Parents of college-bound in Facebook

Parents of the college-bound are beginning to use Facebook too - to find out what their kids' roommates will be like - and schools aren't sure this is a good thing! "A growing number of schools say they're getting more requests for changes — from parents who don't like the roommates' Facebook profiles," USATODAY reports. The article says housing officials cite party photos as referenced most by complaining parents, but one Syracuse University "says race, religion and sexual orientation are the top three concerns from parents contacting officials there," and an administrator at Suffolk University in Boston said sexual orientation was the No. 1 parental concern she heard about. Most schools USATODAY contacted said they don't make changes because of these calls, and the University of Chicago said it never allows changes until the third week (at Syracuse the wait is between 8 weeks and the whole fall semester). Meanwhile, you know social networking's mainstream not only when parents are checking up on potential roommates but when Wal-Mart's advertising back-to-school products in Facebook (see Reuters on this.)

Advertisers' social-Web headaches

It's a fascinating dilemma advertisers have these days, and it's related to a concern of parents we see turning up in the ConnectSafely.org forum time and time again: How to control standards in a medium the user controls? How can an advertiser be guaranteed its ad won't appear next to inappropriate user-generated content? "In London, with the number of Facebook users swelling, government agencies and six companies, including Vodafone, Virgin Media and First Direct, made a jumpy, temporary exodus from the site this month. The companies withdrew advertising accounts from Facebook after their brands surfaced in blind purchases alongside a page for the anti-immigrant, right-wing British National Party," the International Herald Tribune reports. Also in the UK, where junk-food ads have been banned from TV programs targeting kids 4-9 (and that will soon be extended to include ads targeting 10-15-year-olds too), Bebo and HabboHotel are drawing criticism for displaying selling candy and food ads, the Herald Tribune adds. "But the controversy in Britain has had an impact on all companies in the social networking category, many of which have been taking steps to highlight their ethical responsibilities." Here's Reuters on the UK Facebook story.

Facebook's new classifieds

The US’s 6th most high-traffic site introduces classified ads today. Facebook’s new ad section, called “Marketplace,” “will allow users to create classified listings in four categories: housing; jobs; for sale, where users can list things like concert tickets and used bikes; and “other,” a catch-all that could include things like solicitations for rides home for the holidays,” the New York Times reports. Users of the 22 million-member site will probably like the privacy and delivery options built in. They can show an ad to friends only on their profile or send them out in a “feed” (“the automatic updates that appear when users log in to the site”). They can also choose to make their ads available to everyone on their network (their high school, college, company, or regional network that’s closed off to Facebook users in other networks). The emphasis is on privacy right now, with no anonymous classifieds, Facebook says, though the company might eventually charge for broader ad distribution. MySpace has had classifieds for nearly a year and Friendster has announced it will add them.