I was scrolling through my Facebook news feed this afternoon and one of my Facebook friends posted a status that started, “In response to the new Facebook guidelines, I hereby declare that my copyright…” and so forth. I was too uninterested to read the rest as I thought this post was about something only in reference to her. However, as I kept scrolling, I found that four more people posted the status that started the same way hers did. I decided to click ‘read more’ and read the whole post:

 In response to the new Facebook guidelines I hereby declare that my copyright is attached to all of my personal details, illustrations, comics, paintings, professional photos and videos, etc. (as a result of the Berner Convention). For commercial use of the above my written consent is needed at all times!

 

(Anyone reading this can copy this text and paste it on their Facebook Wall. This will place
them under protection of copyright laws. By the present communiqué, I notify Facebook that it is strictly forbidden to disclose, copy, distribute, disseminate, or take any other action against me on the basis of this profile and/or its contents. The aforementioned prohibited actions also apply to employees, students, agents and/or any staff under Facebook’s direction or control. The content of this profile is private and confidential information. The violation of my privacy is punished by law (UCC 1 1-308-308 1-103 and the Rome Statute).

Facebook is now an open capital entity. All members are recommended to publish a notice like this, or if you prefer, you may copy and paste this version. If you do not publish a statement at least once, you will be tacitly allowing the use of elements such as your photos as well as the information contained in your profile status updates…

The post claims that anyone can copy this text and paste it on their Facebook wall, which forbids Facebook to “disclose, copy, distribute, or take any other action against [the user] on the basis of this profile and/or its contents.” It goes on to say that “Facebook is now an open capital entity,” and that all its members are “recommended to publish a notice like this.”

However, this ‘privacy notice’ that, as I saw when scrolling through my newsfeed, has been virally spreading on Facebook, which “supposedly” protects one’s personal details and data from unauthorized copying, is fake. The notice started spreading a few days after Facebook released its new privacy guidelines. What exactly changed? Well, until Wednesday, you had voting rights on Facebook (I didn’t even know that, and I’m sure not many people did). The site used to allow users to vote on the rules for how it treats your information and your privacy. However, because of a lack of voters, (in June, only 0.038% of Facebook’s population at the time voted on Facebook’s proposed two alternative versions of its statement of rights and responsibilities), Facebook decided that it would let users comment on proposed changes to the governing documents, but not vote. This notice resembles that of one that was virally spread in July, but both are untrue.

The purpose of this notice is that Facebook’s listing as a public traded company will have negative affects on its users’ privacy. However, this is not true. Facebook and its users are still bound “to the same terms and conditions that are accepted by users when they sign up for the service, and posting a legal talisman of this kind on your profile does nothing to change that.” Don’t be fooled.

Ever wonder why spammers have to use phony applications in order to spam from profiles? Why don’t they just make profiles and send friend requests to a crowd of people and post spam onto timelines and statuses? Why don’t spammers have greater success on Facebook? Facebook algorithms make it difficult for spammers to thrive on its platform with several strategies.

First of all, spammers have difficulty making profiles that both seem legitimate to Facebook and are good enough to attract friends. If spammers try to take the route of making profiles and then getting friends, the easiest strategy would be posing as celebrities. However, Facebook blocks against that. As a result, the only way to implement this method would be to use scripts to make profiles and include profile pictures and related information to make the account seem interesting enough for other people to want to friend.

If they get past that first barrier, spammers run into the difficulty of expanding from the initial wave of friend acceptances. As we’ve seen from Tiger Compliments (formerly Pton Compliments), if a profile sends a large number of requests within a short period of time, Facebook algorithms restrict the friending to only allow the profile to accept requests. By cutting off a spammer’s ability to explicitly solicit friend requests, this severely limits the spammer’s potential to gain more views.

Next, spammers run into difficulties while posting spam. If algorithms detect frequent posting by a profile, Facebook will force the user to solve captcha in order to continue posting. By requiring a user to solve these, Facebook significantly reduces the posting frequency by potential spammers, making the spammer’s scripts or copy/pasting more difficult. Of course, natural language processing software could help bypass this, but this is going a little far.

Let’s assume spammer profiles do end up capable of bypassing captchas. These posts generate such low like, share, and comment rates that algorithms don’t place these posts at the top of news feeds. If the spammer posts on people’s walls, then deleting would be prompt. Also, the “Report story or spam” option can be easily used.

