacy regarding the internet and sharing of personal information have been redefined in this realm.  In addition service users have adjusted the way they meet and interact with others in daily life as a result of the all encompassing Facebook social web.  Ultimately these same users are learning to depend on Facebook for both their social knowledge as well as extended representations of both their own and others personalities.  This technological extension of the mind and dependence is comparable to a sort of “Cyborging of the mind” and may be just the beginnings of a new regard for identity on the internet.  Furthermore the technological-social network Facebook itself is comparable to a cybernetic organism; evidence suggests the project was established in a fashion similar to strategies of adaptive engineering with the environment.  My paper discusses findings related to this redefinition of cyber privacy and trust on the web as well as the new methods of social interaction that have altered how people meet each other both in the virtual and real world.   I also believe the findings are predictive of a new era of internet use in our future.

Introduction
Contemporary history has seen the transformation from a primarily industrialized American society, often referred to as the age of modernity, to a fluid and fast paced information era that now encompasses virtually every aspect of our lives.  Understandings in production and consumption, exchange and ownership of information, and even our fundamental considerations and perceptions of communication have all experienced paradigm shifts.  Globalization has become the hallmark of our age in regards to economics, social influences and power.  The availability and specialization of information has skyrocketed with the introduction of the internet and its accompanying equalizing nature.  Ideas never before known now reach audiences in places who would otherwise be left completely in the dark.  Just as people of the past came to depend and thrive upon electricity, now the world embraces instant and easy connection.  Technologies of the self, human-computer actor networks, heterogeneous representations and adjustments of the body, cybernetics, the counter-hegemonic nature of the internet–all of these are phenomena of the information revolution and comprise a crucial part of our reality and daily lives.
Social networking has been a part of our lives for about as long as humans have formed societies and cultures.  The advent of the internet has inspired a new permutation of social networking, referred to as social computing.  Social computing has many instantiations including email, instant messaging, blogs, forums, social book-marking, and other information sharing services.  Like the written letter, telegraph, and telephone these communication and social interaction systems have transformed how people converse; they eliminate the need to be face to face with the other correspondents and open up a world of new possible intricacies and articulations of thought.
More than ever, however, these services give a feeling of connection to the community – users or members exist linked to the internet at variable times and yet their presence is almost always persistent in some form.  Computer based social networking also gives participants the ability to exchange with more than one individual at once or selectively choose who they talk to.  This subversive element of the system often provokes criticism as it plays host to passive aggressive and potentially manipulative behaviors.  Some theorize such alterations of exchange are encouraging negative influences among the new generations of the information age.
One of the most recently well known spectacles of computer bound social networking is the web site known as Facebook.
Facebook.com, previously known as thefacebook.com (they expanded from this domain name), is a social networking service for high school, college, and university communities based mainly in the United States. Facebook boasts the leading number of users among college social networking sites and is continually expanding.  The web site has well over 5 million registered users* and gains several thousand more every day.
Facebook has recently* changed its search system to prevent knowledgeable users from giving specific URL query commands but the most recent count I conducted cited 26,700 profiles* present marked as being students of the University of Illinois.  The total undergraduate count is over 29,000 strong.  There is some inflation due to participants employing multiple profiles, transfer or drop-out students, alumni who have not changed their status, and a few other factors.  Regardless one can safely estimate that around 90% of the student undergraduate population has a profile on the Facebook.  Graduate students are less represented, with over 1,600 being marked* out of the nearly 10,000 present at U of I, though this number is invariably going up.
Depending on which source you reference Facebook ranks somewhere between 7th* and 1453rd* among the most visited web pages on the internet.  Michael Arrington, a writer for Techcruch.com, interviewed Chris Hughes of the Facebook team.  His findings were astounding: 

The penetration rate is staggering - about 85% of students in supported colleges have a profile up on FaceBook. That’s 3.85 million members. Chris tells me that 60% log in daily. About 85% log in at least once a week, and 93% log in at least once a month.*

As of May 2005 Facebook had raised 12.7 million dollars in capital with Accel Partners.* Advertisements and flyers can be purchased by groups and individuals with costs varying by the number and school to be advertised to.  In all likelihood Facebook has garnered even more profit then publicly referenced; companies like Apple and ESPN have established specialized advertisement groups on the web site.
Facebook is an undeniably powerful presence on the web.  Not only has it infiltrated just about every college or university in the United States but it’s managed to establish an 85% or greater saturation in those schools.  Usage rates are phenomenal and advertising for the web site has proved its existence as an economic venture.

