Class Stuff – Ashley

Final Project!!!!

Ashley — Fri, 27 Jul 2007 15:59:33 +0000

I just wanted to say that I think everyone did an awesome job on their presentations last night!

Here is my project (the word document) :

Facebook

What is Facebook?

Facebook is a social networking website

It is described as a type of virtual yearbook

-The name of the site refers to the paper facebooks depicting members of the campus community that colleges and preparatory schools give to incoming students, faculty, and staff.

Creation

Created by Harvard students Mark Zuckerburg and Chris Hughes

…Timeline…

2004

Feb. 4 ~ Facebook was launched

– at first only available to Harvard students

-within 2 weeks half the student body joined; within one month, 2/3 of the

students were members.

April ~ expanded to other Boston area schools and all Ivy-League schools

Many individual universities were added in rapid succession by the end of the year

December ~ over 1 million users

2005

September ~ opened to high school students

October ~ expanded to most colleges in the US, Canada, and UK; also, the entire ITESM network in Mexico, University of Puerto Rico, & the University of Virgin Islands

Fall ~ over 5 million active users

December ~ universities in New Zealand & Australia were added -> 11,000,000 users worldwide

2006

June ~ opened to work networks

August ~ added universities in Germany & high schools in Isreal

September ~ “open registration” – anyone with a valid email address could join a regular network

2007

May ~ added a “Classifieds” feature (Facebook Marketplace)

May~ Facebook launched “The Platform” – a system enabling 3^rd party companies to integrate their services inside facebook user pages. At this time, 70 companies had already set up applications.

Applications

What is an application? – a program or group of programs designed for end-users (person who actually uses the product).

No longer will Facebook consider itself merely another social network. Instead it is becoming a technology platform on which anyone can build applications for social computing.

At first, only partner companies could create and launch applications to be downloaded and immediately used with account.

Now anyone can create an application by using this website:

http://developers.facebook.com/

Networks

Networks are a way to connect to people in your area

Three types of networks:

-School

-Geographic Region

-Place of Employment

Being a member of a network grants you permission to view most of the profiles in that network and join most of the groups

How Does Facebook Make its Money?

-mostly advertising and sponsorships

-local advertising businesses

-ad- placement alliance with Microsoft – will place banner-ads on the site until 2011

Statistics

24-million users (growing about 150,000 per day):

Users: Over 30 million

60% log in daily.

85% log in at least once a week

93% log in at least once a month.

Daily new user average: 150,000

Monthly new user average: 4 million

Page views: Over 15 billion per month (about 50 pages per user each day)

Searches: Over 500 million per month

Largest network: Toronto, CAN 1,023,085+

Traffic rank: 13^th worldwide (6th most trafficked site in the U.S. and gets more page views than eBay ~ says they are targeting Google next.

Photos: 1.7 billion (by far the number one photo site on the internet. )

According to Chris Hughes, spokesman for Facebook, “People spend an average of 19 minutes a day on Facebook.

References

www.facebook.com

http://money.cnn.com/2007/05/24/technology/facebook.fortune/index.htm?postversion=200 7052511

http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/115/open_features-hacker-dropout-ceo.html

http://www.techcrunch.com/2007/05/24/facebook-launches-facebook-platform-they-are-the-anti-myspace/

http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/facebook_grows_up.php

http://www.answers.com/topic/facebook

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facebook

Facebook Project

Ashley — Thu, 26 Jul 2007 21:25:16 +0000

If you have not added my facebook page to your friends, do it!

Don’t forget to add yourself to the group as well!

I am putting my notes and powerpoint presentation up on my projects page on the syllabus. (I tried to put the notes on here but it was too messy bc I wasn’t uploading it right, haha).

ps~I’m sad that tonight is our last class – I’ve really enjoyed it!