As for spammers that use fake applications or videos to take control of accounts, Facebook and common sense both make success difficult. Unlike file sharing websites in which advertisers use fake download buttons to try to solicit clicks, users all know what the typical “like” and “comment” buttons look like. In addition, whether by past miscues or by observation of mistakes by friends, most know what fake videos and applications look like. Even if we don’t and fall prey to these, the “Report story or spam” button makes cleanup and damage control fairly simple. As a result, traditional spamming strategies do not work very well on Facebook, as many preventative measures have been taken to prevent such behavior. Only time will tell how spammers will get creative for future attacks.

In the digital age, the advancement of social technologies has facilitated the growth of many innovative and beneficial products. However, access to such a large number of resources demands a certain level of responsibility. Every Internet user runs the risk of having his or her privacy breached, but a more personal danger is that of cyberbullying. The prevalence of this relatively new phenomenon is supported by studies conducted throughout the world – in 2000, a study from the University of New Hampshire showed that around 6% of people under the age of 18 have been harassed online. Today, according to the i-SAFE foundation, this statistic is well over 50% – with roughly the same amount as the antagonist. A number of these adolescents are also victims of cyberthreats and online sexual harassment. Obviously, cyberbullying is a necessary evil that comes with the territory of social media, but how does it compare to traditional bullying? The argument can be made that this new form of harassment is more harmful than its physical counterpart. Two main reasons that support this claim are the use of anonymity and the nature of information posted on the Internet.

Perhaps the crux of why cyberbullying is so rampant is the existence of anonymity. The person typing hateful words or spreading vicious rumors is faceless and nameless. This incentivizes the bully because he or she can find it easier to express their dislike for another individual without suffering consequences. Conventionally, the so-called “bully in the playground” runs the risk of getting told on by the victim or being caught by an authority figure. A case study of how anonymity enables bullying is evidenced through the suicide of a Long Island teen in 2010 where hateful messages were posted through the site “formspring.me,” even after her death. Formspring allows users to ask questions or post comments anonymously on another person’s profile. When the victim receives hateful messages, they rarely have the options of retaliation or avoidance. Traditionally, one could go into the comfort of one’s home to avoid the physical or verbal assault from a bully at school. In modern times, walls do not hamper text messages, email, and online social media. Repeated instances of this can lead to extreme isolation and alienation.

Aside from the concept of anonymity, cyberbullying becomes much worse when the future consequences are considered. On the Internet, it is almost impossible to erase what has already been done. A post on Facebook or a text message can be deleted, but between the time it is posted and the time it is gone, a third party can come and screenshot the evidence and distribute it. When the bullying goes beyond simply the aggressor and the victim, the effects become magnified and therefore more harmful. This sort of “viral bullying” is conducted through means such as email forwarding and word-of-mouth. Incidentally, a case at Princeton where a chat between two individuals was forwarded through a variety of listservs is a testament to how damaging cyberbullying can be for one’s reputation. The spread of defamatory material is a difficult problem to address as once it has begun, as it is nearly impossible to identify the original antagonist and thus no disciplinary action can be filed.

Cyberbullying has drawn a lot of attention from the media, school administration, and left parents apprehensive towards social networking. And frankly it should. Cyberbullying is very hard to detect, hard to identify who the bully is, and when it is identified it’s hard to prevent further emotional attacks. There needs to be measures in place to stop this extreme harassment and further pain, but it becomes a very difficult task when parents can’t monitor everything there child does online and public school jurisdiction is limited by the constitution.  In class, I shared a story that affected my high school. Two students engaged in a verbal conflict on facebook via wall posts. As the fight escalated many people got involved while others were glued to their computer screens watching it all unfold. The next day the students confronted each other in the cafeteria and the fight accelerated into a physical altercation. Both students were sent to the office and were suspended. The following day a students who was a mutual friend of both parties was called into the office and asked to log onto facebook in order for the administration to further investigate this situation. The student proceeded with the request and allowed the teachers to examine each snarky rejoinder.

In this situation it was very clear that the school needed to get involved and take action. I believe that the administration handled it correctly in regards to the constitutionality of its actions. Because the physical alternation occurred on school grounds; they had jurisdiction to punish the students through suspension. In addition, I believe that asking another student to log in to their facebook account was valid. They were not requiring the student to log in or give them their password. The comments and cyberbullying was not through direct message but rather on a public forum for all of there friends to see. The metaphor of asking a person to open the door and looking out into their neighbor’s window I believe validates the actions that were taken. Schools have additional rights to ensure the safety of students learning environment, which further exemplifies that these proceedings needed to be taken.

