Tuesday, September 14, 2010

Pets and Facebook

There was an article written in August, http://www.cnn.com/2010/TECH/social.media/08/05/pets.facebook.networks/index.html?hpt=Sbin, and I've been thinking about it for a while. Having a facebook profile for your pet does violate Facebook's policy ("Since accounts that impersonate anyone or anything can damage the integrity of this environment, Facebook doesn't allow fake profiles for pets."), and yet many are guilty of it. Does having a profile for your pet guinea pig, rabbit, cat, or dog really damage the integrity of the site? I have to say that I don't think it does. Just as Facebook friends want to know about what's going on in each others' lives, people may want to know what's going on in one's pet's life.

"Justin Smith, founder of the blog Inside Facebook, says it's not so much about the pets but the practice of assuming a false identity that 'hurts the quality of communication' on the popular site, which has more than 500 million users."

Is it really stealing one's identity when no one believes that a dog is really typing out their status. My pet guinea pig doesn't have a social security number that I can steal.

"Facebook did not respond to a question about whether the site removes pets' profile pages."

Facebook does in fact remove pet's profiles, or at least it did, since someone I know had 2 of her dogs' profile pages removed.

What is the solution? Let's train our pets to type their own status updates.

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