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Theory
The subject of this paper, however, is the social impact Facebook has made on college-age audiences.  The perhaps too successful social networking service has single-handedly redefined college student understandings for and regard of privacy.  Before the manifestation of Facebook virtually no social networking community could receive total adoption or support or anywhere near the amount of trust Facebook has received.  Most people previously regarded such services as unwanted or unneeded, while still others viewed them as simply undesirable.  Stories of internet stalkers and fears of public availability of personal information prevented full participation.  Somewhere along the line, however, Facebook reached a tipping point.  Wikipedia estimates the period of near exponential growth was in late 2004 with the addition of the group and wall features.*  Perhaps it was the fact that the network is only available to those with university email addresses or merely a coincidence of the generation, but over the course of two years Facebook went from being virtually unknown to a nationally renowned web site as well known as Ebay, Google, and Yahoo.  It remains to be seen how far this trust will go-even now backlash is surfacing in several forms.
Much like AIM names are now exchanged in bars instead of telephone numbers Facebook has become a new virtual meeting grounds for university students.  Users are able to view each others profiles and specifically search out others with alike or dissimilar interests.  Even popular language and verb usage has changed to suit the service – people make references to ‘friending’ one another on Facebook.  One can buy T-shirts that say “I Facebooked your mom” and poking is now understood of probing one another over a virtual medium.  With an over 90% penetration rate at U of I nearly anyone you meet can be found on Facebook.  Only a small portion of information is needed to find their profile – be it a name, email, AIM screen name, or even just year and major.  Clever searchers can find individuals they might have even only seen but have other information about – such as who they’re friends with, where they live, or what groups they belong to.  Someone might see a profile for another student on Facebook before they meet in person – allowing for preconceived notions beyond any capacity previously known.  Facebook has pioneered new concepts of connection, social approach, confrontation, identification, commiseration, and cooperation in a social context.
Beyond these first two accessible and functional studies of Facebook there are several strong potential theoretical aspects to the service.
The study of cybernetics has brought about the creation of what is popularly known as the cyborg, a combination of organic and synthetic (non-biological) components.  Just as someone might depend on a pacemaker or glasses for daily operation and successful existence the information age generation depends on technology as an extension of their pool of knowledge as well as personality.  In ages past someone might have gone to a library to research a famous president or spoken to a friend to find out their current relationship status.  Now information searchers are more likely to consult Google or Wikipedia for knowledge and college students confer with Facebook.  In previous times social knowledge was not readily available save through direct inquiry.  Facebook has brought about the near total transformation in this regard-students can almost anonymously find out information on the social engagements and activities of people within the network.  The beginning of the information age saw the invention of the personal web page, a space online that just about anyone with access could inhabit and represent themselves.  Resumes or portfolios or contact information could be found within the bounds of these personal properties on the web.  Facebook takes this representation further to include elements of personality.  Like a dating service participants engineer the presentation of their identity online.  This virtual representation becomes crucial to interactions within the social network and as such great emphasis and care is placed into the various components of portrayal.  In these aspects Facebook as a technology has become a cybernetic extension of both knowledge and personality of the student population. 
As a whole the system acts as a cybernetic organism much like a business or city.  There are massive numbers of participants interlaced in an endless web of connection in the finest post-humanist fashion.  Actor Network Theory dictates that human, social meaning and non-human, material generate reality. Facebook encompasses this concept as well.  Though the network is human designed and operated it is far from dominated due to random factors of engagement and use of the system by participants.  A participant might be presented a random ‘social net’ search outcome or friends’ picture sampling that results in connection with an individual they would have never encountered without the agency of Facebook.  The system is forever dynamic but tends to establish equilibriums between updates and major changes.  New features are added and utilized leading to new realities and methods of use.  The adoption of picture galleries into profiles, for instance, forever changed the way individuals search for each other on the network.  Suddenly a person didn’t have sole control over presentation of their graphic image online as others could place up pictures of virtually anyone.  The entire system is also self-regulated, giving a rather democratic and decentralized orientation of supervision.  This almost organic environment can be likened to the method of approach known as adaptive engineering.  Engineers might unsuccessfully try to dominate a river and force its flow in one way or another only to have the levies broken by a powerful storm and their calculations to go a rye.  The Facebook designers, at first only a couple of college students, now a small team of youths, many direct out of college, have not designed the system to be one of control, but instead a confluence of social communications and uses that readily changes in response to the community.  Variables are introduced into the environment, much like a re-route might be placed into a river, and the creators see the impact and let the system adapt to itself.  Bruno Latour’s concept of the proliferation of hybrids, from his book, We Have Never Been Modern, draws a similar understanding.  Users engage in the Facebook system with the perception that the organizers and programmers are in charge of controlling everything about the system.  Some conspiracy theories even dictate that the government is watching us through Facebook.  The truth is that users are just as much responsible for the realization of the social network as the programmers, policy makers, and creators.  Rules and variables and settings for the design are influenced by participant activity and in turn the participants help to create the content.  Much like open source programming, the system is never complete and the consumer is at the same time the producer.
Truly Facebook is a social force to be reckoned with.  Substantial use and infiltration into the college student social structure has provoked social change by redefining virtual privacy, methods of interaction and establishing social connection, and ultimately Facebook has become an instrumental aspect of our social knowledge and an extension of our personality.

