Afterthoughts

I think I must be a pretty private person, because people tend to have all sorts of information on facebook about themselves, phone number, address, all sorts of information on what they like and what they do. However, at some point in the last few years, I decided to take all that information down. The most striking things that I notice are that
1. No one knows when my birthday is.
2. People tend not to know what year I am in school.

I suppose people tend to have their birthdays on facebook so everyone knows when to get them a present. I don't really feel like putting my birthday up because...well, I'm not really sure. It makes it more interesting. And I respect people more when they actually know my birthday. This is kind of a silly post, but I think it's an interesting observation.

Lindsay/Jay - Final Project

Questions:
1. How many facebook friends do you have?
We asked this question as a basis for the other qualitative questions that were brought up.

2. Do you have any friends that you have not met in person? If so, how many?
The prevalence of "e-friends" is increasing, and it is possible to be friends with someone that you don't necessarily know IRL (in real life), but we were curious as to the explanations of why people might add someone random, like Andrew Carnegy for instance.

3. How many people on your friends list have you only met once?
Facebook, and the Internet itself for that matter, facilitates relationships without the need for physical proximity. Many times, particularly in college, we might meet someone at a party or through another friend, and even though you might not become best of friends with them on this first encounter, you might want to get to know them better. Then the question of "when is it acceptable to add someone on facebook?" comes into play.

4. How many people on your friends list do you see less than once annually?
Similarly to the previous question, it's possible to have friends (maybe from high school or grade school) that you barely ever see at all but still want to stay in contact with.

5. How many friends do you have from the school you currently attend? Does this network have the largest amount of your friends in it?
We used this to create a ratio of how many people out of the total amount of friends were in their "main network", to see if the majority of their facebook friends came from the people that they interacted with on a daily basis.

6. What network has the second most amount of friends?
Generally, for people in college, this network tended to be their high school. It could also have been a regional network, as that overlaps with school networks.

7. Do you have any relatives on facebook?
This related to the idea of how we view facebook as a connection with our peers, and also our privacy (e.g. if our parents are on facebook, do we have them on the limited profile list?)

8. Do you friend everyone that requests you, even if you don't know them?
This question was asked to gauge responses to the Andrew Carnegy experiment.

9. How do you qualify someone who is "a facebook friend" v. "a real friend"?
This was our only qualitative question, and was asked because we wanted quotes about how we perceive e-friendships, and what the criteria must be met in order to be a real friend, or if one is even better than the other.

10. Do you have any friends that you met THROUGH facebook and not in real life?
We wanted to see how facebook/the internet actually facilitates real-life relationships on its own, without ever actually requiring two people to meet each other in person.

11/30 Journal by Justin

So how many of you actually got a legitimate amount of work done over break? I for one did not nearly get as much done as I previously had hoped. One thing that I can be proud of though is that I finished my SPCM project.
The tale of Andrew Carnegy has come to a close and this paper will most likely bring an end to me using the fake persona for anything other that trolling Facebook groups I disagree with wholeheartedly.
In other news, I am sure glad that The Onion never disappoints. If you don't know what The Onion is, please look it up.

Journal 11/29 Leehee

My views on Facebook are constantly changing. It is my belief that such technologies don't HAVE to consume our lives. We just need to place restrictions on our usage. By blocking my wall and photos (I believe they're blocked), people have to personally message me if they are interested in communicating. I think that the idea of the wall combined with the news feed is rather ridiculous. Why does everyone on my friends list and yours need to know that I said "happy thanksgiving" to you? The messages that people have been sending are much more personal and longer than wall comments have ever been. I believe that it's only natural for people to personalize e-mails versus public comments. The illusion of privacy helps.

This week, my brother had my cell phone for various reasons. I was, to an extent, completely cut off from people. First of all, it did me some good. Second, facebook chat really helped me communicate (sporadically) with individuals that I felt like speaking to. My facebook status helped me find a ride home (kinda). I was able to get the message out.

Basically, I'm finding many benefits to facebook...amidst the obvious flaws.

This week?

Is there a prompt? If so can you e-mail us what it is?

Terms of Use

I'm just going to post the absurd portions of the Terms of Use. They speak for themselves:

"whether or not you are a registered member of Facebook. We reserve the right, at our sole discretion, to change, modify, add, or delete portions of these Terms of Use at any time without further notice. If we do this, we will post the changes to these Terms of Use on this page and will indicate at the top of this page the date these terms were last revised. Your continued use of the Service or the Site after any such changes constitutes your acceptance of the new Terms of Use. If you do not agree to abide by these or any future Terms of Use, do not use or access (or continue to use or access) the Service or the Site. It is your responsibility to regularly check the Site to determine if there have been changes to these Terms of Use and to review such changes."


This one we violated:

"register for more than one User account, register for a User account on behalf of an individual other than yourself, or register for a User account on behalf of any group or entity;"


oops we did it again!


