1. What do you think are the two most influential factors that have contributed to Facebook's success today? Reflect on the impact (both positive and negative) that Facebook or any other social networking tool has on your daily life in relation to these two factors. For each factor, provide at least one appropriate example to support your answer.
Facebook's creator Mark Zuckerburg understood how people like to find out what’s going on in another person’s life. Many people like to check one another out to see who's interested, who’s available, what’s trendy among their friends etc. He made use of these traits and created this social networking site called facebook. What made it more successful than the other social networking sites is its interactivity functions between friends. He was constantly adding in more features to the site. Features that allow users to find out a lot of personal information about a friend or someone they might be interested in without having to ask an awkward question.
One very minor but, I feel, very influential factor was how it first started. Mark Zuckerburg first sent facebook out through random faculty email to students in Harvard. He made use of them to spread the word and soon friends sent to friends, and it goes on and on. Assuming if he had decided to start with his friends, the spread of the site might not have been as great as it is now.
Social networking tools has impact life is so many ways that I can’t find a word to describe it. Firstly, social networking sites have made the web an even less private place. Initially when blogs started, people had concerns with privacy issues. Saying that blogs are like diaries and that they can feel free to say anything they want. But WWW is has no such rules against privacy. So what most people do is, privatise their blogs. Now with social networking sites, even though you can privatize your accounts and profile, anyone else with good inference skills can still know what you did last weds, what is your favourite type of music, who do you hang around with, what is your character like through your friend’s profiles that aren’t privatize.
Say you and a group of friends went out for an entire day all of you had the time of your lives. You took when shopping, watched a harry potter, took many pictures and met another friend along the streets. Then these all gets translated on facebook. One friend updates her status saying “harry potter was great but @XXX didn’t like it. We should be more shopping though! @XOOX. OH! And it was nice seeing @XVOX and BF!:D”. Another uploads pictures and tags everyone. Your facebook page might be restricted to first degree friends only, but if the 2 friend you went out with and the friend you met on the street did not private their profiles, what you did that day would still be revealed. It crazy how these platforms have reach millions of people and how information are being exchanged among friends and marketers without them even realising!
2. The movie focuses a lot on ethical issues and responsible use of social networking tools. Briefly describe any one example of unethical/ irresponsible use of Facebook in the movie and discuss your views on it. Provide one example of how you can engage an online community ethically on any one social networking tool of your choice.
I can’t exactly remember the movie since it was a week ago and honestly my memories when it comes to movies is very, very bad. The only thing I remember Mark Zuckerburg did in the movie that was unethical was posting one of his assignments on Facebook and asking people to comment and discuss about the picture so he can write a report about that art piece. Very clever I must say, but that shouldn’t be how people should use facebook. According to him in the movie, before he created thefacebook.com, he told his friend that it would be about “taking the entire social experience of collage and putting it online”(I watched the clip from the official website and quoted it:D). Social experience in collage isn’t exactly showing people your homework and asking them to comment about it when you are suppose to be the one doing it. If that is what social experience in school is, then I can just upload this two question on to my facebook and twitter accounts and get friends to talk about it and my journal would be finished!:D
Somewhere in the either the terms and conditions and or the privacy policies must have stated that users should not upload photos or videos that’s obscene or violent. One way to be ethical is to do as it says. The world wide web is surfed by many people of different ages from all over the world. Uploading videos that violates those terms is not responsible towards young children. The web is such an influential platform and young children tend to pick up from what they see. Obscenity and violence doesn’t help them at all.
The social network is an exaggerated version of what really happened before facebook. Though it might not be entirely true, it did explain how AWESOME and CRAZY and SCARY social connection are online. I felt that there were many grey areas as to who was really right and who was wrong. But it really taught and show me how powerful social networking can be. Overnight, facemash.com received 22000 hits. Over a short period of time, facebook reached continents out of US.
IN CONCLUSION, social media is INSANELY HUGE and if people don’t realise that, they should.
PS: I like Justin Timberlake as a singer better:D
Amanda Tan
DMC04
P0939845
:D
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