Facebook is at once too closed and too open because the functions it serves require both openness and privacy. It is, like other social networks, trying to connect people, trying to let them introduce each other, communicate, share their thoughts and memories, and create a community. It needs to encourage openness to do this; it needs to provide members with a space where they can write and create and send messages to each other. At the same time, it seeks to protect the integrity of the groups and the communities that are formed within its boundaries. And to do this, it needs to keep the group’s transactions behind closed doors to provide, not so much secrecy, but privacy.

This is a dilemma that faces not only Facebook but educational applications in general. The closed nature of the learning management system is frequently defended on the ground that students need a safe environment where they can experiment without consequences. But at the same time, students may be more motivated to do well when they are required to present their work in public or to participate in the wider professional community. Students need groups, but they also need networks.

Stephen also pointed out as he concludes the article that:

… the nature and popularity of Facebook itself challenges the idea of what an educational application should look like. Facebook puts the social community first, with content—including, but not limited to, educational content—being the medium of exchange between them. Though the traditional learning management system will contain community features, such as a chat room or discussion area, it contrasts sharply with Facebook because it puts content first and structures interactions around the course, the textbook, or the professor.

I think Facebook, at its core, a social networking system. As a community, it’s self-emergent and totally bottom-up. Its educational benefit, if there is any, might be the by-product of social interaction. In many cases, students might prefer to keep control of their own social life and keep it separated from learning. How many students would like to  have social interaction with teachers watching? On the other hand, LMS or CMS has to put content first because it supports purposeful learning community. That is to say, the learning community created within CMS or LMS is usually top-down. Teachers use the online platform to deliver the content or extend the classroom teaching. I think it will be quiet difficult, if not impossible, for teachers to create an online space and let students to socialize, build bond, then see what they can learn.

Another thing about the Facebook is that it’s a personal social network system. While in a learning community, there is a natural boundary – class or cohort. So the social capital we can utilize is within this existing boundaries. And it’s comparatively transient since the class only lasted, normally, for 3 months.

Anyway, I guess the point I want to make is that I doubt that intentional learning community building should put relationship first. However, social interaction, both online and offline, is an important element to take into consideration when we build a learning community.

“Facebook isn’t intended as a venue to seek out new people, though certainly it’s possible…”.

However, Facebook is criticized for its closeness. What posted on Facebook can’t be googled. For someone people that’s a weakness; but for others, that’s exactly what attract them to Facebook. They don’t want everything they put on web to be searchable and public to everyone.

Also, Karp identify the main problem of social website as

“… the inability of the “social graph” on the web to capture the infinite variability of human relationships — and the limited nature of social applications, which don’t enable us to communicate and interact with each of the people we know in all the myriad and infinitely varied ways we do offline.”

One thing is sure, Facebook is not for everyone. And that’s is fine. As Jenkins (2006) maintained:

Compared to the one-size-fits-all diet of the boradcast networks, the coming media age would be a “feast of niches and specialties.”

What we can see is the emergence of various tools catering to different users and needs.