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Features and Components
Key to understanding the impacts Facebook has made on the college audience is exploring the components and functionality of the service.  I will do so here briefly, and readers must realize that the system is of course a sort of permanent-beta: there will always be new features and alterations to the structure. 
Profiles
Central to the whole social networking system is the creation of personal profiles in an online format.  These profiles break down into several subsections and features.
All profiles contain a simple account information section.  This area denotes the chosen name of the participant, the date they joined, and when the profile was last updated.  This information, along with an authorized Email address, is required to create an account.
The next section is dubbed “Basic Info” and contains the school of the profile owner, their status (undergraduate, graduate, faculty, etc…), biological sex, year in school, academic concentrations, place of residence, birthday, hometown information, and previously attended high school.  Most Facebook users fill out this information though the only required field is the school of attendance.  Interestingly enough, relationship status and the category indicating interest in men or women was just recently switched to be included as an element of the basic information area, indicating something about usage and importance of the system.  Perhaps the most controversial part of this section, is the personal information area.  Users indicate if they are interested in men or women (no context is specified as to if this refers to sexuality or general or specific interest), and the type of relationship (if any) they are looking for.  This is also a rather subjective portion of the profile – users are given a choice to indicate they’re looking for friendship, dating, random play (there are a variety of interpretations of this), a relationship, or “Whatever I can get” (definitely the most debatable item as to its meaning).   After this is the relationship status consisting of single, in a relationship, in an open relationship (again, no definitions given), engage, married, and “it’s complicated.”
Following this is the contact information section, which includes the required Email field as well as an alternate.  Users may post their AIM screen name (this is the only messenger service field, though it is by far and above the most widely adopted and employed by college students), mobile phone, other phone (note that this is secondary, cell phones have become primary), school address information and web sites.
The next area, Personal Info, is where users are able to indicate their political views ranging from very liberal to very conservative with categories also for other, apathetic, and libertarian.  Next up are a series of open text fields where users can put in multiple items separated by comas. These are activities, interests, favorite music, TV shows, movies, books, and quotes.  Last is a sizeable text box labeled “About Me.”
The last informational tab down is an area for current courses.  Students (and perhaps instructors) can list courses by department and number along with title.  Each semester or trimester they can then be removed and added as necessary.
The final standard option is an area where a user can select and upload a picture of his or herself on to the network.  Users must agree that the picture is not copyrighted and that it is not pornographic in nature.  They are also able to remove pictures here too.
Depending on the time of the year another section may be available.  Fall, winter, spring, or summer plans can be indicated seasonally giving yet another layer of contact and information for users.  Previous to the 2004 presidential election intended vote was available as an option.*
Non-students (Alumni, staff, etc…) are able to indicate their place and type of work within the non-academic world.  This allows for even graduated users to continue staying in touch with each other.
The features above are those of the college Facebook.  The high school Facebook is allegedly similar, but without some options such as graduate status.

Multiple Profiles
Through use of secondary or alternatively written email addresses users can create multiple profiles.  Students who transfer schools or attend multiple institutions might have more than one profile as well.  This has spawned a whole slew of fake or alternative profiles ranging from celebrities to fictional characters to even malicious copies of real profiles with negative or abusive information.

Friends
Imperative to the success of the social network is the connections between users.  The most common and fundamental connections on Facebook are those of ‘friends.’  Users are able to add another profile or user as a friend, and indicate the details of how they know the other person (through organizations, classes, other friends, random instances, etc…).  The friends’ detail feature was added fairly recently on January 13th, 2006* and as such many users have not defined their friendships with this feature.  Users do not have to give explanations of how they have become friends with individuals on Facebook, but the check box labeled “I don’t even know this person” sets the user up to remove the selected individual.  Another note of interest is that one of the options for establishing the source of friendship is “met on Facebook.”  The feature of friends’ details allows clients to indicate how long they’ve known someone which allows for construction of a related feature – the social timeline.  The social timeline is simply a listing of names, pictures, and relations between a profile and listed friends organized by year.  For instance, all of the friends met as coworkers might be displayed in categories and listed by year.

Groups and Events
Members can also create and join groups on Facebook.  Groups vary from online representations of real organizations, such as fraternities, RSO’s, or sports, to common interest groups, to groups formed around some sort of joke.  Similar to this, temporary ‘groups’ known as events can be created allowing users to show their attendance (or lack thereof) through RSVP-ing to an upcoming event or party.  Like groups this feature is sometimes employed as a joke and has received criticism because high school Facebook users can be invited to college drinking parties by alleged ‘college friends.’  Events are also different from groups because any number of events by the same name may be created sometimes resulting in confusion.  Groups and events are displayed with basic information and descriptions such as purpose and time and meeting location.  Administrators can be seen listed at the top and participants are pictured in the same picture gallery format as friends.  Group listings also often feature a message board area, sidebar for announcements, and curious listing of users in related groups.  For instance, many people in the College Democrats group are also in the Anti-bush group.  During the time of this publication’s writing pictures and a wall feature were added to both groups and events.

Messaging and Poking
Facebook also has a service for users to send private messages to other members.  Though not particularly advanced the system does allow users to keep track of an incoming and outgoing mailbox and read and delete messages as necessary.  The poking option is a rather peculiar element and allows operators to ‘poke’ another profile.  Next time the poke recipient logs on they receive the text “You have been poked by [name of poke initiator]” and are given the option to hide the poke or poke back.  Poked users may view the profile of the person who pokes them, allowing for individuals to see information not ordinarily available through standard browsing about people from other schools or with limited access profiles.

The Wall
The wall is a public message area present by default on all profiles.  Individuals can leave messages on their own wall as well as those of others, making public announcements and comments about pictures or relations between members.  Previously the wall was based on the wiki concept, as anyone could modify the text of a wall without immediate indication of who they were.  A history was provided to track the changes made by modifiers but this feature was later removed in favor of wall posts identified with the picture and name of the author.  Wall owners and post authors can remove unwanted posts.

