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Is There a Right to Privacy in Social Networking?

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Is There a Right to Privacy in Social Networking?
ISSUE: Should social networking sites allow outside parties to have access to user information? Although it is free for users to participate on social networking sites (to a certain extent), companies like Facebook are businesses; they must make money to stay in operation. One way in which Facebook has begun to collect revenues is by allowing marketers to post advertisements on its site. Yet with the growing competition in social networking, Facebook must take new steps to retain its competitive edge. One possible way is by establishing the standard for online identity. In August 2009, Facebook hired David Recordon, an expert in online identification.
Recordon intends to promote open and transparent standards for web identity to Facebook. In other words, the company hopes to make it easier to identify its users.
Although several social networking sites have been criticized over this issue, the site that has garnered the most criticism is Facebook. Facebook has already implemented changes to promote more open identification. For example, users can no longer hide their name, gender, profile picture, or hometown from other users. Facebook also gives access to this same information to its partners of Facebook Connect, a program that lets users log onto their Facebook profiles from thousands of websites.
In December 2009, Yahoo! and Facebook formed a partnership that permits Facebook users to identify themselves on Yahoo! sites and share photos, articles, and other content with friends. Yahoo!, in turn, could use this information to target ads toward specific demographics. In the future, companies may be able to pay Yahoo! to post advertisements in front of specific markets on the web.
Other controversies include Facebook’s new “Like” button feature that websites can add onto their own pages.
When

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