When bullying or character attacks are geared towards children, their needs to be greater protection or more awareness than it would be for adults. Children are much more impressionable and more likely to make rash and permanent decisions. That’s why its important that parents and schools work together to combat the harsh reality of cyberbullying.

In the offline world, children bully each other in ways which are seen, such as physical violence, and ways which are mostly unseen, like gossip and verbal commentary. That the Internet, particularly its myriad social networking sites, have become increasingly significant extensions of childrens’ lives presents an opportunity in this field. What administrators could not do so effectively in the offline world, such as prevent verbal abuse and hate speech, they now theoretically have the technological capability to do in the age of social networking. However, the extent to which this newfound ability should be exerted must depend on the various pitfalls that can come about when government and schools have too strong a presence in people’s personal lives.
Cyberbullying is a completely different animal than regular bullying. The Internet, in many cases provides anonymity, and in others, provides the opportunity for plausible anonymity, making it more difficult to catch perpetrators and decreasing the deterrent effect that law enforcement usually provides due to the decreased probability of negative consequences. Furthermore, Facebook and Twitter’s unprecedented ubiquity and potentials for being platforms for dissemination to much higher numbers of the population of a child’s offline social networks can make the effects of cyberbullying much more emotionally and psychologically devastating than regular bullying. Lastly, the Internet can be used as a mechanism which facilitates offline bullying and violence; ranging from sex offenders and fraudulent scammers — obvious criminals from which the law already pushes very hard to protect children — to online marketers who target children and their parents’ credit cards. Therefore, not only does the technology of the Internet present an opportunity for administrators and the government to prevent many forms of violence done to children, it is also the case that a failure to act appropriately constitutes a significant problem in that very real dangers do exist on the Internet.
So what should be done? Clearly private schools and public schools have different standards based on public schools’ status as extensions of government, subject to the same Fourth Amendment restrictions as police. However, this is not to say that private schools should be able to do whatever they like and public schools are powerless to protect their students. One stance on this policy issue is that schools should have complete access to students’ Facebook accounts so as to be able to completely monitor activity. My view is that this would be misguided, as students would still find ways to bully each other online (new sites such as Formspring pop up every day), and the school would have such oversight over students’ lives that new, more restrictive norms would be created so as to limit childrens’ potential to be content in their social lives (see my post on government intrusiveness on Facebook). However, schools also should not adopt a completely laissez-faire attitude, as inaction, or even indeed action only after harm is done,  can and will lead to negative consequences. If you wait for something bad to happen, then surely something bad will happen. I advocate a middle of the road approach, focusing on preventative measures, while still allowing normal means of law enforcement (such as students themselves coming forward with evidence, and there needing to be something akin to a search warrant for schools to be able to have access to Facebook documents) to provide for the safety of children.

The Cyberbullying Epidemic

The concept of bullying has hit the internet. With the growing popularity of social networking sites such as Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr and Formspring, the concept of bullying has been re-imagined. Because the ability to interact with others has increased, teens are using these sites to anonymously harass classmates and take what would seem like  meaningless rumours viral. In this way, cyberbullying is most definitely a product of the internet.

With that said, I think that the effects of cyberbullying are more dangerous than the positives of having children on the internet. However, this afternoon I came across an article about how the effects of cyberbullying have been exacerbated. This is interesting to me but not far fetched. Over the last year the media’s portrayal of the effects of social networking on bullying has increased exponentially. From the well publicized Tyler Clementi case to cases of teens committing suicide due to their reputations being tarnished on the web, it’s no wonder that we all think we have an epidemic on our hands.

This could very well be because the definition of bullying on its own, without the internet is so broad that when the internet is brought in, the definition becomes even vaguer. In general people understand what cyberbullying is, but no one really knows how to define it. According to the stopbullying.gov website, cyberbullying is bullying that takes place on the internet and bullying in this case is defined as unwanted agressive behavior.

It’s hard to take this definition and transfer it seamlessly to the internet. This is mostly because bullies on the internet are hard to track, the behavior is hard to pinpoint because of the viral nature of information that is on the web. With all this said, I wonder about two questions: One, can cyberbullying be called an epidemic and two, can it be stopped?

