By Michael J. Kasdan*
A pdf version of this article may be downloaded here.
“IMPORTANT!! Tomorrow, Facebook will change its privacy settings to allow Mark Zuckerberg to come into your house while you sleep and eat your brains with a sharpened spoon. To stop this from happening go to Account > Home Invasion Settings > Cannibalism > Brains, and uncheck the “Tasty” box. Please copy and repost.”
– Satirical Status Post from Friend’s Facebook Status on February 15, 2011.
Introduction
Since launching its now ubiquitous social networking website out of the Harvard dorm room of Mark Zuckerberg in early 2004, Facebook has rapidly become one of the most dominant websites on the planet. And “rapid” doesn’t quite do it justice. It has been estimated that over 40% of the U.S. population has a Facebook account.[FN1] Facebook now boasts over 600 million active user accounts [FN2] and was recently estimated to be adding user accounts at the unbelievable clip of well over half a million new users per day.[FN3]