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Viewpoints By T racy M i t r ano

Faceboo k 2.0

2 0 0 8 T ra c y M i t ra n o

In March 2006, the Cornell Universityassociate registrar called me and asked,What are you going to do about Face-book? I laughed, somewhat impolitely,at the thought that I could do anything

at all about a dot-com, but later I came

to understand what she wanted. Tales ofembarrassing exposure, both for studentsand for higher education institutions, werecausing genuine concern among adminis-trators, who wanted to inform studentsof the pitfalls that they might experiencein using this new, explosive Internet ap-plication. A few weeks later, on a typicallydreary, rainy Saturday in central New York,I wrote Thoughts on Facebook.1

Fast-forward to early 2008: the press isfilled with articles about social network-

ing in general and Facebook in particular.Facebook owners have agreed to a multi-million-dollar Microsoft deal that implic-itly values the site at $15 billion. MySpace,currently the largest site of its kind, isworking with Google to create an open-source alternative as a means of fendingoff its ambitious competitor. The goal, inkeeping with Googles overall mission toorganize the worlds knowledge, is to pro-

vide links between and among all of thesesites in a seamless web of social network-ing connectivity. With Facebook recently

allowing web crawlers like Google tocapture front-pages of users profiles on adefault open setting, this development isas predictable as it is inevitable: social net-working goes global. BeaconFacebooksnew advertising program, which uses itsNews Feed feature to share membersactivities on third-party siteswent froman opt-out to an opt-in program within amatter of days due to a user uprising overprivacy. If nothing else, these reactions by

users should end the notions, first, thatthere is no privacy on the Internet and,second, that youth have no interest in it.

What remains fascinating is our ability toobserve the re-creation of cultural normswhose existence in the physical world is

largely assumed, repressed, or forgotten.What challenges remain with this killer

app? I suggest three: (1) user education,especially for adolescents and their par-ents; (2) new features connecting highereducations missions to the popular site;and (3) legal and policy considerationson a global scale. Sensationalized and sadstories of teen-age suicides precipitatedby cruel exchanges on social networkingsites have raised the profile of informa-tion literacy and user education at early

ages. Primary school is not too early, forboth students and parents. For teen-agers,the emergence of helicopter parents hasno doubt driven adolescents deeper intotechnological zones that are generally outof their parents hovering view. Unless anindividual is particularly at risk, invadinga teen-agers space is not the solution. Butlearning more about those spaceshowthey operate, who is on them, and mostimportant, how to talk about their socialdynamicsis recommended. Parents cando that effectively only if they educate

themselves about both the technologyand the sociology of the Internet. Anddemonizing the technology, as is sug-gested even by such august public organsas Frontline, with its feature Growing UpOnline, helps no onenot the youth whowill undoubtedly use the technology, nottheir parents who supervise them, andnot their teachers who need to under-stand the role that this technology playsin their development.

On this subject I have an illustrative, ifnot humbling, story. At the EDUCAUSELearning Institute (ELI) annual meetingin January 2007, I invited a student ofmine at Cornell to present a learning ses-sion about Facebook. With much poise,

Nikki projected her Facebook front-pageon the screen as attendees filled theroom. I noted, with some curiosity, thatNikkis profile photograph was of her inan elegant evening gown standing closelybeside another young woman, similarlyattired. Both, holding Champagne flutes,were smiling and happy in a toast. Face-book front-pages include a photographand fields to be completed by the user.One of these fields is relationship, whichNikki had filled in with Engaged to S.L.,

apparently the name of the other womanin the photograph (the full name was inthe text, but I have abbreviated it for thispublication). Nikki went on to assist theaudience in logging on to Facebook, cre-ating profiles, and demonstrating someof its features. Later, at lunch, I raised myglass to Nikki and said, Congratulationson your engagement! Nikki looked abit befuddled, hunched toward me, andwith a hushed voice so as not to cause meembarrassment, said: You didnt believethat, did you? I thought you knew Im

straight! Reputation was not her para-mount concern; rather, she did not wantto show too much of her disappointmentthat I did not understand the fluidity ofthe virtualand yet very realsocial andpsychological world she inhabited.

