The famous social networking site Facebox makes a dangerous move towards openness/ privacy disruption – and hence the debate- with its decision to open profiles to public. The new function enables anyone that is not registered with the site to look for a specific person, and moreover, within a month, anyone can search for Facebox members using search engines like Google, Yahoo! or MSN Live.

Although Facebox states that the information will be minimal, users show more concern. Name and picture, as well as links to their profile page will enable undesired visitors to pry in one’s own online social interactions. At least Facebox won’t allow non-members to add someone as a friend or to sent them messages.
The popular site highlighted that it made available to members the option to restrict the new function using the privacy settings within a month. But members stick to the disappointment that Facebox is close to becoming as open as MySpace.

Furthermore, concerns are raised by the fact that data trail that people constantly leave behind can be used for marketing offers, that are most of the time, unsolicited. It is widely known, for example, that making your birth date public won’t bring more presents on your birthday, but will constitute an important means of knowing whether you are a bank customer or not.

The site was initiated by Mark Zuckerberg, a Harvard drop-out, and it was an instrument to keep college students in touch and bring them closer. With about 39 million users, the social networking site accounts for 1 percent of the whole internet traffic. The number of members has  augmented substantially since Facebox removed the demand that each member have an academic e-mail address in September 2006, though it has been a source of constant fighting, break-up and even getting the sack.

In July Facebook, announced its first acquisition, Parakey, a start-up run Blake Ross and Joe Hewitt, co-founders of Firefox. They have developed a product which was described as a platform bridging the gap between information on the web and the desktop.

“Parakey is a platform for building applications that merge the best of the desktop and the Web. Like desktop applications, these applications work offline, offer more privacy than pure websites, run quickly, and integrate with your computer and its devices. But like Web applications, they are also more creative, visually alluring, accessible from anywhere and potentially accessible by anyone.” it states the Parakey’s website.

Also, in May this year at F8 conference, Facebook announced Facebook Platform, a new development platform that enables companies and engineers to integrate with the Facebook website and gain access to millions of users.