What do you think of Facebook?
That’s a question lots of people have been asking recently. In fact, the Associated Press and CNBC conducted a poll before Facebook’s initial public stock offering last Friday trying to determine American users’ attitudes toward the site. And even though the social networking sensation has amassed more than 900 million members worldwide and 40% of Americans log into Facebook at least once a week, the poll’s results might surprise you.
First up, don’t confuse using Facebook with trusting it. The CNBC poll found that 59% of respondents don’t trust the website to keep their information private. And 54% reported that they wouldn’t trust the site for e-commerce. Writing for Forbes, contributor Dave Thier said, “A social network like Facebook benefits from being big until a certain point, but eventually it grows to approximately the same size as the Internet itself. People trust small systems within the Internet far more than the large systems that govern them. Facebook is one of those large systems.”
The poll also found that half of Americans believe Facebook is a fad—another number that’s got to feel a bit worrisome to company founder Mark Zuckerberg.
Personally, I probably would be among those who doubt the company would keep my personal data safe. My outlook on such things is generally on the cynical side to begin with, and it’s not hard for me to believe that Facebook would look for ways to capitalize on my data if there were a way for them to do so.
As for Facebook being a fad, well, I guess that boils down to how you define that word. Fads come and go. Hula hoops were a fad. Pet rocks were a fad. Beanie Babies were a fad. Mullets were a fad. (And I think I speak for all formerly mulleted men everywhere when I say thank goodness).
Facebook is enormously popular, to be sure, one critical component in any fad. But I think Facebook has transcended fad-dom at this point. When 40% of a nation’s people use something weekly, it’s not just a trend. It’s a way of life, one that’s become woven into the very way we go about our day-to-day rhythms and routines. In that sense, I suspect that Facebook may be more akin to television or telephones than it is the fashionable fads of bygone eras.
I may be proven wrong about that. After all, who could have predicted the spectacular implosion of Facebook’s predecessor, MySpace?
But I don’t think I’m off base here. We may not trust Facebook. We may be ambivalent about how much privacy we’ve lost. But that doesn’t keep us from logging in to update our status, add friends and likes and generally manage our digital identities online.
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