The Facebook Effect Analysis Pages 107-214

Thefacebook was expanding at an extraordinary rate. Zuckerberg befriended Sean Parker and the two of them began to create this internet sensation into a thriving business. They began talking to many companies all interested in investing in Thefacebook. Parker was the main negotiator and he put in a hard bargain. Parker and Zuckerberg were very interested in working with the Post and Zuckerberg developed a great admiration its CEO Donald Graham. The Post offered a very large investment in the company, but there was many other competitors. One in particular were the partners at Accel. Kevin Efrusy was a venture capitalist in training and he was directed by Jim Breyer, a partner at Accel, to find an up and coming social networking website in which they could invest. Efrusy put a tremendous amount of work into convincing Zuckerberg and Parker to take his deal. At this time they were much more interested in the offer by the Post, but Efrusy did not give up. He did whatever he could to help convince the two to take his offer. As Parker continually turned down Accel, the offers kept coming, each one considerably higher. Finally, Accel came down to an offer that Thefacebook could not refuse. Parker and Zuckerberg were extremely happy with the offer, but Mark was worried about his moral agreement with Graham. With Graham's blessing Zuckerberg decided to go with Accel as long as they agreed to a few minor changes. They wanted Breyer to join the board at Thefacebook and although Efrusy was somewhat offended since he did all the work, he understood. Accel and Thefacebook came to a final agreement and the company was able to expand with all the money Accel had invested. 

Now Thefacebook was in need of better equipment and a larger staff. They invested millions of dollars in servers to make the network run smoother and they needed to find engineers and other workers. Initially they had a very difficult time finding employees. Not many people were willing to work for a company that was run by a bunch of twenty-something year olds and especially with Sean Parker's reputation many people were hesitant. They even tried to convince people to drop out of school to come work for Thefacebook full time. Finally they found people interested in working with the popular and extremely successful company and the eventually had to move from their original location into a bigger space. 

Now they paid specific attention to the features of Thefacebook. They wanted to make it easy to upload new photos and share them with the rest of your social network. Finally they created a platform that was suitable for what they wanted it to do. Photo sharing was a major feature of Thefacebook website. Zuckerberg continually came up with new ideas that he wanted to add to the website and he wrote them all down in a small notebook. He wanted to create a Newsfeed and allow others to add applications to the site for others to use. The employees at Thefacebook were always adding new features and options to the site. They changed the website depending on the new trends of the world in order for it to not become obsolete. Thefacebook showed no signs of slowing down. 

It is incredible that in a few short years the company had expanded into a multi-million dollar enterprise. It  shows how anything is possible if a twenty year old drop-out can create such a successful business. None of this success came to them without a considerable amount of work. They were responsible in their work ethic and every moment was put to creating a better social network and business. Facebook continues to grow and as society changes so do the features of the website. Today, Facebook is just as popular as it was when it first started out and it shows no signs of becoming obsolete any time soon.  

Midterm Presentation Evaluation

Through our evaluations and analysis of the Cloning Wikipedia article we came to realize that this entry was not a very scholarly source. When we researched the information on our own the majority of it seemed to be accurate, but there is no way that this information could hold up in a college research paper or something along those lines. There is too much information that is missing or inaccurate and cannot fully be trusted without outside research. It may be a good idea to browse the citations on the article because they may lead you in the right direction. It can certainly be a good jumping off point.

Wikipedia though is very convenient and it is no wonder that it is the first resource many people view when looking up information. If you just want general knowledge for your own benefit then this is the perfect site to choose, but for all scholarly purposes it is quite flawed. I use Wikipedia for quick facts and information. I constantly use Wikipedia to catch up on Reality TV shows in case I missed them to find out who was eliminated.

Technology has a tremendous effect on our culture. Everything is made so convenient for us that now we have trouble going out of our way to do something. Everyone wants to use Wikipedia as a scholarly source even though we all know it is not, because it is the quickest and easiest tool to find information on whatever we are searching for. It is also amazing how there are so many people who are willing to continually update the material so we are constantly informed with recent news.

I learned that although Wikipedia is always my first stop when it comes to finding information, I must be wary about what I read on the site because I never know what is accurate or not. If I’m just looking for a basic knowledge of something, Wikipedia is a great resource. If the information I need is of grave importance, I might want to view some more scholarly material.

The Facebook Effect Analysis Pages 1-106

The Facebook Effect was by far my favorite book we read this year. It had a very interesting story line and kept me entertained the whole time. The beginning detailed Mark Zuckerberg early college life and experiences. It described him as being very technology oriented and could spend hours on end, without sleeping, designing and improving different programs and applications. He even got his room mates involved in his projects, brainstorming different ideas and writing them on the white board. Zuckerberg aimed to make life's tasks easy, convenient, and connected. He embodied this principle in the program he created, called Course Match, which allowed students to find out who was in their classes. From this idea he created Facemash. Facemash, although extremely popular, got Zuckerberg into quite a bit of trouble. Many people were extremely offended by a program that put Harvard students face-to-face, in a battle of looks. From these two ideas, Zuckerberg began to develop The Facebook. 
I went to see The Social Network and I found that the first half of the book pretty much followed the plot of the movie. There were only a few instances where additional people involved with the creation of Facebook were mentioned. The later half of the reading got very technical and swayed away from the movie, going into detail about all the business aspects of Facebook. There was a lot more information listed here then there was in the movie, due to the fact that the movie was strictly for entertainment purposes. 
It was odd reading about something that is so entrenched into my life and sometimes I forget there was even a time before Facebook. When these types of tools seem to come to us so naturally and with such ease, it is easy to forget how much work went into creating them. One harvard undergraduate student came up with a brilliant idea to connect people all over the world and has become a billionaire and a tremendous success.

Made to Break Analysis Page 186-281

The third part of Made to Break examines the importance of computer technology. The culture of society was changing due to advancements in computer programs and microchips. Products were being produced to include this new technology into toys and entertainment. Children's toys and other games were becoming more electronic. This technology lead way to the first video games. Earlier designs such as the pinball machine became widely popular and as technology improved, better interfaces and graphics were created for new and improved products. Eventually they were able to make these chips and hardware quite small and discrete. Nintendo used this technology to develop the Game Boy which became instantly popular amongst the world wide market. This hand-held device greatly threatened the arcades and home-systems due to its portability quite possibly making them obsolete. More and more new products are created each year and many people will go out and buy the latest technology even if their old system is still working. Slade describes this process as E-waste. Another product that greatly contributes to E-waste is cell phones. Every year so many fully functioning cell phones are discarded just because the consumer wants the newest features and designs. He states "Cell phones have now achieved the dubious distinction of having the shortest life cycle of any electronic consumer product in the country and their life span is still declining." (284). E-waste is quite a major issue. So many electronics are so often forgotten, not due to their lack of functionality, but because they do not contain the new and improved programming introduced on the market. It is expensive to disassemble these products to recover usable parts and some of these electronics are so small that they can easily just be thrown in the trash to be lost in landfills. Overall, with so many new advancements in this field of electronic devices and technology, the old products become obsolete as we as consumers are always searching for the next thing.