Monday, February 7, 2011

"Facebook Effect"

Nobody today would deny that Facebook is bringing the world together. Despite its modest beginning as a college project of a Harvard student, Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook has become a powerful tool with unprecedented influence across modern life. It has not only changed the way people communicate today but also how organizations and government reach out to the general public.

It has grown from being restricted only to Harvard crowd to having users spanning across different generations, geographies, cultures and languages. Initially, it started as a plaything among college students. But today, it has become a routine part of lives of millions of people (its membership is now over 400 million).

As a new form of communication, it has lead to strange interpersonal and social effects. The Facebook effect happens when it puts people in touch with each other often unexpectedly, about a common experience, interest, problem or cause. This is because Ideas on Facebook have the ability to rush across groups and to bring awareness simultaneously with ease.

The foundation of this open and transparent communication was put in policy and practice based on real identity. On Facebook, it is important to be your real self without which you will not be able to interact effectively with your friends.
The owners of Facebook have tried to keep Facebook simple, clean and uncluttered while putting innovative ideas and running new applications on it. Through News Feed, Facebook Connect, etc. Facebook has tried to make communication more efficient and intimate.

Since privacy has been a central concern for its users, Facebook has continued to come up with more simplified and improved privacy controls to protect the user data from being misused.

Even though critics continue to argue that the young people spending whole day on Facebook are losing their ability to recognize and experience change and excitement in the real world, the membership has continued to grow. Every month billions of data gets uploaded on Facebook including trivial announcements, birthday greeting, weighty announcements, political provocations, invitations and it is already the largest photo sharing site on internet.

The rate and scale of growth has no doubt raised complicated social, political, regulatory and policy issues But still, Facebook remains one of the biggest expression of globalization today.

2 comments:

  1. Hehehehehe
    do I need to say anything here...
    ;)

    ReplyDelete
  2. Lol!! don't forget it gives you motivation!!:P

    ReplyDelete