Photos
The most recent and perhaps most popular portion of Facebook are photo galleries.  This feature sprung into existence on October 27th of 2005* and by February of 2006 users were uploading around 1.5 million new photos every day.*  The Facebook web site advertises an unlimited number of photos but one particularly adamant user took it into their own hands to discover the limit is really 50 mega bytes.  They made a flash video to commemorate the lie.*  Users can have a number of photo galleries and add captions as well as ‘tag’ individuals within a picture.  ‘Tagging’ consists of marking a box around a person pictured which is linked to their profile on Facebook.  Virtually anyone can be tagged so others may put up pictures of you with tags without your permission or any action on your part.  Users are notified when pictures of them are placed online and also have the option of removing tags as needed.  Inappropriate pictures can be reported using a link underneath any given photo.  Facebook checks up on reports and removes pictures as required. Photos add a uniquely graphical connection between participants bringing the visual elements of recognition into play within a social network that lacks face-to-face interaction.  They have also had some inadvertent negative effects to be explained in later portions of this paper.

The Pulse
The pulse is a page on the Facebook web site that displays statistics and tendencies among the Facebook dynamic.  The page is updated daily* and shows top ten lists for various parts of user profiles, such as the top ten movies or books among a college population.  Viewers can choose between observing their home school or other university institutions as well as the Facebook community at large.  An area for the rapidly rising and falling items is provided as well. Interesting observations about student behavior and outlooks can be observed from even this limited data.  The mere fact that the Facebook team keeps track of some information about users is scary; some Bloggers have already constructed conspiracy web sites pondering the possibility of Facebook being fueled by radical conservative data-miners.

Status
Recently added in April of 2006 is the status feature.  Users are able to leave a short notice of where they are or what they’re doing along with their profile.  This feature comes in accordance with the extremely high rate at which many participants check profiles. It also adds yet another degree of reflection of real world location and interaction.  People can track where others are much like they would by checking away messages on AIM.

Advertising
Though not exactly a staple feature, Facebook does play host to a number of advertisements for a variety of products and services.  These ads are remarkably effect as they advertise to a very specific and predictable audience as well as manage to create more than enough revenue to pay for the site.*  Members of schools can advertise events and activities within their own schools via flyers for discounted prices and corporations like Apple can create global groups or events to advertise their products.  Sports seasons bring about other advertising schemes as well.

The Future
Not every feature on Facebook remains in the contemporary implementation.  At one point in time AOL Instant Messenger away messages of a given user could be seen online.  The accessibility and appearance of the wall feature has changed over time.  Many people wonder if Blogs will formally become a part of the Facebook service.  Other possibilities include customizable user interfaces and profiles or more integration with peer to peer sharing, such as the ability to host or share music.  The network will almost undoubtedly continue to grow and expand, the dynamic-utility nature of the service is one of the biggest reasons for its popularity.  What’s more is that Facebook users will play the biggest role in determining this future.

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Research Methodology
The information gathered for this paper comes from a number of sources.  Since the Facebook service is too new for any number of professional academic books or publications virtually all “literature review” references have been to web sites and web publications.  As the project has progressed I’ve begun to collect and access pertinent materials on internet social networking.  Statistical information has been collected via a number of specially designed surveys and deployed through an online survey service, SurveyMonkey.com.  At this stage only the first phase of surveys have been conducted, a series of six surveys designed around quantitative response questions.  Observations at this time have been limited primarily to University of Illinois students, though some participants from other schools are present in small numbers.  The first phase included surveys with an opportunity sampling.  A Facebook event was designed and released advertising the web site companion to this project and inviting users to participate in taking the surveys.  The sampling is bias in several ways.  First and foremost, obviously it is not a random grouping of individuals.  All of them are users of the Facebook service, and all of them chose to respond to the survey.  The event invitation was sent out to 701 people listed as friends on my personal Facebook account, which introduces the bias of connection.  Though I’m connected to many different types of people and groups there are invariably some substantial trends in the data as a result.  Regardless, the sampling is better than might be expect by any other simple method of survey propagation, I am what Malcom Gladwell would refer to as a ‘Connector.’ *
Currently the survey process has been simple and regulated. Surveys are hosted on a survey service provider web site and results are analyzed from there for a number of interesting statistics. No personal information collected is identifiable to any specific individual. Furthermore questions are not changed or removed (save for spelling or grammar mistakes should they be found) after a survey is released thereby insuring integrity of data. At this current juncture in time data is being collected only from the Facebook invitations, however I fully intend to establish a large random sampling once IRB approval can be obtained from the University.  These two sets of data will be kept separate but will take the same survey questions. Great consideration has been given to wording and order of questions as well as ease of use.

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Results
So far results have been nothing short of amazing given the sampling method.  The total number of responses can be seen below:*

Privacy and Trust	112
Meeting People and Relationships	98
Friends	85
Pictures	72
Groups	41
Messaging	40

Analysis of these results will be integrated into the remainder of this paper and all tables are attached as references to this work. 

