Yes, at this point we all know that Mark Zuckerberg went to Harvard University and therefore we automatically give him credit for being ‘smart’…but through my research I have concluded that yes, in fact he is very smart. With a lot of help from the Facebook ‘team’ Mark Zuckerberg has created a phenomenon. My project focuses on the Facebook News Feed and the Privacy issues that go along with that and I would like to point to September 5h, 2006. This is the date that Facebook released the ‘mini feed’ and the ‘News Feed’. Immediately after the release of the two there was an outcry buy the Facebook users saying how they did not like the change and felt like it was stalkerish–there was even a group created called ‘Students Against Facebook News Feed’.
In order to ease the crowd of angry users, Zuckerberg wrote a blog post entitled ‘Calm down. Breathe. We hear you.’ that basically said he and his team were working on the privacy issues. His main argument behind the creation of the News Feed was that “We didn’t take away any privacy options…The privacy rules haven’t changed. None of your information is visible to anyone who couldn’t see it before the changes…Nothing you do is being broadcast; rather, it is being shared with people who care about what you do—your friends” (https://www.facebook.com/notes/facebook/calm-down-breathe-we-hear-you/2208197130).
Zuckerberg responded with a follow up blog two days later on September 8th. 2006 where he was emphasizing that the News Feed was created to allow people to live on the ‘free flow of information on the Internet’ and that the News Feed was to help people keep tabs of their friends–and ONLY their friends. He argued that all the information is public anyhow. https://www.facebook.com/notes/facebook/an-open-letter-from-mark-zuckerberg/2208562130
I still have more information to get–but so far this is getting so juicy! Stay tuned.