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COMMENTARY | Facebook an increasingly relevant factor in everyday life may become more so in the very near future. I see rumors of privacy issues, selling personal info and first born children and possibly the selling of souls. The simple fact is I doubt the regular users will notice much difference. Part of the appeal of Facebook to investors is the user base it would be bad business to alienate them.
I have no problem with Facebook going public. They can do whatever they want with it. It’s theirs not mine, although soon enough it could be mine, yours and everyone else’s as well simply buy some stock. Fact is the privacy issues have always been there, people scam, swindle and mine for information now, and will later. If you don’t want people to see your information, then don’t put it up there. I’m looking forward to changes on Facebook. I’d love to see it become more stable rather than changing its format or rules every time one person gets a great idea.
I use Facebook to keep track of friends from around the world. As long as I can continue to do that it won’t matter to me what they do to the platform. They want to put up advertisements; that’s fine they already do. They want to add charges for you to promote your personal page, that’s fine with me too. I don’t see any downside to the IPO of Facebook and am confused by the people who do. I use it for games; they won’t go anywhere. I use it for networking, that won’t go away. Perhaps being tracked that I like particular games or specific celebrities seems troublesome. I honestly think it’s already going on anyway and just act accordingly. The benefit from that is it might tell me about things I would like but am unaware of. Similar to Amazon giving me suggestions on things I like based on other things I looked at or searched for. I think that’s convenient.
Facebook’s upcoming IPO doesn’t concern me in the least if anything I will be buying shares when it happens. Even if everyone’s worst fears come to life, and it becomes one giant advertisement burying all of my friend’s activities and status updates it will make money. I’ll simply move on to whatever platform springs up from its ashes. That’s how things work if your unhappy with a service, even a free one there is always something else to take its place. I’m not worried about it at all. On the day of the IPO’s official start, my status update will read “Facebook is dead, long live Facebook!”