【明報專訊】Who wants to live in a world without facebook? The social networking service, which launched its initial public offering (IPO, 初次公開發行股票) three years ago today, has become one of the indispensables (必需品) of many people's lives.

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◆1. Road to IPO

Facebook was created by Mark Zuckerberg (朱克伯格, as shown in picture), a Harvard student, and his classmates in 2004. Initially restricted to the use of Harvard students only, facebook was later expanded to other universities such as Stanford, Cornell and Yale, and ultimately the whole world.

Shares in facebook were trading higher and higher on the secondary market (私人二級市場) given its continued success, leading to rumours that the social network would ultimately go public. Facebook officially filed for an IPO in February 2012, and went public on 18 May 2012 with a peak market capitalisation of over US$104 billion.

◆2. The debates over facebook

Not only has facebook redefined the term "friendship", but it has also triggered a lot of debates.

˙Is facebook good for society?

We use facebook to catch up with our friends and find our old classmates we have long lost contact with, while businesses find it an excellent platform to target their products at some specific groups of customers. But there have been countless crimes linked to the site. In 2010, a US teenage girl called Phoebe Prince committed suicide after receiving abusive (辱罵的) text messages on her facebook wall.

Scams (詐騙), identity theft, defamation (誹謗) and harassment (騷擾) are among the most common crimes associated with facebook. A 2012 study found that a facebook crime was reported every 40 minutes. All this has led to doubts whether facebook is a force for good, despite the convenience it has brought users.

˙Has it become too powerful?

Facebook has been involved in a lot of controversies since its inception. In 2012, it conducted an "emotion experiment" by manipulating the news feeds of 689,003 people to see if the emotions conveyed through their news feeds impacted the emotion they went on to display through their own posts. The experiment led to severe criticism, with lawyers, internet activists and politicians describing it as "scandalous", "spooky" and "disturbing". Some people cite the incident as evidence of the immense power it wields. Furthermore, facebook has amassed a wealth of data from its users, which many believe could lead to serious consequences if used improperly.

˙Should facebook be free from restriction?

The use of facebook is banned in some countries and regions. It is blocked by the "Great Firewall" in mainland China. Despite Zuckerberg's efforts to enter the China market (he speaks Mandarin fluently and once showcased a collection of Chinese president Xi Jinping's speeches to a visiting Chinese official in his office), he has made little headway towards China's 1.3-billion population. Facebook is also censored in countries like Iran, Iraq and Syria.

˙Has facebook made privacy a thing of the past?

Modern people value privacy greatly but can seldom resist the urge to "check in" at a new location, post pictures of their meals and share their most personal feelings on facebook. Such information can be accessed not only by their friends but also by any nosy internet browser. There have been cases in which employers went to the facebook pages of people they had just interviewed, and decided not to hire some of them because of what they saw online.

People differ as to facebook's impact on privacy. Some believe that it is a nightmare to privacy, while others think that we have the freedom to choose what kind of information we want to put on our facebook pages, and that it is not an invasion of our privacy when someone accesses it.