Facebook faces its future

Explains the issue facing social networking sites, which are internet based communities of people with similar interests. Introduces Facebook as a specially interesting network that is closed to anyone not belonging to an academic community; it has six million subscribers, many of them daily devotees who add their personal information and search for information, for example on past and present friends. Points out that marketers with edu addresses are mining the profile pages for significant data and trends, but despite this infiltration students seem optimistic about Facebook's exclusivity. © 2006, Emerald Group Publishing Limited