Curious what your mom is doing on Saturday? Check your Dad's weekend photos? Poke Grandma?

In the near future, Facebook.com is going public, meaning anyone with a valid e-mail address can join the social network -- a change some students don't agree with.

"I don't like it because it feels like Facebook isn't what it was originally intended for --. a place for college kids to join and stalk each other," said Akash Sethi (junior-premedicine).

The social network, which was created as a haven for college students in 2002, recently allowed high school students and business organizations to join.

Now, Facebook will launch more than 500 regional networks globally for users to choose from, Melanie Deitch, director of marketing for Facebook, said.

Facebook had planned to open its doors to the general public last Monday, but after severe criticism of the news feed and mini-feed, the Web site decided to wait until a later date to invite the hordes of anxious preteens currently banned from the online realm.

Once the new service kicks off, the user will join a geographical network, such as Pittsburgh.

"Once you've made that choice [of a region], you can only change every couple months when you move," Facebook cofounder Chris Hughes said in a chat room press conference Sept. 14. "It's inflexible because we don't want users to jump around from region to region, but instead just choose the region that they actually live in."

New members will only be able to view profiles of other members who live in their same geographic location, unless students opt not to join a local network, Hughes said.

"Unless you're in a regional network on the site, you will notice no difference whatsoever to your Facebook," Hughes said. "Only the people in your networks will be able to see your profiles, and even those can be limited with your privacy settings."

Ryan Nelson (junior-environmental resource management) said opening up Facebook makes it akin to MySpace.com, another online social network.

"Having Facebook open only to college students is the one thing that separates it from MySpace," Nelson said.

But Hughes said the anticipated changes not only will improve the Web site for new and old clientele, but privacy concerns will be addressed.

"MySpace and Facebook are really different when you think about it," Hughes said. "Whereas they seem to be trying to be a media portal where you connect with a lot of people you don't know, we're aiming to be a social utility where you rebuild the real-life social networks that you already have."

There is no telling how large the Facebook community will grow once this remodeling takes place. Facebook, which has almost 10 million users, looks meek compared to the online city of MySpace, which currently has 109 million users, according to GigaOM.com, a technology weblog.

"I don't like it, but I think it's a smart move for Facebook, because it's obviously becoming a business just like MySpace did, so I think it was pretty much inevitable that they would open it to the public," Al Ryan (senior-journalism) said. "I think I will still use it for now, but once I graduate I'm definitely going to get rid of it."