(Group 5)-- Andrew,Kevin,Thomas

This is the page for the group project of Andrew, Kevin & Thomas

Group

 * Kevin
 * Andrew

Issue with Technology
About Facebook and how its use effects people positively and negatively

What is Facebook
Facebook is a social networking which major purpose is to allow people to very simply keep track of and communicate with people they know. It lets people search for each other online and become online friends. This can be an extremely useful tool to allow people to reconnect with people that they have lost contact with over the years, as well as allowing students to stay in touch after graduation when their lives take them in different directions. Facebook is the second largest social network behind MySpace and is arguably the quickest growing internet community today. Facebook was originally restricted to students, but is now open to anyone with a valid e-mail address. Facebook is very easy to join, all a person must do is log on to facebook.com and fill out a simple form. The site allows people to create their own profile page where they can post information about them selves. People can share photos and videos online and communication is made simple through public wall posts that are displayed on the persons profile page, as well as private messages between people. Facebook currently has over 30 million users.

History of Facebook
Mark Zuckerberg Launched the original Facebook site on February 4th 2004 while attending Harvard university. It was originally called The Facebook. Zuckerberg got the idea for Facebook from a Physical paper book that was passed around his highschool as a way for students to get to know their class mates better. Zuckerberg essentially took this idea and introduced it to the internet. At first it was only available to Harvard students, and it was hugely successful as half the student body at Harvard had signed up within the first two weeks of the sites launch. As students from other schools started to demand a network of their own Zuckerberg set to work expanding Facebook and was able to add 2 more college networks, Yale and Stanford. Zuckerberg then sought out the help of 2 of his classmates, Chris Hughes and Dustin Moskovitz, with their help Facebook was able to have over 30 college social networks within 4 months. Zuckerberg and Moskovitz dropped out of school in order to focus all of their time on developing and expanding Facebook. Zuckerberg and Moskovitz changed the name from The Facebook to Facebook in August 2005, when they purchased the domain facebook.com for $200 000. A Facebook continued to grow and receive funding it became available to more and more people. In september of 2005 Facebook became available to high school students as well, and soon after that the photo sharing feature was installed increasing it's popularity even more. Facebook them moved on to work networks, and finally in september of 2006 Facebook became available to anyone with an e-mail address. Facebook currently has over 30 Million members, the target audience continues to be students, but there is a growing member base among professionals. There have been offers made to buy Facebook in excess of $2 000 000 000, Zuckerberg has refused and remains the owner.

Features
Facebook incorporates several features into their website which make the sites use more diverse and fun for users.

News Feed: The News Feed is a sort of home page for Facebook, that is different from an individual persons profile page. The News Feed is constantly being updated and it allows the user to see the different Facebook activities their friends have been up to lately. Information that commonly appears on the News Feed typically includes wall conversations between a persons friends, status updates, upcoming birthdays and events, relationship updates, and profile changes.

Status Updates: Facebook users have to option to include on their profile a short description of what their current thoughts, actions, locations, etc are. The status originally was required to start with " persons name is..." and the user was free to then type in whatever they saw fit. SOme people found this restricting of their ability to update their status exactly how they wanted to, so on December 13th 2007 Facebook removed the requirement of the word "is" appearing after the persons name. Status update are one of many ways for people to communicate with their friends on Facebook.

Wall Post: Each individual personal profile has a space ( the wall) where friends of that person can post messages. The next time taht person logs on they will be notified that a friend of theirs has written on their wall, they can then check thier profile to read the post. A persons wall is visible to all of that persons friends so Wall Posts are not typically used for private conversations.

