I’m a firm believer that every ambitious collegiette who strives to succeed should be educated in every way available to her; this means, among other things, having at least a vague understanding of major current events happening around the world. Many of us are aware of the Republican primaries and that Iran might be trying to build a nuclear weapon, but this news doesn’t affect many of our day-to-day lives.
So, what recent story WILL affect us average college-goers? A hint? It has to do with everyone’s favorite procrastination-helping, stalking-made-easy pastime: Facebook.
I don’t want to bore you all with intense economic jargon and pointless statistics, so here’s the deal:
Essentially, Mark Zuckerburg (founder and creator of the site who was made infamous in The Social Network) and his co-leaders decided to make Facebook a public company. This means that us mere mortals will be able to invest in the company and actually be able to OWN a small amount of the company (and by small, I mean minuscule…the speculated cost of one share is too insanely high to even acknowledge).
There are a lot of shares to buy, it seems, because the site is unsurprisingly valued between $85 and 100 billion. To put that in proportion, that’s almost 7% of this country’s national debt.
How will this affect us, you may ask? Besides the possibility of owning a tinnnnnnnyyyyy little bit of Facebook, experts predict that the site will change a lot over the next few years, perhaps not in a good way. Remember when Facebook first started changing its format a few years ago and EVERYONE was upset with each new change? Remember how we eventually sucked it up and accepted the changes? That might not happen once the company goes public.
The Timeline feature, for example, is just one of the many changes made to please future investors. You may not have a problem with Timeline…in fact, you may even like it. But have you noticed that profiles with Timeline also feature ads? Experts predict that ad space is bound to grow, which may slow the site down, eventually frustrating users enough to visit Facebook less and flock to sites like Twitter or Tumblr.
The bottom line, really, is that many people believe that Facebook is on the fast track to becoming the next Myspace. And, let’s face it. Five or six years ago, we loved Myspacealmost as much as we love Facebook now. If our loyalty changed so easily back then when a better site came along, who’s to say Facebook won’t join Myspace in the Graveyard of Fond Internet Memories.
So there you go! You now know more about a current event that actually matters to you in some way, and you’re a more informed and impressive collegiette because of it!
Sources
http://www.usdebtclock.org/
http://www.cnn.com/2012/02/01/tech/social-media/facebook-ipo-reactions/index.html?hpt=hp_c1