Loralei Hurlock
Lit & Media Studies
Extra Credit
11.17.10
Lit & Media Studies
Extra Credit
11.17.10
I decided to analyze the largest social network of the internet, Facebook. Facebook, according to a study done in January 2009 compete.com, is the largest social network with more than 500 million users as of July 2010. The crazy part of it all is that Facebook was only launched in February of 2004. That's 6 years of time for it to become so popular, but it makes me wonder what happened for this website to get so large so rapidly.
Facebook was founded by Mark Zuckerberg, with the help his roommates and fellow computer science students. Initially, Facebook was limited to Harvard students and then spread to other colleges in the Boston area such as the Ivy League and Standford University. After a while, it opened up for high school students and eventually it became a website for anyone over the age of 13 to join. Facebook has the most worldwide active monthly users, followed by Myspace.
Facebook, employing over 1,400 people and having 8 offices, gathers most of their revenue through advertising, which is another unique thing about Facebook. It does not bombard you with advertisements, except for some on the sides, which pertain to your interests. Most people don't want to deal with pop ups and annoying ads, so Facebook dodged a big bullet with their easy to operate design. Facebook has also been banned in several countries and in most working environments, including schools, it has been banned due to it being so distracting.
Personally, I used to use Facebook. I knew people who had accounts and swore that I would one day give in and make an account. Unfortunately, they were correct, as I was trying to fight the media and the urge. But to be honest, the way it's presented and how easy it works, with all the options it allows you to have make it a lot better than Myspace. Even myspace realized that Facebook had a certain something that was attracting all of the users and began doing the little options you could do on Facebook, but not on Myspace. At the beginning, I would keep in contact with my friends and family back home in Toronto, Ontario in Canada after I moved, which was an easy way of having them close to me, although not physically. After it started becoming the new best social network, Facebook began to expand more so on the photo aspect, games, quizzes and the style of the entire site. It's now read like the paper, everyday, to a younger generation, yet even the adults have sprung an interest to this website. I can firmly say that my entire family on my dad's side has a facebook, which is a lovely way to keep in touch, but there are always consequences.
There used to be something called privacy. It's quite rare now and I almost am not sure if it exists anymore. For example, Twitter is a site where you can update what you're doing all of the time, which to be blunt, no one really cares what others are doing every ten minutes, so whats the need? We've glorified diminishing privacy and then complain we don't have any. All in all, I think Facebook will be the top social network for a good amount of time, unless we decide more privacy is a good thing.
Facebook was founded by Mark Zuckerberg, with the help his roommates and fellow computer science students. Initially, Facebook was limited to Harvard students and then spread to other colleges in the Boston area such as the Ivy League and Standford University. After a while, it opened up for high school students and eventually it became a website for anyone over the age of 13 to join. Facebook has the most worldwide active monthly users, followed by Myspace.
Facebook, employing over 1,400 people and having 8 offices, gathers most of their revenue through advertising, which is another unique thing about Facebook. It does not bombard you with advertisements, except for some on the sides, which pertain to your interests. Most people don't want to deal with pop ups and annoying ads, so Facebook dodged a big bullet with their easy to operate design. Facebook has also been banned in several countries and in most working environments, including schools, it has been banned due to it being so distracting.
Personally, I used to use Facebook. I knew people who had accounts and swore that I would one day give in and make an account. Unfortunately, they were correct, as I was trying to fight the media and the urge. But to be honest, the way it's presented and how easy it works, with all the options it allows you to have make it a lot better than Myspace. Even myspace realized that Facebook had a certain something that was attracting all of the users and began doing the little options you could do on Facebook, but not on Myspace. At the beginning, I would keep in contact with my friends and family back home in Toronto, Ontario in Canada after I moved, which was an easy way of having them close to me, although not physically. After it started becoming the new best social network, Facebook began to expand more so on the photo aspect, games, quizzes and the style of the entire site. It's now read like the paper, everyday, to a younger generation, yet even the adults have sprung an interest to this website. I can firmly say that my entire family on my dad's side has a facebook, which is a lovely way to keep in touch, but there are always consequences.
There used to be something called privacy. It's quite rare now and I almost am not sure if it exists anymore. For example, Twitter is a site where you can update what you're doing all of the time, which to be blunt, no one really cares what others are doing every ten minutes, so whats the need? We've glorified diminishing privacy and then complain we don't have any. All in all, I think Facebook will be the top social network for a good amount of time, unless we decide more privacy is a good thing.
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