Web 2.0

Ashley — Tue, 24 Jul 2007 03:29:59 +0000

Tonight we watched the CNN/YouTube democratic debate. I thought it was a great way for major issues to be addressed on a more personal level. A problem with that type of questioning is that while the people who submitted questions had time to prepare their questions and videos, the candidates did not have that same time to formulate their answers (although I am sure they spent much time preparing answers to possible questions). However, I think that one of the points of the debate is for the candidates to show that they are able to think quickly and come up with satisfactory answers under pressure while presenting themselves as a proficient public speaker, since public speaking is a necessary component of the presidential job description. I feel that sending in questions via YouTube is an eye-opener for people who have not before considered how much the internet is an important part of our lives. Before I took this class, I never really appreciated how things like blogs, YouTube, RSS feeds, or sites like del.icio.us were important in everyday life; I really only used them when I was playing around on the internet or sending videos & links to friends. Now, most websites have RSS feeds, del.icio.us tags, and links to include the articles/videos/pictures into blogs, myspace, facebook, etc. This presidential debate on CNN tonight integrated YouTube, which I think is a major turning point for people who have not yet or fully understood how significant web 2.0 is becoming in our lives today.

Facebook continued…

Ashley — Mon, 16 Jul 2007 21:46:46 +0000

I am going to make a facebook page for the class as part of my project (in addition to a powerpoint with information about facebook). I have finally decided! I was thinking about all the neat things that I can add to it, since there are a million and one applications for it now (music, graffiti, videos, gifts, quizzes, etc), and quotes, pictures, friends, groups, and blogs.

I’ll put a link up here when it’s finished so you can add it!

Tools

Ashley — Fri, 13 Jul 2007 01:41:35 +0000

Every tool represents a human purpose. In Immigrant, the cabinet is a major tool. It is programmed to have the ability to interact with humans. I think it represents a human purpose because it does pretty much everything a human can do so it is like a servant (but without negative connotations, since it was designed for that purpose). It has the ability to read what people are thinking so it can better serve them. It can talk and offer advice. In the story, it helps to connect and advise Bishop. I think the cabinet is fascinating because of everything it is capable of doing, especially because it acts as a sort of mirror, reflecting Bishop’s thoughts and ideas.

Facebook

Ashley — Tue, 10 Jul 2007 23:31:15 +0000

I am doing my final project on Facebook. I am trying to decide how to incorporate it into the class. I have two ideas so far: making a facebook page for the class or creating a facebook group. I’m not really sure what else. I am going to incorporate some of the applications on facebook, (there are 80-something now!) because there are some really cool ones. I’m trying to come up with other ideas too. I’m still brainstorming though – I am going to work on it a lot on Wednesday, since we don’t have class. I’ll post more about it later when I think of some new stuff!

Speech Recognition

Ashley — Wed, 04 Jul 2007 04:03:24 +0000

On my way home tonight, I remembered something that had to do with speech recognition, which I forgot to bring up in class. I work at a bank, and last Friday someone left a cell phone (I don’t know what kind it was – a Blackberry maybe? It seemed high-tech, anyway!). Well we called the last contact on the phone which happened to be the person’s roommate, and she said she would let him know where his phone was. The next morning when we opened the vault (where we had put the phone the night before for safekeeping with everything else), the phone started beeping. We thought it was a call or a message coming through so didn’t pay attention. But a few minutes later one of my co-workers was on her phone and the phone started beeping again and when she looked at it, it was recording! It was obviously voice-activated and was recording our conversations – it had even recorded some conversations of accounts being opened! Our first thoughts were that someone was casing out the bank, which is a really creepy thought! When my manager got there, however, she did not seem to think it was a big deal. I think it’s because she’s old and does not really know how to use a computer or any sort of new technology. So my question is, can people set cell phones to be voice-activated, or is there another trick to it? Do you have to download some kind of software or is it something that comes automatically programmed? I don’t know, it’s all very strange. Hmmm…

Oblique Strategies

Ashley — Tue, 03 Jul 2007 02:59:23 +0000

Oblique strategies is a deck of cards that you can look at when you’re in the middle of a problem and do not know how else to go about solving it. I found a neat website that had online oblique strategy cards that you can click through the cards. My favorite one was “repetition is a form of change.” I found this one particularly interesting because it can mean so many different things. For example, if the same sentence is used throughout a story, the sentence is obviously the same each time it is written, but the meaning also changes with each setting in which the sentence is used. And as Dr. C said on the subject tonight, “repetition is a change in changeability.” Another one I found on the site was “emphasize repetitions,” which is pretty much along the same lines as the other one, but it is still interesting to think about, because why would you do that? How does that help you solve the problem? These are some questions that the statements on the cards make you think about, which is great when you are stuck on a problem and trying to look at it in new ways and from all directions.

http://www.asahi-net.or.jp/~rf6t-tyfk/oblique.html

^ Thanks for the new link David!