While, I don’t have a concrete idea of what the answer could be, I have some ideas. I don’t think cyberbullying is an epidemic, I think that it is a problem that is probably greater than regular bullying but the attention it receives because it’s on the internet makes it seem much worse than it is. Second, it can be stopped. Just like schools, parents and the government have intervened with regular bullying, they can do the same with cyberbullying.

Coinciding with our in class discussion today on cyber bullying and laws to protect children online was the signing of a joint declaration between the European Union and the US Department of Homeland Security.  This declaration intends to work on online safety for children, and it announces that the two countries will make this a joint effort.  The European Union has always had stricter privacy laws regarding the Internet than the United States, so it does not surprise me that Homeland Security would want to partner with them in the campaign to protect young people who use the Internet.

Of course, the Internet is potentially the most difficult place to keep safe due to the relative anonymity of its users.  Traditionally, this meant predators could impersonate others; today, the roles are reversed.  While predators can still disguise their identities, children also have incentive to lie.  In an attempt to keep the young people safe, and in response to COPPA (Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act), many sites ask for the age of users.  However, with kids under thirteen able to lie about their age, website providers cannot tell which users are of age, and are consequently unable to properly protect them.

This perpetual cycle makes protecting kids on the Internet through laws nearly impossible.  This joint declaration proposes a different focus for online safety – through education.  Instead of imposing more stringent laws, it centers on educating both parents and children on Internet safety and risk awareness.  This approach ensures that when children do access sites (which they inevitably will, with or without a birthday check), they know how to properly use the website and avoid bad situations.  In February, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security will join in participating in the European Union’s Safer Internet Day for young people.

I think this approach will be most effective because it is the most practical.  If you tell children not to go on certain websites because they are not allowed or it is not safe, they will not know how to avoid hazards when they inevitably gain access to the site.  For example, studies show 38% of kids on Facebook are under the minimum age, so clearly rules are not stopping them.  However, if you acknowledge they will probably find ways onto the Internet and educate them so they can properly handle themselves, they will be able to maximize the potential (socially and educationally) of the Internet.

When I started to use Facebook about 5 years ago, there was no such thing called ‘Games’ in it. And just all of a sudden, I was spammed with feeds about FarmVille, Mafia Wars and MouseHunt on my News Feed. Despite being a little annoyed by the ceaseless and almost meaningless (at least to somebody who does not play the Game) posts, I was actually more intrigued by this whole list of ‘App Feeds’. Many people play games on Facebook not because of the actual contents of them, but rather the fact that they could interact with their friends (and possibly find new friends) by engaging in virtual cooperation and competition.

What is the difference between games on conventional gaming systems and games on Facebook and similar websites? Sony and Microsoft have both provided user-networking platforms on PS3 (PlayStation Platform) and XBox 360 (XBox LIVE), which are intended to give users the ‘social-networking experience’ while playing video games. However, their user counts are still dwarfed by the enormous 240 million of Zynga, the largest ‘social-networking game provider’. Taking into consideration the age of Zynga (founded in 2007) and the ages of XBox (first generation released in 2000) and Play Station (first generation released in the 1990s), we are even more amazed by the impact of social games on us users.

Most of the social games require very simple control methods, sometimes only a few clicks (exemplified by the game Cow Clicker). Instead of complaining about the lack of intellectual challenge compared to video games that usually involve complicated control systems and demand good body coordination, I believe such simple and ‘unintelligent’ gaming methods are exactly one of the reasons why people enjoy playing them so much. Sometimes people are so exhausted by tasks at work that they just need a simple way to relax. And a game that is player-friendly and at the same time helps one interact with one’s social circle could be the best choice. Without the trouble to figure out the proper way of playing the game, players could dive into the gaming environment almost instantly. That is why thousands of users are drawn to Cow Clicker and remain enthusiastic in this game despite it being somewhat ‘dumb’.

Having said that, many social games are actually not as ‘unintelligent’ as they appear to be. In order to obtain higher scores in a social game, there are certain strategies which need to be employed. These strategies deal not just with the mechanism of the games themselves, but often involve theories in human psychology and behavioral studies as well. The social games could be simple to play, but since people who are playing them can display complicated and unpredictable behaviors, the resultant interaction can provide profound knowledge on our insight of the human mind.