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Who Are You? Identity and the Facebook
Profiles are the fundamental building blocks of Facebook and virtually all services on the web site are built around connecting them.  Much like in face to face contact the absolute first impression someone gets of a person is almost always visually based.  On Facebook, however, the first vision, be it thumbnails of friends or search results, is a single 200 pixel wide picture.  Judgment of pictures is often harsh and in our largely materialistic and appearance obsessed world people are always dying to look good.  Of the respondents I surveyed, nearly 85% (61 individuals) indicated they felt their picture was somewhat or very important.*  Only just over 15% (11 individuals) thought their profile picture was not very important at all.  So much so is this concern and obsession that entire groups have been founded on Facebook picture appearance alone.  A number of top-one hundred most attractive type groups have been created and boast full membership of people who select pictures to specifically qualify themselves for entry into the group.  Spoofs and off-shoots of this concept have developed too, including the top one hundred most ugly girls and more.  Some users are even known to ‘shop’ for profiles of people they find attractive within groups or among friends of friends.  When browsing through profiles over two thirds of respondents investigate profiles belonging to people they find attractive some of the time or more (as contrasted to around 30% who rarely or never do).*  When investigating any given profile, over three fourths of participants surveyed would often view other pictures of that person, if available.*  Insecurity of appearance or unwillingness to be identified in certain situations is particularly evident, as almost half of survey responses indicate that participants have removed a tag from themselves in a picture.* This kind of behavior suggests that ties to appearance have traveled with precedence into the virtual world – a place that might otherwise be free from issues of appearance – and are an established part of the Facebook experience.
Listings of profiles are done in an alphabetical fashion and as a result some users have found creative ways to bring their profiles to the top of listings.  Some insert symbols into the front of their last names while still others use non-alphabetical characters.  Nicknames are also commonly used as well as occasional alternative spellings.  As with fake profiles, fake names are entirely possible as well.
Users are inadvertently encouraged to update their profiles through policies for browsing profiles.  When looking through listings of your friends the most recently adjusted profiles are the ones displayed by default and therefore get the most immediate attention.  Users have discovered this and often enjoy keeping their profile appearance in a state of near-constant change.  Some simply change their picture every few days while others adjust small parts of information in their profile.  The largest survey indicates about 20% of users (23 responses) update their profile at least once a week (some more).*  Major changes to the service also typically result in updated profiles.
Like face-to-face contact some people are prone to lying about themselves on Facebook.  Users will sometimes present incorrect information about their major or interests in the form of a joke, such as claiming to study sex therapy or having an interest in aborting babies.  Some people have gone so far as to make fake profiles depicting real-looking people or famous characters.  Facebook has formally banned false profiles but at one point in time the Hugh Hefner profile at U of I had several thousand friends. With all of this freedom to depict oneself it is a wonder that most profiles are accurate portrayals of who people really are… or so they say.  While over 98% of responses say users feel their profile has accurate information about themselves, only about 85% believe other people’s profiles are accurate factual representations of their personalities’.*
An ex-girl friend of mine once commented in a semi-comedic fashion that I was keeping secrets from Facebook when I didn’t indicate my relationship status accurately on my profile.  Though she phrased the statement as a joke, it drove home the fact just how much people trust and depend on Facebook for social knowledge.*
My roommate demonstrated that profile information is anything but infallible in a particularly clever but borderline unethical maneuver.*  As a joke he constructed a fake profile almost identical to a friend (who just so happened to also be an ex-girl friend).  He used the same picture, contact information, and more but subtly changed certain parts of the profile to make fun of the person it was mirroring.  Most fake profiles take the form of fantasy characters or celebrities, his was unusually disturbing.  Luckily it was intended only as a joke and was later dismantled but this could be a potential threat for stalkers and trouble makers within the system.  Invariably someone has probably tried it on a much more malicious scale elsewhere.
The final, perhaps most disturbing facet of identity on Facebook is the preservative quality of the web site. In some instances individuals have died in life due to one cause or another but have had their profiles continue on after their death.  Other members have posted messages on their wall and left tributes to their lives in a digital form via groups, wall posts, and messages.  The actions are by no means limited to just family and friends of the passed – in some cases the person receives fame beyond that which they would have ever normally incurred in normal life.  In these circumstances other students often talk to the deceased individual as if they were there or still with us actively using and engaging us every day.  Most people have mixed feelings as to how ethical or respectful such behavior is but the Facebook formal policy is to remove any profile belonging to someone that has passed.*  After observing the comments on one such case at U of I and getting past my own feelings of discomfort I quietly reflected, “What if they had said all of those touching and meaningful things to the person in real life, instead of leaving them on some web page after their death?”  Perhaps this can be a lesson in gratitude and embracing life while we still have it.
Beyond this it’s another scary extension of personality.  Not only are users represented without their presence in this digital social complex, but they don’t even need to be alive to be noticed and interacted with.  Though nothing about ones profile is automated it’s a frightening snapshot of existence that is taken as very real.  The advent of Facebook makes it possible to have a memory of who we are available for just about every individual.

