When I signed on to Facebook this morning I was greeted (in my news feed) with a message that Facebook will now be open to everyone, allowing those who did not go to college or graduated before facebook was in existence to join regional networks. Facebook insists that this does not effect current users' privacy because unless you add a regional network, your profile will still only be available for viewing by people in your college, high school or work networks. Most interesting about this open wall policy is the following statement on new users signing up, "If new regional users cannot authenticate through an email address, we prompt them to authenticate through a mobile phone number. This makes sure that they are real people.". Interesting.

It is obvious that Facebook is desperately trying to extend its popularity and relevance. While I am definitely of the opinion that an effective social network should let users decide what their networks are and not be exclusionary, I doubt that this decision by Facebook will necessarily bring large numbers of new users. It seems, from my limited exploring of Facebook, that the site has primarily been a place for people who go to the same school to find each other and keep in contact. I don't know that it is going to be so easy for the site to redefine itself in a 'myspace' sort of way and I'm not completely convinced that its relevant for them to try.