Facebook: What's Not to Like? - an Ira Basen documentary

Here are some startling figures to consider next time you click on Facebook:  there are 1.6 billion active users every month. 100 million hours of video watched and 300 million photos uploaded every day. $5.8 billion in revenue in the fourth quarter of 2015, an increase of more than 50% from the fourth quarter of 2014.

As users migrate in the millions away from desktops to phones and tablets, the 12-year-old social network has solidified its status as the colossus of the online world. And that colossus keeps on getting more colossal. This is the company that has changed the meaning of the word "like".

And there IS much to like about Mark Zuckerberg's creation. But the astonishing size and global power of the company comes with a price - for Facebook lovers and for people who have never spent a second inside its walls. 

Ira Basen pulls back the curtain on Facebook's phenomenal rise to global domination, and the surprising price we may all pay for it. Are these the dying days of the truly open web?

Ira's documentary is called "Facebook: What's Not to Like?" 

 ABOUT IRA:

Ira Basen is an award-winning CBC Radio producer, writer and university lecturer.

He was instrumental in the creation of three network programs; The Inside Track (1985), This Morning (1997), and Workology (2001). He produced the six-part series "Spin Cycles", about public relations and the media, and the two-part series "News 2.0", an exploration of news in the age of social media.

He has won numerous awards, including the Canadian Science Writers Association Award, the Canadian Nurses Association Award, the Gabriel Award, and the New York Radio Festivals Award.

Ira has developed several training programs for CBC journalists, including courses on documentary making, "spin", and journalism ethics, as well as a series of webinars on critical thinking.

In the fall of 2012, Ira was the CanWest Fellow in Media Studies at the University of Western Ontario, He is also on the faculty of the Masters in Communications Management program and the Bachelor of Professional Communication program at McMaster University. He also teaches at Ryerson University, and in the Media Studies program at the Scarborough Campus of the University of Toronto.

He is the co-author of the Canadian edition of The Book of Lists (Knopf Canada, 2005).