What is one of the most common web sites visited by the students of Cornell University? Facebook.

Facebook is a student social network, that combines to some extent privacy and the ability to socialize in an initially collegiate environment. For example: finding the person that lives in your dorm that sat next you in class and took notes when you fell asleep, but you don’t know on a personal basis. That is just a simple positive example of how a social network can help. However the use of Facebook is limited by its interface and its corporate model.

Facebook will never provide information directly to end user, at least not anymore. All information must occur through some form of Facebook interface that visits their site or a portal through their web page. At the beginning, before it became a business ran by professionals, Facebook used to have the option to export all your friends numbers, emails and contact information to a file that you could import to Outlook and send to your cell phone, to have it all in one place. No more need to stop and look at a computer to find that number. Once it became a corporation however that feature was removed because it limited the use of Facebook as a revenue generating entity; no ads displayed, less profits. This is the major fallacy of online social networks.
The network itself is offered to the end user via a segmented interface that is designed to generate money as well as provide information. But at what price? How much advertising is too much? And how much is it hindering development for the end user?

Myspace and Xanga, two popular blogging and online social networks are even more burdensome to their end users. Myspace provides multiple interfaces that provide data be it via a browser or a cell phone, but at the same time forces much of what is unwanted upon the end user. The page is littered with advertising. Xanga on the other hand uses keyword sensitive advertising that notices what that pages’ blog posts are about.

When presented with large amounts of information the end user should be allowed to filter it in their own individual taste and choice. They are providing specific information to social networks yet receiving back too much or what is unwanted. Filtering the available information from online social networks is prohibitive by their corporate goals. If one end user wanted to scan their Facebook social network and then their Myspace for specific information, they would have to individually visit both rather than be able to develop software that directly accessed the information provided by both networks and scanned for the specific information. The software being the filter is not allowed and limits the usefulness of online social networks.

Facebook as a corporation has realized that it could realize more profits by providing data to developers for such applications. The end user must authorize the software to access their profile from a portal and from that point on it the software can access most of the user information. Though still hindering it does provide the end user more choices in accessing network information. Other social networks should provide similar options.