Dear Facebook, I’m not Your Salesman

• Once upon a time, Facebook was a social network for college students.
• Then it was a social network for college students with a previously-unheard-of amount of transparency between users.
• Then it was a social network for college students and everyone else with a previously-unheard-of amount of transparency between users.
• Then it was a social network with ubiquitous advertising for college students and everyone else with a previously-unheard-of amount of transparency between users.

Now I’m not sure it even qualifies as a social network at all.

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I know all of this because I was among the founding members of my college’s Facebook network. In fact, we had to petition Facebook to add our school, because at that time it was limited to larger, more well-known institutions.

Because our four-year student body consisted of about 600 students, it’s not an exaggeration when I say that that there was a campus-wide feeling of celebration when we were finally granted an official network. Within a week, a significant percentage of the student population had joined and made good use of this new social tool.

This first iteration of Facebook had a feeling of intimacy and protection not afforded by MySpace (new kid on the block, then) or Friendster (the falling star). My classmates and I frolicked freely in the playground Facebook set forth for us, knowing that the information we shared would only be visible to those with whom we had real-life connections. Inside jokes relating to organizations and goings-on around campus abounded. It was almost as if our little liberal arts utopia had been transposed straight to the internet.

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Then the developments I outlined above came about, and something changed. Suddenly, the community we had created online was no longer analogous to the intimate kind of community we shared in real life, on campus. Slowly, we were opened up to each other and to others, in a way we hadn’t quite expected. Some of us protested, some of us didn’t care, but we could all agree that our privacy was being whittled away.

Now it’s being hacked off.

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To understand what I mean, check out this excerpt from a recent AP article:

In announcing the initiative, Palo Alto, Calif.-based Facebook has begun transforming itself from an online hangout into an online business district. Companies can now create their own pages on Facebook for free and tailor their pitches to the activities of users’ friends.

For example, if a friend has booked a vacation on Travelocity, the online travel agency will be able to display the friend’s photo as part of a “social ad” to entice the user to buy flights and hotel stays. Advertisers can similarly have their pitches appear when friends review restaurants and buy books or DVDs.

(many more via this Google search)

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Today, I almost bought a Dreamhost account for the express purpose of messing around with the Facebook API. In fact, I was checking my bank account to make sure it was doable moments before reading that article. But at this point, I don’t want to invest money and labor in something that would tacitly support what is swiftly becoming an unsavory environment for social interaction.

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I have more to add, but must be off for now. So I’ll just leave you with this question:

Is Facebook now just a marketing research tool masquerading as a social network?