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Who are your Friends?  Social webs and the Facebook
The American Heritage Dictionary defines a friend as “A person whom one knows, likes, and trusts.”*  Facebook friends, however, aren’t exactly the traditional kind most people refer to in real life.  There’s no indication between a Facebook friend you’ve laughed and cried with for the better part of a decade and someone you’ve just met once talking in class. The Facebook system lies down no methods of determination regarding friends, other than the strong suggestion to remove “friends” that you do not even know.  People clearly have differences in how they determine friends, as Dee Brown the basketball player could never truly have thousands of friends.  For others the large number of friends might be representative – many people believe in the concept that the world is linked by a relatively small number of people known as connectors.*  Connectors are often very friendly individuals blessed with a good memory for names and faces and typically involve themselves in many different worlds of activity. 
Of the people from UIUC surveyed about their number of friends at UIUC, responses fell into a fairly broad range.  The majority of people fell into the range of 50-250 friends with the mean being close to the 150 mark.*  Based on my personal observations the estimate seems a bit low but perhaps this is a warped perception.  With all schools included the total number of friends on average was close to the 250 mark.*  Two thirds of respondents felt that these numbers were higher than the number of friends they would consider themselves to have outside of Facebook, and median averages indicate that most people feel about half of their Facebook friends are acquaintances and about half are people they would consider friends outside of Facebook.* 
The option to define friends gives a level of establishing significant relations between profiles on Facebook.  This feature can’t be counted on, however, because many people do not bother to explain connections, and as with most things, they may not be accurate.  Members are able to indicate people they’ve met through another friend, however, which adds a potential method of demonstrating the connector principle.  Since the feature was established late and it involves some effort the majority of users have only filled out the ‘How do you know this person’ information on a few of their friends.*  Disagreements about how to define friendship, especially after the end of a relationship, can be problematic as well.  Many people information about ‘hooking up’ or dating is private, even to the realm of Facebook.
When someone chooses to add another individual as a friend on Facebook that person is sent a request.  They have the option of accepting or rejecting that request.  Many people are not comfortable rejecting requests, as they would have trouble rejecting or saying no to people in face-to-face communication or interaction as well.  Others simply feel the number of friends they have is a testament to popularity or a good joke.  Most people will sometimes feel bad when rejecting a friend request, and just over 13% (11 people) simply don’t ever reject requests!  Of those 11 people 9 of them were females, interestingly enough, and 10 of the 12 people who indicated they always accept friend requests from people they do not know were also female.* Only one person of all of those surveyed thought women are the people likely to have the fewest friends on Facebook and almost no one felt people (excluding obviously fake profiles) with the most friends are actually friends with all of those they have listed.*
The sheer number of friends one has on Facebook has become the subject of some debate.  Some people view it as a representation of popularity, while others see those with many friends as fake or unrealistic.  Groups have been created pitching the idea that the number of friends you have on Facebook does not make you any better or worse than anyone else.  There are some significant differences in gender between friend counts as well.  Women tend to have more within the 200-300 range and men, on average, have fewer (the 100-150 range),* but are also the owners of profiles with the most sheer number of friends (500+) tend to be male.  This last observation was not based off of survey analysis (only a couple of participants were anywhere near that range), but instead taking noticed of the well connected profiles: Athletes, politicians, musicians, and other well known individuals.
The profiles with the largest number of friends, however, are primarily of three types: Athletes, political figures, and fake profiles.  This makes sense, as everyone wants to be friends with a famous basketball or football player, and political figures do their best to recruit as much popularity as possible for their own success.  Fake profiles, interestingly enough, are outlawed, but historically have held the absolute highest number of friends.  Rumor has it that people have developed automatic scripts to attempt to friend as many individuals as they could though I’ve seen no instances of this as of yet.

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Get in the in crowd
Groups represent an entire other facet of the Facebook as are one of the mainstay reasons for its popularity and use.  As mentioned before they come in many forms an range in participation varying from a single or few individuals to groups containing thousands of members.  Most respondents felt group membership was at least somewhat reflective of who you are as a person.*  Some of the most notable groups are as follows:*

Group	Members
Illini Basketball Has the Best Team In the Nation!!!	6376
Chief Illiniwek Forever.	6167
The Derek Zoolander Center for Kids Who Can't Read Good and Want to Learn to Do Other Stuff Good Too	5204
Future Procrastinators of Tomorrow	5003
I Just Tried to Ford the River and My Fuckin' Oxen Died	4955
Family Guy	4886

            Consider that there are about 40,000 individuals at U of I in general.  Faculty and Staff profiles make up a negligible number and graduate students numbered only a few thousand when I last checked.  Undergraduate profiles account for greater than 26,000 accounts – total combined with an unknown number of Alumni one can reasonably estimate in excess of 30,000 profiles on the UIllinois Facebook site.  This means these aforementioned groups have as much as a fifth of the entire campus population in membership.  This is an absolutely astounding number.  The potential for communication is both frightening and intriguing.  Note that the two largest groups are sports/school pride oriented.  Peculiar elements of our generational pop culture can be seen in the other four.
Most participants surveyed said they were in common interest and organizational/activity groups.  A significant number were also in academic, sports, and community service oriented.  Only a few were in sponsored (like Apple students) or Greek life related groups.*  Most users at the time of the survey responded signifying they rarely or never sent or checked group messages or used group message boards on Facebook.*  Shortly after the survey release, however, Facebook added pictures and walls to groups to help encourage participation.  This number may go up in time.
A tribute to the bias nature of the surveys, most participants indicated they have created or administrate at least one group.  Many indicated as many as three or four!  I can’t say for sure, but I would venture to guess this has to do with the assertive or motivated nature of those who would actively respond to a survey.
There are some pretty strange groups out there.  “Eating babies for fun and profit,” “I masturbate and cry simultaneously,” “I pick up stuff on the ground and out of dumpsters,” “Gay marriage killed the dinosaurs,” “My Soul Hurts,” “Donald Rumsfeld Is a Shaolin Ninja Master!!” and more decorate the profiles of many.  Just about every band, TV-show, movie, character, or social trend imaginable is available in some group form.
Eventually when I have more data I’d like to conduct information on gender differences related to who creates and administrates groups.

