FACEBOOK


By Carmen Wilson


KALAMAZOO, Mich. -- In front of me is the home page of the social networking Web site Facebook, on which users connect to the people around them. Users started out as primarily students in college networks, but the site has since spread to high school, business, and regional networks. Users have their own profile pages, in which they can include a plethora of information, including any combination of name, gender, sexual orientation, political views, birthday, relationship status, occupation, school, interests, activities, photos, and contact information. An additional feature of the site is adding friends, who may be friends in real life or friends met on the internet. These friends can write comments on the users’ profile.
Users can post pictures of themselves and their friends in albums of 60 photos or less. The site allows users to “tag” themselves and others in these photos, so that when looking at a person’s profile page, all photos of that person will show up in one place. In addition to photos, users can publish a statement about themselves and change the statement depending on their mood or current activity, for example, “Sally is going to the mall.” All previous statuses, as these statements are called, show up on users’ profiles, unless deleted.


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