Moreover, the different intentions with which people play conventional video games and social games also influence the rapid user growth rate of social games. When we play games on PS3 and XBox 360, our primary intention is to explore the content of the games themselves. The part of ‘interacting with friends’ usually comes after that. However, when we open Mafia Wars or FarmVille, we are trying to use the tools in the game to compete with our friends online. So our top priority is social interaction instead of solely game-playing. And that means we will try our best to involve our friends (interact with their characters, obtain higher scores than they have, or post feeds on their wall) in the games. As a result, one user’s action could trigger multiple responses from many other users. This nearly exponential rate of user involvement in social games plays a significant role in the rapid growth of firms like Zynga, and is the primary factor that distinguishes social games from normal video games.

Social games have become so integrated into Facebook that they are now an indispensable part of our ‘social-networking experience’. Leaving the positive and negative influences of such experiences aside, I am more interested in the fact that firms are now connecting fields (gaming, music, news) that were not associated with social networking in the past to websites like Facebook and Google+ so as to enrich our online interactions. The list of fields associated with social-networking sites is constantly increasing and hopefully, one day our social life online could be as colorful as our daily life (or is it already more colorful than our daily life?).

Expressing the opinion of the court in the U.S. Supreme Court Case Reno v. ACLU (1997), which struck down key provisions of the Communications Decency Act (CDA), Justice John Paul Stevens wrote the following:

In order to deny minors access to potentially harmful speech, the CDA effectively suppresses a large amount of speech that adults have a constitutional right to receive and to address to one another. That burden on adult speech is unacceptable…

In this landmark decision, the Court aligned itself with the ACLU’s vision for an uncensored Internet, a free speech zone endowed with the same First Amendment protections given to “old media.” The battles over free speech today, though, are still characterized by evolving precedents and unsettled grey areas. The global community that witnessed Reno v. ACLU could not have anticipated the complications resulting from Internet intermediaries’ role in allowing – or restricting – free speech.

In this post, I will examine recent incidents involving free speech on Facebook and Twitter. They are listed here chronologically.

It may be helpful to remember that both Facebook and Twitter do have the general authority to take down posted content. States Facebook: “We can remove any content or information you post on Facebook if we believe that it violates [our Terms of Service] or our policies.” Likewise, Twitter makes clear: “We reserve the right at all times (but will not have an obligation) to remove or refuse to distribute any Content on the Services.”

• (November 2012) In India (on Sunday!), two women were arrested — one for posting a Facebook status criticizing the city of Mumbai for its citywide lockdown after the death of controversial politician Bal Thackeray, and the other for liking her status. The status was as follows: “People like Thackeray are born and die daily and one should not observe a [shutdown] for that. … Respect is earned, not given and definitely not forced.” The piece of law cited was India’s Information Technology Act of 2000, a code that Internet rights activists rally against. Note here that a Facebook “like” was considered a significant act of speech, unlike in the January 2012 case in Virginia below. Significantly, India is the world’s largest democracy, and precedents like the one established here are just as significant as others from the international community. ^{1 2}
• (November 2012) In Israel, the Israeli Defense Force has been using Twitter and Facebook as strategic propaganda tools in its ongoing campaign against Hamas. Of note is a tweet from last Wednesday: “We recommend that no Hamas operatives … show their faces above ground in the days ahead.” It is questionable whether this tweet violates Twitter’s rules, which do not permit users to “publish or post direct, specific threats of violence against others.” Most of the IDF’s tweets fall within the bounds of standard news reporting, but some bring into question whether global policy is an exempt area within Twitter’s terms of service. Nonetheless, Twitter has not taken action yet. ^{3 4}
• (November 2012) In Britain, Adrian Smith had his salary halved and his rank stripped by the housing trust firm he works for after posting on Facebook that gay marriage was “an equality too far.” His company claimed that by listing it as his employer on Facebook, Smith was posting as a representative of the company. A high court in London, however, defended Smith’s post, characterizing its decision as “a necessary price to be paid for freedom of speech.” ⁵
• (October 2012) In Britain, Azhar Ahmed was fined and sentenced to two years of community service for posting on Facebook, “all soldiers should die and go to hell.” The piece of law used to justify the sentencing was Section 127 of Britain’s Communications Act of 2003, the oft-criticized cornerstone of British media regulation that outlaws “grossly offensive” messages. Interestingly, according to Section 127, those who are offended by the message in question need not be the recipients of the message. ^{6 7 8}
• (October 2012) In Germany, Twitter decided to selectively block content from the feed of the neo-Nazi group Better Hannover in response to a takedown request from Germany on grounds of hate speech and anti-democratic propaganda. This is the first time Twitter has used its authority to selectively withhold content. The feed, however, is still visible in the United States and other countries. ⁹
• (October 2012) In Britain, Matthew Woods was sentenced to 12 weeks of jail for “sick and offensive” posts on Facebook about missing children April Jones and Madeleine McCann. Woods’s lawyer claimed the posts were written in a “moment of drunken stupidity,” but the sentencing judge saw the posts as “abhorrent” and “causing public outrage,” citing Section 127 as well. ^{10 11}
• (July 2012) In Britain, Paul Chambers was convicted (in 2010) for a public tweet of “menacing character” in which he joked in frustration that he would “blow an airport sky high” after realizing it was closed because of snow. Again, Section 127 was cited. He won his second appeal in July, however, and ultimately his tweet was protected in Britain’s High Court as an act of free speech. ¹²
• (January 2012) In Virginia, Daniel Ray Carter Jr. was fired from his job after “liking” the Facebook page of the candidate challenging Carter’s boss, a sheriff. Carter filed a lawsuit, but a U.S. District Court ruled that “liking” a page isn’t an “actual statement,” and is not protected under the First Amendment right to free speech. Facebook and the ACLU, as amici curiae, sided with Carter and together have appealed the decision. They compared the action of “liking” a status to other forms of protected free speech, such as wearing “a button on your shirt with a candidate’s name on it” (ACLU) or a displaying “a front-yard campaign sign” (Facebook). ¹³
• (March 2011) After previously stating that it wouldn’t remove a page called “Third Palestinian Intifada” in response to Israel’s request that the page be removed, Facebook reneged on its promise and pulled the page. At the time of removal, it had 350,000 “likes” and, according to Facebook, was actively posting “direct calls for violence” and “expressions of hate” by asking Palestinian Arabs to rise up against Israel on May 15, 2011. ¹⁴

