Web 2.0 : between wikinomia and counterculture: Facebook

The article elaborates on discursive and commercial strategies of Facebook, aimed at incorporating any criticisms and discontent from its users within discussion groups formed at Facebook itself. Two major campaigns to overthrow and reject changes put forward by the service's management have been presented as micro case studies; the campaigns resulted in implementing the Facebook Statement of Rights and Responsibilities, a quasi-democratic set of rules worked out with the users over a few weeks when voting procedures were introduced to accept the rules. Such a strategy - along with an open API policy and drawing a number of small companies specializing in providing Facebook-related applications and games - can be one of the sources of Facebook's global success. Comparison is drawn with Polish social networking site, Nasza-klasa (currently nk.pl), which communicates with its users in a much more one-direction, top-bottom way. Such strategy is clearly designed rather to overcome criticism from the users than to accommodate it (to boost emotional investments from them). The bottom line, though, is the fact that Facebook, as a social networking site capitalizing on the circulation of data generated by its users, advantages from any heated discussion among them, as long as it is kept within borders of Facebook and held under its logo.