On February 4th, 2004, a new social networking site was launched  that connects people, to keep up with friends, upload photos, share links and videos: Facebook.

Happy Birthday Facebook!

 

For the record: Originally, the website’s membership was limited by the founders (Mark Zuckerberg, Eduardo Saverin, Andrew McCollum, Dustin Moskovitz and Chris Hughes), to students at Harvard University, but this was soon expanded to other colleges in the Boston area, (the Ivy League, and Stanford University), and then to students at various other universities.  Later access was opened to high school students, and eventually to anyone aged 13 and over, (although there are reports that are millions of children under 13 who have accounts).

That’s not the only controversy that has surrounded Facebook, for example:

• The original idea for Facebook is supposed to have arisen out of a hacking project carried out by Zuckerberg on the Harvard computer system – but all charges of improper activity were dropped;
• Other students claimed that he “appropriated” the idea from them and this became the subject of a Hollywood film;
• The service has been blocked intermittently in several countries – for example China, Iran, Uzbekistan, Pakistan Syria and Bangladesh.
• The Privacy of user information has been an issue with “user accounts” being compromised on several occasions … ;
• Concerns have been expressed about the safety of children using the site – the minimum age limit of 13 is apparently designed to prevent conflicts with US federal law designed to protect children on-line;
• there have been legal issues over copyright – both of the code itself and the content;
• It is claimed that Facebook has turned into a “national obsession” in the United States, resulting in vast amounts of time lost and encouraging narcissism;  Workers in the UK have had access blocked out of concerns over, (amongst other things), reduced productivity;

In September 2012, Facebook had over one billion active users, more than half of them using Facebook on a mobile device.

Quite a few of them are here in Kyrgyzstan.  In fact, Facebook has added Kyrgyzstan to the other 126 countries of the world where it is the social network of choice, with – according to socialbakers,  almost 110,000 users drawn from the five and a half million population.  That’s only 2% of the population but represents a tenth of the on-line population of the country.  It’s also a growing community – adding some 32,000 users, representing growth of over 40%, in the last 6 months.

Most of the users are, (as might be expected), young – in the age range 18-24 … but they are split almost evenly between male and female.

It was the fifth most popular site in Kyrgyzstan, (after the search engine google – both the generic and localgoogle.kg incarnations; the local internet service provider, elcat.kg; and You Tube).  According to analytical statistics on Alexa traffic, a typical visitor spends something like 28 minutes scanning the site  looking at about 18 different pages.

It faces considerable competition here in Kyrgyzstan, especially from the Russian language services VKontact (In Contact) and Odnoklassniki, (Classmates).  I have registered on both – but tend only to use Facebook.

It seems to me that whatever the pros and cons … Facebook is something which has the power to be a force of social cohesion but, as in so many cases of new technologies … much depends on the way it is used:

I have written elsewhere about how I came across Facebook … a member of staff went on a scholarship to a University in the States and when she returned she duly logged on to Facebook to keep in touch with her new friends.  The rest of the staff were quickly infected with Facebookitis and joined … and I decided that UI ought to find out what all the fuss was about.  To access the site you have to join and create a profile … that done, I had a quick look round round and, although it looked interesting, I decided it wasn’t for me, logged off and more or less forgot about it.

Some time later I got an email saying that someone wanted to be my “friend” … I had had these before and ignored, but this one was different … I recognized the name – it was one of my nephews – and so I decided to follow it up.  That was it … I too was hooked.

I still tend to ignore most of the friend requests – unless I do actually know the people concerned.

I came across this poem about how your facebook friends take over your life … (he calls it an ode and a “short poem” – it’s neither … but it is still a good read).

It has proved interesting … and useful … making contact with and keeping in touch with people back home that I haven’t seen for twenty years or so, as well as many new friends that I have made here.

I also get updates and news which may be interesting on a number of different topics: Music and musicians; Films; TV and Radio programmes; Inspirational people; Places; and so on.

In turn we have created a variety of special pages so that “followers” can obtain updates about us: posts here on ianbek; about the company; about links to webpages about travel here to Kyrgyzstan and about issues related to tourism in Kyrgyzstan.

On several occasions, I have sat in meetings when the discussion has been long, involved and detailed … and as the meeting has drawn to a close, someone has suggested that we continue the discussion on line – on a Facebook page.

 

Tags: Calendar, For_the_Record, Life_in_Kyrgyzstan