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SURF’S UP

Wednesday, 2nd January 2008

The success of Facebook may be the talk of the town, says David Crow, but a number of serious competitors are catching up fast

Few deny that social networking sites – where users create personal web pages or “profiles” and interact with friends – are the big successes of Web 2.0. But despite a bumper 12 months, the narrative of Facebook’s rise to fame has always been undermined by whispers of doubt.

Some argue, not unconvincingly, that Mark Zuckerberg, the 23-year-old chief executive and founder, is too young and foolhardy to manage the company’s scorching growth rate; others say his decision to open the site up to non-college users and application developers has created an unwieldy monster that will eventually deter users. Last month, over 50,000 signed a petition against Facebook’s controversial Beacon marketing system – which gives advertisers access to the rich personal data on the site – causing the company to backtrack on important aspects of the scheme. It serves as a timely reminder of just how fickle the young, tech-savvy social networking crowd, dubbed the Facebook Generation, is.