Facebook Privacy Makes The Cover of Time Magazine

by Jennifer Van Grove

Time Magazine’s May 31 issue will hit newsstands with a cover and feature story dedicated to the “scary” side of Facebook.

The cover art pays homage to the Facebook generation with a mosaic of 1,295 Facebook profile photos, accompanied by a blurb from the feature article: “Facebook …and how it’s redefining privacy. With nearly 500 million users, Facebook is connecting us in new (and scary) ways.”

The feature article by Dan Fletcher delves inside Facebook() and its methodologies for hooking new users and explores the historical events leading up to present-day privacy concerns around Open Graph and instant personalization.

At first glance, the feature story appears less critical than the cover makes it out to be. But Fletcher lends a sharp eye to Facebook’s grand vision and enormous growth, and eventually concludes that Facebook is on the path to become “the Web’s sketchy Big Brother, sucking up our identities into a massive Borg brain to slice, dice and categorize for advertisers.”

Although Time Magazine no longer has the same distribution it once did, the print piece — with its online duplicate — is bound to get traction from a very mainstream audience. Unfortunately for Facebook, it looks like the controversy around its approach to user privacy isn’t going away anytime soon.



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Source: http://mashable.com/2010/05/20/time-magazine-facebook-2/

Facebook is for Old People

I was in Trinoma a while ago and went to Powerbooks to read some books and magazines while killing my time. I went to the magazine section and grab the Time magazine because the cover was Kate Winslet and why she won the Best Actress in Oscars. I was reading it and glance the magazine and saw this article regarding Facebook. I was curious and read the whole article itself.

So I decided to post a note regarding this and to share it to you guys. Enjoy reading!


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Why Facebook Is for Old Fogies
By Lev Grossman

Facebook is five. Maybe you didn't get it in your news feed, but it was in February 2004 that Harvard student Mark Zuckerberg, along with some classmates, launched the social network that ate the world. Did he realize back then in his dorm that he was witnessing merely the larval stage of his creation? For what began with college students has found its fullest, richest expression with us, the middle-aged. Here are 10 reasons Facebook is for old fogies:

1. Facebook is about finding people you've lost track of. And, son, we've lost track of more people than you've ever met. Remember who you went to prom with junior year? See, we don't. We've gone through multiple schools, jobs and marriages. Each one of those came with a complete cast of characters, most of whom we have forgotten existed. But Facebook never forgets. (See the best social-networking applications.)

2. We're no longer bitter about high school. You're probably still hung up on any number of petty slights, but when that person who used to call us that thing we're not going to mention here, because it really stuck, asks us to be friends on Facebook, we happily friend that person. Because we're all grown up now. We're bigger than that. Or some of us are, anyway. We're in therapy, and it's going really well. These are just broad generalizations. Next reason.

3. We never get drunk at parties and get photographed holding beer bottles in suggestive positions. We wish we still did that. But we don't. (See pictures of Beer Country in Denver.)

4. Facebook isn't just a social network; it's a business network.And unlike, say, college students, we actually have jobs. What's the point of networking with people who can't hire you? Not that we'd want to work with anyone your age anyway. Given the recession — and the amount of time we spend on Facebook — a bunch of hungry, motivated young guns is the last thing we need around here.

5. We're lazy. We have jobs and children and houses and substance-abuse problems to deal with. At our age, we don't want to do anything. What we want is to hear about other people doing things and then judge them for it. Which is what news feeds are for.

6. We're old enough that pictures from grade school or summer camp look nothing like us. These days, the only way to identify us is with Facebook tags. (See pictures of a diverse group of American teens.)

7. We have children. There is very little that old people enjoy more than forcing others to pay attention to pictures of their children. Facebook is the most efficient engine ever devised for this.

8. We're too old to remember e-mail addresses. You have to understand: we have spent decades drinking diet soda out of aluminum cans. That stuff catches up with you. We can't remember friends' e-mail addresses. We can barely remember their names.

9. We don't understand Twitter. Literally. It makes no sense to us. (See the top 10 celebrity Twitter feeds.)

10. We're not cool, and we don't care. There was a time when it was cool to be on Facebook. That time has passed. Facebook now has 150 million members, and its fastest-growing demographic is 30 and up. At this point, it's way cooler not to be on Facebook. We've ruined it for good, just like we ruined Twilight and skateboarding. So git! And while you're at it, you damn kids better get off our lawn too.



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source: http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1879169,00.html?imw=Y