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Privacy and Trust in The New Age
Perhaps one of the greatest subjects of debate brought on by the whole system of Facebook is the alterations to privacy and trust incurred by the system.  Of all of the literature reviewed for this paper the overwhelming majority was documentation of the times people have trusted the system and have suffered problems on its account.  Be it football fans who illegally rushed the field after a game who were tracked down by the police on Facebook*, or individuals who were fired from their jobs as RA’s for having pictures of themselves drinking up online, Facebook is a controversial display of information previously unknown.  Contemporary mainstream media focus is disproportionately oriented towards spreading ideas of fear though dramatic stories and as such Facebook has often only received a bad rap.  What’s more is that the generation reporting on the system is primarily composed of those who are not active normal participants.  MySpace.com, a related teen social networking web site, came under fire from misinformed adults in a way that truly demonstrates this issue.  The technology news web site, “The Inquirer” (different then the fake newspaper) explained:

“THE STATE of Massachusetts called on MySpace.com to raise the minimum age for users from 14 to 18.
Massachusetts Attorney General Tom Reilly said that MySpace had not taken enough steps to make its site a safe place for minors.

"An adult can register as a minor member and use that profile to seek access to the profiles of countless underage members," he said in a statement.
He wants MySpace to install an age and identity verification system, equip Web pages with a "Report Inappropriate Content" link, respond to all reports of inappropriate content within 24 hours and significantly raise the number of staff who review images and content.
It is not just that Reilly, is running for governor, but we really don't think he has thought this one through. Myspace is a teensite that has a few rogue adults that visit it, not an adult site that has access for teens.
Telling teens that they can't do something is just going to make things more attractive. Instead of pedophiles pretending to be teens, you will get 14 year old pretending to be 18. The pedophiles will still be there, using fake ids, the only difference is that you will have made most of the legitimate members of a teen site criminals. *
More at CNN”

Though an obviously slanted view, the article brings to light one of the key issues in regulating and understanding social networks such as Facebook.  The participant audience is primarily youth and as such naïve, but also on a different playing field in regards to understanding the internet and trusting each other over technological mediums.  To a person of younger generations carrying on multiple conversations over AIM might be just as legitimate as a telephone call is to an adult.  The aforementioned scenario could easily be drawn up as reasoning to attempt to prevent stalking on Facebook as well (both the high school and college versions).  One of the reasons the system is so successful is that it’s largely free from normal dominating or authoritative forces – it’s owned by the students who operate it.  Bring older generation adults into the picture and the system fundamentally changes (and would more than likely diminish or die).  The same older generation regulation minded line of thinking would not bode well for the adaptive engineering project.  Instead of unleashing changes and letting the system change itself an older authoritative community introduces structure and requirements and limitations.  Every picture would have to be reviewed, no student could indicate anything the least bit controversial and the whole deviant fluidity of the system would be frozen into a jagged hostile framework.
Critics have not hesitated to raise several concerns in regards to authority and power structures entering the otherwise free world of Facebook and the internet.  Regulation of deviant and illegal actions has always been a complicated part of the mangled web but the true living habits of college students are increasingly being revealed as more and more immersion becomes ordinary.  Authorities are shocked and see Facebook as an excellent medium for exposing the evil villains of our youth by finding pictures of kids drinking or dancing in provocative ways or whatever else.
It’s an interesting contradiction, really.  Much like the kids who didn’t have their parents call in and lie for them on senior ditch day (and got punished for being truthful), honesty and truth about who one is and what they do with their life is almost discouraged.  An LGBT student might see Facebook as a safe medium to express their sexuality and learn to date freely for the first time… right up until their parent or uncle or cousin manages to log in and then proceed to disavow them from their family.  Our society is ridden with issues of trust and honesty and in a world like Facebook, where the inclinations and traditions of the youth are expressed in rather strong and pointed fashions, authority figures are caught off guard.  It’s not that students aren’t drinking underage or dressing scantily at bars, it’s that this is hidden from view ordinarily from society.  Using one of the new and few mediums for potential honest portrayal of self to instead punish and reject youth culture is not a solution.  Social issues such as underage drinking or politics should be addressed on a societal scale through other methods such as community solutions and seeking to understand and accept one another, not through punishment and fear.  History has shown the ill effects of negative reinforcement and purely authority driven power relationships.

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Who do you Trust? Privacy and Trust on Facebook
Controversies of privacy aside, Facebook offers a new norm for release of information to the community.
Of those surveyed, about 72% felt Facebook is a safe place for college students to display information, but nearly 64% identified that they do not think Facebook is a safe place for high school students to display information.*  The majority of students have in fact adjusted their privacy settings on Facebook to alter just who can see their profiles, better keeping the community exclusive and safe.*  Half of users let everyone on their school network see their profile, but a third allows for only friends.  Faculty and staff are the ones most often sealed out and the majority of students who adjust their privacy settings alter who can see their contact information, pictures, and other general information.*  Across the board participants are more likely to divulge information on Facebook about their relationship status, political views, or contact information than they are to tell people identified as acquaintances or anyone outside of Facebook.*  Not surprisingly, many students also trust this information to friends more easily than parents, too.  Most students are just about as likely to post their concentration of study or classes on Facebook as they would be to tell anyone about those things.*
The numbers from my surveys construct a definitive image.  College students on the Facebook readily reveal more about themselves to potential strangers and acquaintances then they would in every day life.  This goes for individuals who allow anyone to see their profile as well as only individuals at their school.  The 20% portion of the surveys that only allows friends to view their profiles obviously are omitted from this number, assuming their friends are not people they would consider random strangers or acquaintances they don’t know very well (which may not be a proper assumption!).
This has a very real world effective difference.  Some random student can go log on to Facebook and check the relationship status of a boy they thought was cute, or see what political affiliation an outspoken student in class happened to be.  The interesting part is that the whole system is a more passive way of finding or divulging information.  People are more willing to trust or be less private through indirect means.  Instead of announcing a status or information, or instead of asking for it, they publish it to Facebook and expect others do the same.  The system is built, more or less, on feeling comfortable to display private information in way that’s not immediately overt.

