2009-04-28T07:22:00.000-07:00

The new thing that has became popular with a lot of people over the past couple of years but just has grown recently is the phenomenon of Facebook. It started out as a private connecting site for college students and you had to have a college email address to join. Now the times have changed with this and it now has opened up to the public where anyone can join whether it be through your work, high school, college, or you just want to join to find some of your old friends all you have to have is a vaild email address. I think Facebook is a great invention it is a unverisal tool that can be used for networking in many different ways such as for work, associations and also most popular for reconnecting with friends.

Facebook has grown tremendously since it started in 2004. In fall of 2007 over 1 million new users signed up every week, around 200,000 daily, totaling over 50 million active users. The days are long gone for Facebook as just a social network for college students. Today 11% of the users are over the age of 35, and the fastest growing demographic is users over the age of 30. It has also grown internationally with 15% of the user base is in Canada.

When I think of Facebook and how it has changed the way we get in touch with our friends and family. In the past everyone would call each other on the phone and then we started sending emails, now this is the new phase of talking to people. Sometimes you lose contact with people over the years, maybe you went to high school or college with your friends from the past. It has even changed how older people can use the internet and get in touch with friends they went to high school with which they may have bene out of school for awhile. There are other uses for Facebook you can create your own page tell everyone what you are doing, you can even post pictures online for your friends to see. They have even different applications that you can add to your profile page. Now the new thing on Facebook is taking these quizzes that they have posted like where would you be living, who your celebrity boyfriend would be and many others. It is nice to talk to your relatives that live far away and you want to catch up and talk, it makes it easier to do over Facebook.

Then it goes back that you may be using Facebook to avoid using the phone to talk to people. But I would disagree with that it's just another form of getting in touch with your friends, co-workers, and family. It's actually kind of funny to hear older adults using Facebook so they can get in touch with their friends. You always hear that it is for younger high school, college aged adults but it has changed where almost at any age people are using facebook. There could be some problems with using Facebook. Some say that some college students may have lower grades due to being on and using Facebook all the time instead of focusing on their studies. Which I could see where that can be a problem.

Overall I believe Facebook is the greatest thing created for anyone to connect with friends and family. It's so easy these days to make a profile and start finding your friends. I think it has also helped the older generation of adults to use the internet more often than just to check your emails. I believe Facebook will continue to grow and be very succesful. You will still get feedback from people who love Facebook or who absolutely hate it.

Sources:

http://www.crunchbase.com/company/facebook

http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/business/companies/facebook_inc/index.html?inline=nyt-org

Facebook: The New Social Networking