Social network gains staying power

In high school, our designated picture taker was Katie. Pictures were a must, and somebody had to take on the burden of snapping all the photos we’d instantly upload to Facebook and comment on for weeks. Katie never complained; in fact, she enjoyed it to a point it could get annoying.

Did we need pictures in front of the pool where we spent uneventful summer days? These events were so routine there wasn’t much excitement in looking back on them. Katie persisted, and when I’d ask why, she’d always say the same thing: “When I have a family, these will all be preserved on Facebook for us to look at, and I want to remember it all.”

Will Facebook still be around when I’m celebrating my 30th birthday?

Had you asked my sixth-grade self the same question about MySpace, I would have told you without a doubt that MySpace would never die. A self-proclaimed addict, I would spend hours changing my layout, agonizing over my Top 8, picking my page’s music and decorating it with various glittery images and quotes. Simply put, nothing was threatening to move in and take over this beloved outlet.

Enter Facebook, now the giant in social networking.

Originally only available to Harvard students, Facebook has stretched well beyond its start-up status and commands countless hours of people’s days, young and old. Essentially everybody is on Facebook, using it for social purposes, business networking and to connect with old acquaintances.

You already know this, of course, as you likely utilize it daily for any number of these purposes. As of now, Facebook seems unstoppable, but does it face the fate of all social networking sites thus far? Put less eloquently, will Facebook ever die? For several reasons, I don’t think so.

Facebook is legitimate. MySpace committed slow suicide by allowing users to create fake profiles, which led to pedophile publicity and spamming. Friend requests and ads for Viagra started coming in by the hundreds, littering people’s pages with so much spam it was almost impossible to pick out the legitimate material. When users such as SeXXXykitten69 began messaging me to chat, I sought greener pastures.

The exodus of MySpace addicts left a target market hungry for the benefits of social networking, so Facebook skyrocketed. In a feeble attempt to regain users, MySpace incorporated popular Facebook features such as tagging pictures and allowing status updates, but alas, it was too late. Users flocked to the environment fostered my Mark Zuckerberg’s creation and enjoyed features such as “people you may know,” which is allowed only because of the criteria that users create real profiles, with real email addresses, and agree to monitored content.

Facebook is more than just a fad; it’s quickly become the most effective tool available for networking in all contexts, business and social, and its effect is unparalleled by any other blog or file sharing site available. It boasts the most advertisers of any website, including Google, thus tightening its grip on power in market share. It has an ability to pool users of all ages, drawing in adults who use it for their own networking or to monitor their kids, a feature that MySpace failed to provide.

People will never stop enjoying socializing or sharing pictures and daily updates, not to mention the addiction element (I’ve checked it twice since beginning this column).

So will Katie be able to log into Facebook in 15 years and show her family pictures from our high school homecoming dances? I wager yes.

Unless Facebook becomes littered with the spam, glittery layouts and pedophiles that sadly destroyed MySpace, it will continue to assist social interaction among people of all ages.

Laura Ellermeyer is a first-year finance major. Her column appears on Tuesdays.