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Conclusion
Facebook is clearly a new set of intersections in the giant mesh of society and technology.  Rarely has a social networking system become so widely pervasive that it has truly altered the methodology in which people see, interact, and otherwise communicate with each other in both the online world and outside.  People have found a new instantiation of technology of the self and the system is representative of posthumanous sociology and adaptive engineering.  Ultimately I feel it’s predictive of a new generation of immersion in technology – cyborging of the mind – a premier form of social knowledge that has become a natural and dependant part of virtually all undergraduate college students.

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Outline

            This paper is far from over.  The next outline illustrates my plans for upcoming sections, and plenty more needs to be said about privacy and trust on the web.  Open ended response surveys will help funnel in more information and I hope to add a fully flushed out conclusion in coming editions as well.

“I’ll Just Facebook You”

• Fundamental theory – what you’ve always wanted to know
• Privy to passive nature of inquiry and investigation
• Acceptable medium of meeting others
• Statistics from Meeting People and Relationships Survey

Reconciling authority relationships on Facebook

• Parents
• Employers
• RA’s/RD’s
• Military, Greek life
• Respect of privacy vs. obligation as an authority
• Facebook as a positive tool, not tattle-tale

Messaging and communication

• Importance – or lack thereof
• Poking as a dating tool
• Pat’s comment on poking

Peculiarities

• Poking
• Lack of racial/ethnic ID, religious ID
• Interested in, Looking for
• Omitting categories
• ASCI imagery, ASCI porn
• “Don’t know this person”
• Leaving Facebook
• Alternative interfaces

And the future?

• Features
• Saturation – absolute?
• Impact on high school vs. college
• Post college world
• Privacy and legal impacts
• Social norms and social computing
• Cyborging of the mind

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Employed References

Online Sources

Facebook.com. 5 May 06. <http://www.facebook.com/>

"Facebook features." Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. 29 Apr 2006, 01:47 UTC. 5 May 2006, 15:49 <http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Facebook_features&oldid=50677468>.

"Facebook." Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. 5 May 2006, 11:00 UTC. 5 May 2006, 15:49 <http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Facebook&oldid=51661790>.

First draft Wikipedia references March 25th.

“The Facebook unplugged at Stanford ETL.” Jeff Clavier’s Software Only.  27 October 2005. 5 May 2006, 15:54. <http://blog.softtechvc.com/2005/10/the_facebook_un.html>

Netcraft.  5 May 2006. < http://toolbar.netcraft.com/site_report?url=http://www.facebook.com>

Arrington, Michael.  “85% of College Students use FaceBook.” TechCrunch. 7 September 2005.  5 May 2006, 16:08. <http://www.techcrunch.com/2005/09/07/85-of-college-students-use-facebook/>

“Accel Partners Invests in thefacebook.com.” Accel.  26 May 2005.  5 May 2006, 16:11.  <http://www.accel.com/news/news_one_up.php?news_id=1>

Farrell, Nick.  “Massachusetts wants MySpace to raise minimum age” the Inquirer. 05 May 2006. <http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=31472>

“6 Entries found for friend.”  5 May 06. <http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=friend>
The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
Copyright © 2000 by Houghton Mifflin Company.
Published by Houghton Mifflin Company.

Print Media

Read, Brock.  “Think Before You Share.” The Chronicle of Higher Education.  Copyright 2006 The Chronicle of Higher Education, Vol. 52 No. 20, Pg. 38.

Gladwell, Malcom.  The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data, 2002, pgs 30-60.

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Planned References

Carley, K.M. (1999). On the evolution of social and organizational networks. Research in the Sociology of Organizations, 16, 3-30.

Barley, Stephen R. (1990). The alignment of technology and structure through roles and networks. Administrative Science Quarterly, 35 (March), 61-103.

Burkhardt, M.E. & Brass, D.J. (1990). Changing patterns and patterns of change - The effects of a change in technology on social network structure and power. ASQ, 35(1), 104-127.

Burkhardt, M.E. (1994). Social interaction effects following a technological change: A longitudinal investigation. Academy of Management Journal, 37 (4), 104-127.

Haythornthwaite, C. (forthcoming). Social networks and online community.

Haythornthwaite, C. & Wellman, B. (1998).Work, friendship and media
use for information exchange in a networked organization. Journal of the American Society for Information Science, 49(12), 1101-1114.

Haythornthwaite, C. (2001). Exploring multiplexity: Social network structures in a computer-supported distance learning class. The Information Society, 17(3), 211-226.

Thurlow, C., Lengel, L. & Tomic, A. (2004). Computer-mediated communication:
Social interaction and the Internet. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

Wellman, B., Boase, J. & Chen, W. (2002). The networked nature of community: Online and offline. IT & Society, 1(1), 151-165.

Wellman, B., Salaff, J., Dimitrova, D., Garton, L., Gulia, M., & Haythornthwaite, C. (1996). Computer networks as social networks: Collaborative work, telework, and virtual community. Annual Review of Sociology, 22, 213-238.

Footnotes