Photos: Facebook’s photo features acts as a seemingly limitless online photo album, where users are free to post up to 60 pictures per album with no limit on the number of albums each user may have. The photo feature allows users to see and tag, identify themselves in the picture and save it to their profile, pictures. It has over 1.7 billion photos with 160 terabytes of storage already used on photos, and 60 terabytes already readily available, it doesn’t seem like they’re running out of storage space any time soon.( http://blog.facebook.com/blog.php?post=2406207130)

Messaging: Facebook allows people to communicate to each other in the form of private messages that are only viewable to the sender and the receiver. This is very similar to e-mail and is usefull to allow people to communicate without having other people able to view the conversation.

Events: The events feature on Facebook allows users to organize events and let anyone they choose to know about it by filling out a selected number of fields; Event Name, Tagline, Host Name, Event Type, Start time, End time, Location and status of the party (secret, open, closed). After filling in these fields you must select the people that you choose to invite from your friends list. Once an event is created the people you invited are free to invite other people to the event you created, assuming it is open.

Chat: Facebook Chat was introduced officialy on April 3rd 2008, it allows users to have one on one instant messaging conversations with friends that are currently online. Facebook gives the user a list of their friends that are currently online, and the user is able to select who if anyone they wish to engage in a Facebook Chat conversation

Positives
-Easy to register. Facebook now allows anyone with a valid e-mail address to register for its services there is a simple form to fill out, and once you submit the form you are ready to ‘Facebook’.

-Good way to get back in touch with old friends. Because Facebook is so widespread it is likely that whoever you may be searching for has a Facebook account and can be contacted with ease.

-Easy access Photo Album. Rather than the traditional photo album, Facebook allows members to store their Photo Albums online, making them very easy to access. This feature on Facebook also allows you to see other ‘Friends’ pictures and to save them to your photo album if you so desire.

-Event Planning Facebook presents a new-age way of planning events, it is simple to organize events and even easier to invite everyone you know. Planning an event on Facebook is faster than talking or sending written invitations and it allows for more detail with less work than sending the same information through e-mail. An event that would take several hours or days to organize by traditional methods can be done in a couple minutes with the click of a mouse and facebook’s help. When organizing an event through Facebook everything is laid out and ready to be filled in. Once an event is established Facebook allows for correction, whereas e-mail and written invitations do not.

Negatives/Concerns
-	 '''Facebook has recently stricken an advertising deal with a Credit Card company, Morgan Chase. In exchange for funding, Facebook will promote the credit card. Users of the credit card will be offered “fraternity prizes” based on the amount of money they spend on the card. ''' Facebook is using its pull with College aged students unethically: students tend to be in debt to begin with, to lure them to extravagant spending through credit card use is unethical.

-	Facebook’s privacy policy allows them to share personal information of its users with third party companies. There have been cases where personal information from Facebook has been used inappropriately: Amy Polumbo, Miss New Jersey 2007, was forced to leave the Miss America pageant because of photos from her Facebook profile which were shared publicly.

-	 Facebook discourages certain types of social interaction. Rather than talking on the phone, it is easier to write a Facebook message or text message. Like everything verbal communication gets better with practice, with more people choosing the written route we can expect our verbal skills to worsen.

-       Loss of productivity. In Australia alone the time spent on Facebook could cost employers over $5 000 000 000 per year in productivity.( http://www.news.com.au/story/0,23599,22273758-2,00.html) The calculation is made on the assumption that there is an hour spent on Facebook, rather than working, within each Australian company during each working day.

-	Mark Zuckerberg was accused of stealing Facebook. While attending Harvard, Zuckerberg worked for another social networking site named ConnectU. Zuckerberg left ConnectU and started Facebook on his own. ConnectU filed a lawsuit alleging that Zuckerberg stole ConnectU’s source code, the case was dismissed.

Summary
As with most thing there are positives and negatives associated with Facebook as described the the" Positives" and "negatives" sections above. While there are certain dangers to the use of Facebook, it is clear that as long as a person has a reasonable understanding of these dangers, knows not to give out too much information, and not to be fooled by attempted scams. The positives of Facebook as a social tool and means of keeping track of and communicating with friends far out way the negatives.