Around the Net
Facebook Gets Out Of Town
- Facebook Blog et al., Wednesday, December 2, 2009 1:47 PM
"For those who have been following Facebook closely, the announcement doesn't deliver any new information, it only confirms some previously discussed plans," writes ReadWriteWeb. "However, for Facebook's user base ... the updates represent a major overhaul as to how privacy is handled on the site."
"Good riddance" to Facebook's regional networks, says PC World's Tech Inciter blog. "Regional and other networks made sense when Facebook was a tiny service for college students and other affinity groups," it writes. "But, as it became 'how people connect' the groups stopped making sense ... I've been a member of regional groups and they have never been useful to me."
Likewise, "The move to ditch regional networks is long overdue," writes ZDNet's Between the Lines blog. "A lot of folks are multi-regional ... Why do I have to pick the Princeton area when I could do Hoboken. Or New York. Or Philly. Or Delaware. You get the idea. You move around a bit and regional networks just get silly."
More to the point, "The problem is that many of the networks have gotten so large that they've essentially become meaningless in terms of privacy," writes VentureBeat. "That's confusing users about who they're exposing their personal information to."
Regarding Facebook's astronomical growth and gargantuan size -- again, now 350 million -- GigaOm writes, "The opportunities for the self-reported cash-flow positive Facebook to expand quickly and easily are petering out." Why? There were only 444 million worldwide broadband subscribers in the second quarter of 2009, according to Point Topic."
Still, remarks Softpedia, "When you add the fact that Facebook started out the year with 150 million users in total, it's clear that it's doing something right."
