CS @ HBS

I first heard of Facebook about a year ago, when a friend from Israel asked me to join and told me it’s a site where people upload their photos and can tag themselves in these photos. As attractive as this sounded, I politely declined. The truth is I don’t like social network websites; in general I still shudder to the thought of someone googling me and finding my photos or any other embarrassing information about me. So I stayed away from Facebook.

And then I came to HBS. In Pre-MBA in July, people started uploading photos from our get-togethers to Facebook. I still refused to join, and made them send me direct links to their albums instead.

But at some point it became ridiculous. I realized that practically everyone was on this site, and it became too time consuming to keep track of everything going on there without being there. So I gave up. I joined. After joining, I found out that the group “HBS Class of 2009″ has 535 members (out of 900 students!). I added all of them as my friends. I still maintained some sort of self respect by not adding any ‘applications’ like growing bonsai trees / comparing Indonesian poems / throwing bananas, but I have to admit I do write on walls and update my status (only occasionally!).

The funny thing is, having joined in July I was able to witness Facebook taking over Israel. I don’t know what triggered it (maybe me joining :)), but Israelis started to discover Facebook over the last few months, and slowly but surely I saw all of my friends joining. I realized this was reaching a certain pinnacle last week when I searched Facebook for my last name and found out my uncle. This week I found my aunt. And yesterday Isreal’s largest finance magazine (The Marker) published an article about Facebook, stating that currently 163,365 Israelis are members, an 86% increase in two weeks! A few Israeli pseudo-celebrities are quoted in the article, one of them is Iftah Wisel, the owner of Fox – one of the largest fashion brands in Israel. He said that Facebook consumes 4-5 hours of his time on a daily basis. Scary.

Facebook is quite useful, in a way. Like email, it allows you to communicate with certain people in a way that’s much easier than calling them or – heaven forbids – meeting them. It’s actually even easier, and less binding, than emailing. It also allows you to keep track of what your friends are doing and where they are – my friends at HBS use Facebook all the time to say where they’re going to be on Friday night – very useful information. Not to mention, of course, the awesome ability of stalking people and obsessively viewing their 428 photos, one by one (hypothetical example). Or finding long-gone high school friends (and stalking them as well. Another hypothetical example).

From a business point of view, I heard Facebook being mentioned more than once here at HBS as a “cool tech company to work for” with regards to MBA students. Microsoft investment in the company last month, according to a valuation of $15 billion (yes, that is US dollars), didn’t hurt either. Last weekend in Cyberposium, speakers in the Online Media panel talked about Facebook as a goldmine for marketers of all kinds – being able to analyze your profile data and offer you advertisements tailored according to your preferences. Again, personally I’m not sure this lack of privacy is a good thing. On the other hand, I did like receiving personal coupons from the supermarket, so what’s the difference?

I don’t hate Facebook anymore; I’m not a power user either. I guess my attitude is best described by the phrase “if you can’t beat them, join them” (but still use a picture of a squirrel as your profile picture)

And as I was writing these very lines, I received an email from a Wharton friend inviting me to join the Facebook group “Isreali alumni of top MBA schools”. Off to Facebook, then…

Related posts:

1. Cyberposium 13, (a bit about) Recruiting and some culture!
2. End of Pre-MBA, start of Analytics
3. First days at school and Operation: Apartment
4. First week of school
5. Midterms and International Week