How Facebook Is Redefining Privacy by Dan Fletcher Thursday, May 20, 2010
How Facebook Is Redefining Privacy
Nearly 500 million people worldwide live their lives —? or versions of them —? on Facebook. Is there a limit to how much we'll share? CEO Mark Zuckerberg is betting there isn't
By Dan FletcherThursday, May 20, 2010
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Artwork by Yuji Yoshimoto. Photograph by Tom Schierlitz for TIME.RELATED
Web Privacy: In Praise of Oversharing[->2]
Facebook: Friends (and Moms) Without Borders[->3]
Inside Facebook Headquarters[->4]
Your Thoughts About Facebook[->5]
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Sometime in the next few weeks, Facebook will officially log its 500 millionth active citizen. If the website were granted terra firma, it would be the world's third largest country by population, two-thirds bigger than the U.S. More than 1 in 4 people who browse the Internet not only have a Facebook account but have returned to the site within the past 30 days.
Just six years after Harvard undergraduate Mark Zuckerberg helped found Facebook in his dorm room as a way for Ivy League students to keep tabs on one another, the company has joined the ranks of the Web's great superpowers. Microsoft made computers easy for everyone to use. Google helps us search out data. YouTube keeps us entertained. But Facebook has a huge advantage over those other sites: the emotional investment of its users. Facebook makes us smile, shudder, squeeze into photographs so we can see ourselves online later, fret when no one responds to our witty remarks, snicker over who got fat after high school, pause during weddings to update our relationship status to Married or codify a breakup by setting our status back to Single. (I'm glad we can still be friends, Elise.)
(See pictures of Facebook's headquarters.)[->11]Getting to the point where so many of us are comfortable living so much of our life on Facebook represents a tremendous cultural shift, particularly since 28% of the site's users
Nearly 500 million people worldwide live their lives —? or versions of them —? on Facebook. Is there a limit to how much we'll share? CEO Mark Zuckerberg is betting there isn't
By Dan FletcherThursday, May 20, 2010
inShare[->0]
Read Later[->1]
Artwork by Yuji Yoshimoto. Photograph by Tom Schierlitz for TIME.RELATED
Web Privacy: In Praise of Oversharing[->2]
Facebook: Friends (and Moms) Without Borders[->3]
Inside Facebook Headquarters[->4]
Your Thoughts About Facebook[->5]
Email[->6]
Print[->7]
Share[->8]
Reprints[->9] Follow @TIME[->10]
Sometime in the next few weeks, Facebook will officially log its 500 millionth active citizen. If the website were granted terra firma, it would be the world's third largest country by population, two-thirds bigger than the U.S. More than 1 in 4 people who browse the Internet not only have a Facebook account but have returned to the site within the past 30 days.
Just six years after Harvard undergraduate Mark Zuckerberg helped found Facebook in his dorm room as a way for Ivy League students to keep tabs on one another, the company has joined the ranks of the Web's great superpowers. Microsoft made computers easy for everyone to use. Google helps us search out data. YouTube keeps us entertained. But Facebook has a huge advantage over those other sites: the emotional investment of its users. Facebook makes us smile, shudder, squeeze into photographs so we can see ourselves online later, fret when no one responds to our witty remarks, snicker over who got fat after high school, pause during weddings to update our relationship status to Married or codify a breakup by setting our status back to Single. (I'm glad we can still be friends, Elise.)
(See pictures of Facebook's headquarters.)[->11]Getting to the point where so many of us are comfortable living so much of our life on Facebook represents a tremendous cultural shift, particularly since 28% of the site's users