CHRISTIAN FUCHS - ICT&S - Universität Salzburg

Christian Fuchs: Social Networking Sites and the Surveillance Society5.2. FacebookMark Zuckerberg founded Facebook in February 2004. Microsoft purchased 1.6% ofFacebook for more than 240 million US$ in October 2007. Other than MySpace,Facebook is based on local university and city networks. In terms of Internet traffic,Facebook is ranked number five at the global level, number 16 in Germany, number 11in Austria, and number 4 in Switzerland (alexa.com, accessed on October 28, 2008).The three-month average share of global Internet users who use Facebook is 10.41%(alexa.com, accessed on October 28, 2008). In 2007, MySpace had more uniquevisitors than Facebook, but in 2008 Facebook outstripped MySpace (unique visitors ofFacebook in June 2008: 132 million, MySpace: 117 million 15 ) and became the largestISNS. The number of unique visitors increased by 153% in the period from June 2007 toJune 2008 (June 2007: 52 million) 16 . Facebook makes profits of approximately 10-50million US$ per year 17 . It is a legal entity in the USA.In November 2007, Facebook started the Beacon advertising system. This systemcollects usage data on other partner websites, even if the user is logged out fromFacebook, and uses this data for personalized and social advertising (targeting a groupof friends) on Facebook. The partner sites include for example eBay, LiveJournal, NewYork Times, Sony, STA Travel, or TripAdvisor. Users can opt out from this service, but it isautomatically activated and legalized by Facebook’s privacy policy:“Facebook Beacon is a means of sharing actions you have taken on third partysites, such as when you make a purchase or post a review, with your friends onFacebook. In order to provide you as a Facebook user with clear disclosure of theactivity information being collected on third party sites and potentially sharedwith your friends on Facebook, we collect certain information from that site andpresent it to you after you have completed an action on that site. You have thechoice to have Facebook discard that information, or to share it with your friends”(Facebook Privacy Policy, accessed on November 2, 2008).By signing up to Facebook, users agree to its terms of use and thereby grant thecompany a license for using and selling all content that is uploaded to the platform:“When you post User Content to the Site, you authorize and direct us to makesuch copies thereof as we deem necessary in order to facilitate the posting andstorage of the User Content on the Site. By posting User Content to any part of theSite, you automatically grant, and you represent and warrant that you have theright to grant, to the Company an irrevocable, perpetual, non-exclusive,transferable, fully paid, worldwide license (with the right to sublicense) to use,copy, publicly perform, publicly display, reformat, translate, excerpt (in whole orin part) and distribute such User Content for any purpose, commercial,advertising, or otherwise, on or in connection with the Site or the promotionthereof, to prepare derivative works of, or incorporate into other works, such UserContent, and to grant and authorize sublicenses of the foregoing. You may remove15 http://www.comscore.com/press/release.asp?press=2396, accessed on October 28, 2008.16 http://www.comscore.com/press/release.asp?press=2396, accessed on October 28, 2008.17 http://www.alexa.com/data/details/main/facebook.com, accessed on October 28, 2008.38