Facebook, an online social network popular amongst college students and businesses, is planning on opening its doors towards to the rest of the world by allowing users to connect based upon where they live.
(The Independent Florida Alligator) Facebook confirmed the plans to allow users with any e-mail address to join regional networks on Monday. Restrictions will keep users from viewing profiles in other networks the same way a UF student is restricted from the Florida State University network.
Facebook was planning on opening last week, but decided to delay the opening after users were upset about the company introducing news feeds within the site.
Members inside Facebook are already complaining about the future decision, desiring to keep Facebook “a college crowd” in order to avoid the vain babbling that is often seen on MySpace.
Although it is understandable that many users want to keep Facebook from being diluted by outsiders, they must realize that Facebook needs to find new ways to expand its user base in order to attract new advertisers, as running the seventh most popular site online can be pretty expensive.
The nature of all businesses is to expand and (hopefully) beat their competition, and to ask Facebook to remain small would be like asking Burger King to be happy with playing second string to McDonalds.
Facebook looks like it has a lot to offer to social networking arena, and unless their are major privacy concerns, what reason would there be to lock away its services from the rest of planet earth?