Kitsimons

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Facebook is a social utility that connects you with the people around you says the strap line on the Facebook homepage. What could be more simple than that? Search for friends and family who are already registered with Facebook, invite them to join if they aren't already a member, and away you go.

I first joined Facebook after a request from my brother. I left the account idle for a couple of weeks after registering, almost forgetting about it, but then I started getting friend requests from people I hadn't been in contact with for years - old high school classmates, University friends, colleagues from previous jobs and so on.

Slowly but surely I was sucked in. I exchanged messages with a number of friends, edited my profile, adding some photos, my musical tastes and the usual likes/dislikes. Soon I was searching for people on Facebook. I found myself racking my brains for the names of people I could try and get in touch with. Some were already registered with Facebook, while others were nowhere to be found, and so I sent out messages inviting them to join Facebook, which some duly did.

So here I am, over six months into being a Facebook member, with a healthy list of friends, along with a handful of applications and various other bits and pieces on my profile page. But what do I actually use Facebook for and how does Facebook benefit me?

Sweet and Innocent

When you look at what people do with Facebook, it becomes apparent, for the most part, it is a total and utter waste of time. I can see that my friend Joe Blogs who lives in London is in a bad mood today. I can view the endless funny viral video clips users post. I can use the Vampires application to bite some friends, see where people I went to school with have visited around the World, and post a flippant comment on a friend's wall.

All said and done, there is very little happening on Facebook that anyone could really consider more than a distraction. Facebook is just another one of the growing number of ways to waste spare time. Or an employer's time.

Is it nice to be in contact with people who I otherwise would not? Sure, but that's about as far as it goes. Even then you could argue that we already tend to keep in touch with the people we would really like to anyway - Facebook is entertaining, but ultimately there is little more to it than that.

Deep Down and Dirty

Information. When it boils down to it, Facebook is a vast collection of highly targeted, personal information on every single one of its millions of users. Information that is in the hands of Facebook's owners. It is a marketer's wet dream, something which Facebook is acutely aware of.

In the last few days Facebook backtracked on a new social advertising system called Beacon that required users to opt-out of, rather than opt-in to using the tool.

The system works by showing users which stores their friends have been using, as well as purchases they've made. It is easy to see how much harm can be caused by such an invasive advertising mechanism. Friends could see items purchased that we'd really rather they didn't know about - everything from Christmas presents, ruining the surprise, to intimate personal purchases (Ann Summers, anyone?).

Facebook are well within their rights to use registered user information in this manner, as well as implement the system on an opt-out basis (see their terms of service). The only reason the mechanism changed was due to the backlash against it, but it just goes to show what Facebook can, and will do, with the information it has on users.

People either don't seem to care, or more disturbingly, don't understand the amount of personal information they are handing over to Facebook.

The most eloquent example of the latter are the idiots who join Facebook groups campaigning against the introduction of national identity cards. Do they fail to grasp the irony of joining a group campaigning against the introduction of national identity cards on a website where they freely hand over more personal, not to mention revealing, information than would ever be stored in a national ID card scheme?

For my part, I try to be very careful in what I post on Facebook, both in terms of information and in terms of photos and other content. Aside from Facebook having a free reign over anything I post to my profile (photos, artwork and video included - again, it's in their terms of service), I only post information that wouldn't be the end of the World if it got into any Tom, Dick or Harry's hands. The assumption has to be made with a service such as Facebook that anyone can get a hold of anything you post.

Facebook masquerades as a service that is there to help its users. The reality is that its users help Facebook much more than the other way around, and in many ways that its users may find abhorrent. If users realised the extent to which their personal information may be used, both now and at any time in the future, would they be so quick to post the information they do?

We rely on Facebook not doing anything we would consider untoward, but we do so at Facebook's grace and favour. The Beacon advertising system has already ruffled the feathers of average users, as well as getting the knickers of privacy advocates in a real twist, and Beacon is undoubtedly just the beginning of what Facebook has planned for our information.

Do we, and should we, trust Facebook not to abuse the information we offer to them on a silver platter? And what recourse do we really have should Facebook ever decide to use that information in a manner we are not comfortable with? Whatever happens we are walking into it willingly. Foolish perhaps, when you think about it.