Western Courier

Issue date: 9/18/06 Section: News

Media Credit: The Harvard Crimson Mark Zuckerberg, a Harvard dropout, launched Facebook at Harvard on Feb. 4, 2004. Within three weeks, 6,000 students had joined.

GAINESVILLE, Fla. - Facebook.com's creators said Thursday that they are not aiming to compete with MySpace.com or increase profits by opening their online social network to anyone with a valid e-mail address.

"We are aiming to be a social utility where you rebuild the real-life social networks that you already have," said Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook's creator and chief executive officer.

MySpace, on the other hand, tries to connect users with people they do not know, Zuckerberg said.

Zuckerberg and Chris Hughes, Facebook's co-creator and spokesman, chatted with student journalists at an online forum that lasted about an hour. Reporters were required to submit questions to a moderator, and the creators chose about 37 to answer.

Defending the expansion, Zuckerberg told reporters that people outside of college need to be updated on their friends, too.

"That's why we have a lot of high school students and alumni on the site," he said. "That's why we are continually expanding it."

After news broke Tuesday that the site, previously exclusive to colleges, high schools and corporations, planned to become all-inclusive, many users joined groups in protest. The group "Official Petition Against Opening Facebook" had more than 46,000 members Sunday night.

When Facebook becomes open, people will be able to associate themselves with any of 500 regions.

Zuckerberg said he was still deciding when to open Facebook, which already has about 9.5 million users.

But he denied accusations that he was trying to profit from expanding his Web site. He said he was focusing on "building something great."

Facebook made headlines at the University of Florida when school officials warned student leaders, including resident assistants, to scrub alcohol-related photos and messages from their profiles to be good role models.

When asked about employers looking at employee's profiles, Hughes said that members could change their privacy settings so that only friends can see their profiles.

"It's not about whether we are comfortable with that or not," he said. "It's up to the individual."

Last week, students joined groups protesting Facebook's new news feed feature and messaged administrators asking for better privacy settings. Zuckerberg responded with a letter apologizing to users, and he upgraded privacy features so members could pick what gets posted.

Hughes said despite the uproar, use and membership did not decline.

Zuckerberg said, "It was nice to see people use the tools we supplied to create a forum and have an open discussion about these things."

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