When Facebook began in 2004, the popular social networking site was only accessible to college students at Ivy League universities. Five years later, Facebook comprises an active user base of more than 150 million people across dozens of countries worldwide.

What changed in those five years?

Well, for one, Facebook drastically expanded its user base. The site, once known for its exclusivity, has become accessible for practically anyone with a computer. In fact, while Facebook remains wildly popular among college students, the majority of Facebook’s new growth comes from users who are 30 years old or older.

While luring an older and more professional demographic has been a coup for the company, it has had a somewhat less desirable effect for many preexisting Facebook users. While photos of drunken shenanigans and crude 3:00AM wall postings have become the norm in Facebook’s college crowd, many users are now being forced to reconsider what they post on their walls. What if your boss is on Facebook? Or that nosy tattletale co-worker? Or, God forbid, your mother? Worse yet, what if they try and friend you???

Thankfully Sarah Perez, of the web technology blog ReadWriteWeb, recently contributed an article to NYTimes.com detailing the step by step process by which a user can filter their page using Facebook’s “Friend List” feature. We’ve copied the nuts and bolts part of Sarah’s advice below, but make sure to check out the full article for an interesting perspective on how much info is too much info for the modern Facebook user.

From the article:

To get started with Facebook Lists, you first need to build one. You can do this from your Friends page. (Click “Friends” in the blue bar at the top). On the left side of the page, click the button “Make a New List.” Give it a title.

Now you’ll have the option to add your friends to the list. You can either start typing in names one by one or click on “Select Multiple Friends” to add several people to the list all at once. (To add people, just click on their photos.) When you’re finished, click the “Save List” button at the bottom.

Once you have some lists created, it’s time to figure out who gets to see what. To edit your privacy settings, go to “Settings” at the top-right of the screen next to the search box. When you hover your mouse over the link, you’ll see a menu appear; click “Privacy Settings”on this menu. On the following page, click “Profile,” the top choice in the list of options.

On the profile privacy page, you have the option of customizing exactly who gets to see what. You can modify the following areas: Profile, Basic Info, Personal Info, Status Updates, Photos Tagged of You, Videos Tagged of You, Friends, Wall Posts, Education Info, and Work Info. If you’re unsure of what any of those things are, click the “?” next to the item to read a definition.

Using the drop-down boxes, you can customize who gets to see your info: “Only Friends,” “Friends of Friends,” or “My Network of Friends.” To lock down your profile to friends only, you could set all these to “only friends.” But since you have now created specialized lists, you’ll want to use these instead.

To do so, click the fourth option from the drop-down box: “Customize.” From here, you can add lists of people who should NOT be able to see this part of your profile. For example, if you wanted to block a list of work colleagues or those in your family from seeing your status updates, you could do so here – just type the name of your list in the box “Except these people” and save your changes.

Note: you can also block certain people individually just by typing in their names, but given the ever-growing number of Facebook users, you’re probably going to need a Friend List at some point. We recommend biting the bullet and creating your lists now instead of treating everyone as a one-off.

After you’ve saved your changes, you’re done. You’ll have your privacy back without having to change the way you and your friends use Facebook. Of course, keep in mind that nothing is foolproof – determined hackers can gain access to your account as can anyone who guesses your password….so maybe you shouldn’t use your dog’s name.

When lists are finally in place, you can assign new friends to a list right when you’re accepting their friend request – just look for the option “Add to Friend List” before you click “Accept.”

Owen Tripp, co-Founder of Reputation.com and a great friend of mine, is pictured rockin’ his RepDef t-shirt dominating CES 2009.  (This post is a couple weeks late in coming, but better late than never.)  He is in front of the Intel booth here.  Photo taken with my handy iPhone.

Carmen Gentile of the New York Times reports  that Katherine Evans, now a student at the University of Florida, is suing the principal of her high school, for suspending her for having organized an attack on her English teacher on Facebook.

I’ll be quite interested to see how the courts handle this one.  Is the legal principle she is asserting one of generalized free speech?  I wonder….

Jason Kincaid is reporting at TechCrunch that the gossip site Juicy Campus is closing. He reports that the site claims the closure is for financial reasons and also points out the libelous and defamatory nature of some of the speech on the site. The post is quite good, so I will quote from it at length. Quoting from the page.

