College star makes deal with devil

Author: Andrew Chae

Last week national news broke that the social networking start-up Facebook.com was on the verge of a near billion-dollar sale. The official reports from the news wires published that Yahoo, out of a bidding group that also included the likes of Microsoft and Viacom, was close to completing the sale. In preparation for the possible sale, Facebook officially opened their site to the general public on Monday.

As a Middlebury student I was particularly intrigued by this news pondering the potential ramifications of such a change. Fighting off my initial desire to now cancel my profile before the onslaught of Levitra and Viagra spam e-mails pound my inbox, I decided to take time out of my day to reflect the road taken to the likely death of Facebook.com.

Creator Mark Zuckerberg's first social internet venture was actually not the Facebook. His very first creation was Coursematch.com that allowed students to readily check what classes their friends or perhaps their crushes were enrolled in.

After that was the most interesting idea of Facemash.com which was a website that had the lifespan of 4 hours before Harvard officials banned it from continuing. Facemash was a volatile idea of a picture rating website of students all around campus. (Imagine the simultaneous horror and delight of a website like that landing in Middlebury).

After Harvard disciplined Zuckerberg, he created Facebook and the famous success followed. The website exploded in popularity eventually spreading to every 2-4 year post-secondary educational institution in the nation. Zuckerberg took a leave of absence from Harvard shortly after he created Facebook, eventually confirming that he would never return.

Now 22 years of age, the Phillips Exeter Academy graduate has before him a deal that would most likely take care of all material worries for the rest of his life. But should he do it? All his failed adventures along with Facebook stayed consistently centered around the same noble concept of establishing a social arena for the modern student that has become increasingly isolated due to the constant rising demands of academia. Couldn't he just sell it for less than a billion just to maintain some semblance of original credibility?

The clear simple answer is hell no. I say cash it in for as much as you can get. The last threads of credibility have already been corrupted with the implementation of the news feeds and open public membership. If the website were to disappear tomorrow very few tears would be shed for the new future home of internet predators and 40 year-old molesters. The novelty of the site has long since passed. I say forget the Facebook. Move on to bigger and better things such as a NBA franchise or your own personal island. The possibilities are endless.

I hope he enjoys every penny of his winnings. I hope he enjoys the multi-million dollar house with the million dollar toys he'll eventually be getting. I look forward in seeing him live the new American dream of being featured in a future episode of MTV's Cribs. As for me, I'll be ending my Facebook career to avoid the eventual spam e-mails that will inevitably be sent. But every so often I will sit back and admire another legendary story of a college drop-out hitting it big as I sit frantically trying to finish another physics problem set.