Higher education plug-ins to social net-working sites present a second challenge.Here it is not the technology but rather thecontrol and use of the technology that is atissue. With more institutions moving to-

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social norms and psychological mean-ings, its advertising and market models,and its legal and policy queries on aglobal scale. A corporate, commercializedInternet has more money, flexibility, andmotivation to innovate than do most busi-ness aspects of higher education and isthe driving force behind the outsourcing

of campus IT services and products. Thatmove toward outsourcing might not be abad thing. As entrepreneurs continue topush the proverbial envelope of accept-ability in gossip and other salacious sites,such as Juicycampus.com, legislators mayrethink the Communications Decency

Acts section 230, which provides Internetservice providers and sites with immunityfrom common torts such as defamation.Designed to stimulate the developmentof the Internet, this immunity is increas-ingly coming under scrutiny as victims

of cyberbullying, libel, and defamationseek to understand the role that technol-ogy plays in terms of the scope and scaleof damages. ISPs, as passive conduits, arenot likely to be implicated, but site own-ers may acquire more liability under lessprotective legal regimes. Higher educa-tion needs to get out of those kinds ofbusinesses altogether.

Nevertheless, those of us in higher ed-ucation should be thoughtful about thedegree to which outsourcing restricts our

control over our products and servicesin higher education. IT professionals vice presidents and chief informationofficers especiallyhave a responsibilityto raise critical questions and perhapseven to teach or coach their administra-tions about the long-term, and possiblyunintended, deleterious consequencesof decisions that seem so obvious from abusiness and financial perspective today.Surrounded by commercialism and itsalmost irresistible temptations, we mustbe careful not to sell our souls.

Note

1. Tracy Mitrano, Thoughts on Facebook, CornellUniversity Office of Information Technologies,IT Policy Office, April 2006, .

Tracy Mitrano is the Director of

Information Technology Policy and

Computer Policy and Law Programs

at Cornell University.

ward commercial sites for student e-mail,calendaring, and document applications,it should not be too long before highereducation collaborates with Facebook tolink applications for course enrollment,grade checks, and other online studentservices. InCommon offers security andprivacy authentication; technological

links, combined with considered contractrelations, should close the deal. Lets faceit: Facebook has built the site, and studentsuse it; we in higher education should cometo recognize that this universal commer-cial site is here to stay. We should use it foradvertising and for communicationsand

certainly for emergency messaging. Therace is on: may the first institution to forgethis adventurous type of innovative col-

laboration win. The course enroll sitesmight just mark the beginning of suchconnections, soon to be followed by fac-similes of course management and othercontent-delivery systems.

Finally, global legal and policy con-cerns represent a third challenge. Civilprivacy claims stand out as the first issue.Technology does not create the underlyingproblem of tongues that wag too loosely,but it does amplify that problem in a way

that readily establishes the basis of tortu-ous liability. These claims may portendmore public privacy laws, since amongdeveloped nations the United States hasridiculously low standards. Accommoda-tion to stricter international regulationsmay encourage stronger and more consis-tent privacy laws in the United States or,

if that bar is too high, at least the hope ofharmonized privacy policies on the siteswith global constituencies. That optimis-tic perspective should be tempered by theever-present reality that commercial sitestie free services to marketing and adver-tising business models. Privacy and free

speech concerns will always be in tensionwith commercial interests that seek infor-mation about users and their preferences.

Of greater consequence is the problem ofhigher educations reliance on these sites. What will happen when an advertiserdecides to pull its account because itobjects to the content generated by a con-stituent of higher education, which hasbecome dependent on that site for deliv-ery of services?

Social networking continues to be acool new tool, and we should stay con-nected to its emerging technologies, its

IllustrationbyRandyLyhus,

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