A Look at Facebook

I’ll start off by confessing that most of this social networking seems to be perhaps an evolutionary step that I am not participating in, because it just seems odd to want to connect online instead of in-person or on the phone, and the privacy issues scare me. That being said, I’ll try to keep an open mind on the educational applications, if any, that I can determine from viewing some of the sites.
Please discuss the following:
1. What was the target audience for this social networking site? Originally colleges.
2. How long was the site in existence? 2004 & still around
3. Why was it popular? Good question. What was its demise? Still here
4. Is/was there another competitor in the same market that was more popular? MySpace
5. Would you ever consider creating an account and using it? No. Explain your reason using a personal experience as an example. I actually talk to my friends or write them, have no need for yet another way of communicating that is less personal, or another password to remember.
In the Boyd and Ellison article, the authors summarize that the sites have differentiated themselves from each other by: attracting niche members, allowing different permissions (viewing private/public) and features, and mobile device compatibility. Facebook is a popular site that is still in existence from an original launching for Harvard in 2004, then spreading to other colleges, high school age students, and eventually to businesses and ‘everyone,’ according to the article (Boyd & Ellison, 2007). I found it interesting that there is a schism between organizations that want to exploit access (advertising) to these sites, and those that want to prevent it (private employers, military, K-12.) Another note regarding Facebook, states that users search for people they already know (for real) as opposed for ‘meeting new friends,’ as was suggested by the original ‘networking’ with ‘friends of friends.’ I think this idea was probably borne out of the Internet dating and common interest niche for many of the original SNSs.
In the educational context, none of this information is particularly relevant or useful. What matters in the academic realm is whether there is a learning objective that could be achieved through this medium. The only application I could see, would be for a sociology or psychology class, polling one's friends for attitudinal surveys or observing behaviors for anthropology or ethnography – and because your ‘friends’ are probably similar to you, that is a biased sample, so academic usefulness is questionable.
Here’s a fun link to a video spoof about Facebook etiquette: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iROYzrm5SBM