JuicyCampus, a website that invites students to post anonymous (and often-times libelous) messages about their peers, is headed for the Deadpool. In a blog post on the company’s website, founder Matt Ivester blames the site’s demise on a lack of revenue, despite steady growth:

Unfortunately, even with great traffic and strong user loyalty, a business can’t survive and grow without a steady stream of revenue to support it. In these historically difficult economic times, online ad revenue has plummeted and venture capital funding has dissolved. JuicyCampus’ exponential growth outpaced our ability to muster the resources needed to survive this economic downturn, and as a result, we are closing down the site as of Feb. 5, 2009.

I wouldn’t be surprised if some of the site’s advertising issues stemmed from the fact that it often featured incredibly hateful and mean-spirited content that advertisers were hesitant to be associated with. Ivester has long maintained that the site was for ‘Juicy’ gossip, not mean insults, but with top threads including “Biggest Whore At Tulane”, it was hardly a place for light-hearted fun. In light of the overwhelmingly negative comments found on the site, some schools began banning JuicyCampus entirely, leading Ivester to claim that they were “joining the ranks of the Chinese government in internet censorship, and spitting in the faces of everyone who believes in free discourse online”.

Ivester may also be growing increasingly worried about the litigation threats the site receives for defamation and libel. Ivester has claimed legal protection, citing the fact that he didn’t author any of the defamatory posts, but he may not be too eager to put those claims to test in court.

 Mashable also has the news. The Mashable post points to anti-cyberbullying efforts as possible contributors to the site closing. They also state that other gossip sites have been unable to successfully monetize:

With similar services, like Camfess, BoredAt, and CubeVoice, biting the dust, we have to wonder if anonymous gossip sites are a thing of the past. I can’t say that I’ll miss the genre of web sites, but then again Craigslist, the safe haven for anonymity lovers, isn’t going anywhere.

Reputation.com Blog has covered Juicy Campus in the past, profiling the hurt and hate anonymous slander engenders. Reputation.com promotes a safe and secure internet experience for all users and applauds Juicy Campus for ending the defamatory practices of their site and acting responsibly in this matter. We wish Mr. Ivester the best of luck in his future endeavors.

Recently Reputation.com COO Owen Tripp was sourced for an article in Stanford Business Magazine. Mr. Tripp, who holds an MBA from Stanford, provided insight into online privacy, online reputation management and and identity theft in the information age. The article discusses possible pitfalls facing professionals and businesses online, and notes the problems that people encounter when negative listings appear in search engine results. Even when the individual is blameless, they can still be adversely affected by not proactively managing their online identity. Quoting from the page:

LAST MAY, a Connecticut woman with a Stanford MBA was surprised by a stranger’s phone call asking about her personal background. That’s when she learned that a woman in Washington state with a similar name had apparently lifted details of her biography off the internet, including her graduate degree from Stanford, and was using it in her profile on an online social networking site.

The Washington woman, it appeared, had used the Google search engine to look for her own unusual name, and the Stanford MBA’s biographical information popped up. With a few clicks, the data was hers. She used it to enhance her business profile on networking site LinkedIn.

In January, another Stanford alum, Liz Lynch, discovered that an Australian man had taken an article she wrote off the internet, slapped his own byline on it, and posted it on his website. Lynch, MBA ’92, learned this when she tried to submit the piece to an online article directory, and the fake author’s name surfaced. To add insult to injury, Lynch was accused by the directory of being the plagiarist.

This sort of cyber squatting is becoming commonplace these days.

Owen Tripp, MBA ’08, cofounder of Reputation.com, a company that sells security services and helps victims clear up online profile problems, believes resume and credential theft is a growing problem in today’s dismal economy. “Everyone’s trying to get a leg up, to create a great resume that’s going to get them that good job, or to build a better credit profile to help them buy that house,’’ he says.

[SNIP]

[Reputation.com employs] “deep” searches that the average computer user cannot do. When a suspected offender is located, Tripp says his company simply contacts the person and asks that he or she desist. Surprisingly, the approach usually works. But in many cases, the damage has been done and can be long lasting. Offensive or fake postings can be removed from sites, but often they can lurk somewhere in cyberspace forever. A doctor whose identity was used by an imposter to commit Medicare fraud is still trying years later to convince people he is not the man who perpetrated the fraud.

It is clear that managing one’s online identity is critical in a world where business, romance, commerce and networking take place online. The professionals at Reputation.com are the leaders in providing identity solutions for the information age.