A recent study conducted by the National Restaurant Association found that more than 95% of restaurant owners said that they will be on Facebook within two years. This is smart, considering this is the place where most of their consumers are. Facebook recently announced in September that it reached the 1 billion-user milestone.

The food and beverage industry is a major component on the social network, as there are about 187 million consumer restaurant brand “likes.” In addition to promotions, some restaurants have gone the extra step and have decided to incorporate food-ordering abilities directly from their fan page. This allows Facebook members to order a meal without ever having to leave the site. Some companies that have jumped into the Facebook online integration game include ChowNow, NetWaiter, and ONOSYS.

While it may be too early to see whether this service is beneficial or not, a restaurant in Charleston, S.C., The Taco Spot, has already experienced a ten percent lift in digital orders since it implemented the new feature. The restaurant’s owner, Lindsey Collier, said, “Not only does Facebook ordering channel provide convenience for socially networked customers, it has also helped the restaurant fill more orders, faster.” Chris Webb, the CEO and founder of ChowNow, said that in addition to speed, another benefit of being able to order food on Facebook is that is “levels the playing field for smaller chains.” I agree. Regardless of a restaurants size or budget, every restaurant’s Facebook page looks the same. This helps independent restaurants and smaller chains compete with bigger, national chains. Another benefit of having a Facebook ordering platform? It speeds up the process, and in today’s society, time is so valuable. The convenience it creates is a great return for customers. Because people are on Facebook all day long, they are able to order directly from the site instead of going to the restaurant’s website. This makes the process one click faster, which people will fully appreciate. Another obvious advantage is the potential for increased sales.

Although there are benefits to the Facebook ordering platform, the concept is still new and untouched by many – for now. A recent study conducted by the Cornell University Center for Hospitality Research found that the top fast casual and quick-service chains have moved forward with online ordering, but not on Facebook. Philip Laque, one of the authors of the study, said, “Although almost every chain is on Facebook, we found only about three percent allowed ordering through Facebook. On the other hand, electronic ordering is not for every chain. We found virtually no online ordering possibility for fine dining restaurants.”

Beyond these facts, however, the researchers saw a heavy preference toward electronic ordering, mainly with younger restaurant customers. Because of the growing consumer base and its increasing influence in the foodservice industry, Facebook’s ordering app might grow rapidly. I believe this new tool does have the potential to grow quickly. Restaurants want to build an online presence where most people are, and Facebook is the obvious answer. If restaurants add the convenience of Facebook ordering, it is an added advantage and an opportunity to gain more customers.

This is just one more way that Facebook is integrating into all aspects of society.