"impersonate any person or entity, or falsely state or otherwise misrepresent yourself, your age or your affiliation with any person or entity;"

How do they regulate this?

"You may not post, transmit, or share User Content on the Site or Service that you did not create or that you do not have permission to post. You understand and agree that the Company may, but is not obligated to, review the Site and may delete or remove (without notice) any Site Content or User Content in its sole discretion, for any reason or no reason, including User Content that in the sole judgment of the Company violates this Agreement or the Facebook Code of Conduct, or which might be offensive, illegal, or that might violate the rights, harm, or threaten the safety of users or others. You are solely responsible at your sole cost and expense for creating backup copies and replacing any User Content you post or store on the Site or provide to the Company. "


"By posting User Content to any part of the Site, you automatically grant, and you represent and warrant that you have the right to grant, to the Company an irrevocable, perpetual, non-exclusive, transferable, fully paid, worldwide license (with the right to sublicense) to use, copy, publicly perform, publicly display, reformat, translate, excerpt (in whole or in part) and distribute such User Content for any purpose, commercial, advertising, or otherwise, on or in connection with the Site or the promotion thereof, to prepare derivative works of, or incorporate into other works, such User Content, and to grant and authorize sublicenses of the foregoing."

Journal fri/sat/sun 11/14-17

I have had a slight (emphasis on slight) change of view in regards to facebook. Recently I have been getting more involved in my sorority. My sorority has three active members and four girls are trying to get it. The three actives (myself included) are all new. Last semester, the eight girls who were active members graduated. We were left the onus of sustaining the chapter. The beauty of this sorority is that the alumni and active chapters nationwide are very supportive and close-knit. Once I finally broke down and admitted that we needed help to one of the alumni that I was closer with, the entire sorority nationwide was activated to help us out. Something that is very important is the bonds that were made with other RSO's and chapters in the Greek system on this campus. These are ties that took a long time to develop and it would be a shame to lose. Facebook proved to be very helpful and dynamic this weekend. I received a flood of e-mails and invites from girls to events going on with these organizations that the alumni knew on this campus. With a few clicks, I was able to forward the invites to the four associates (the girls trying to get in). Furthermore, I was able to introduce myself to the presidents of these organizations with a few quick e-mails. The good qualities of facebook proved true for me this weekend.

Outline for Project

For my final project I will use the information I have gathered up until this point based on the fake Facebook persona also known as Andrew Carnegy. I will detail what exactly is was that I did to make such a "friendly" fraudulent account by using examples of messages sent to me and wall posts. I will then describe what I have learned throughout this ordeal: what this project taught me, the positives and/or negatives, and how I was enlightened.

Journal 10/13

No, really. 10/13. I'm concerned about the "legitimacy" of facebook relationships. This has to be one of the most confusing aspects of facebook-dom. When American society begins to adopt terms like "facebook official" ("The ultimate definition of a college relationship - when on one's facebook profile it says "In A Relationship" and your significant other's name." - urbandictionary.com), I know we're in trouble. I guess this opinion reflects upon my view that inferring someone's relationship status without having them explicitly state it is one of the biggest frustrations in the dating world. The fact that you can so publicly state that you're in a relationship, married, "in an open relationship", engaged, or otherwise with another facebook denizen just makes it more complicated. Usually when someone says that they're married to someone, you can assume that they a) are lying or b) just really like that person a lot. But which one? One of my friends is actually married and both she and her spouse have facebook accounts. A lot of people are in facebook relationships with people of the same gender; I asked my friends what they thought about this and they also said it was probably just a joke. But then that plays into heteronormativity. What if they really are in a relationship with someone of the same gender, but don't feel like putting their sexual preference on their profile? It's like real life - some people lie, and some people don't, but the fact that some people do means everyone could be. Unless you see evidence to otherwise.

Final Project

For my final project I am using the subjects of "friends" on FaceBook. Who really are your friends? Who have you never met? Who is on your friends list for networking purposes only? I will be comparing my own profile with my roommate's profile. I will compare factors such as people you know from high school, people you've never met, people you've only met once..etc. I will go through my profile and individually change the "how do you know this person" setting in order to get my answers. I will interview a couple other people and ask them questions about their "friends" on FaceBook. I will use all of the information I have gained and create a slideshow presentation for the class.

Journal 11/10

I went through my facebook account and deleted the people that i don't know. This class has really made me open my eyes about privacy because when you add others that you don't know, they have access to all your info. Its creepy that these strangers would be able to see all your info. I think its crazy that when you set your privacy level so that only friends can see your profile, i thought that it would be pretty safe and most people still think like this. But its not beause people are willing to add anyone and my fake profile showed me that. More than half of the people that i sent request to were willing to add a perfect stranger. This has made it really easy for people to stalk others and find out information about others. Its up to the users of this site to be careful and make sure that only their "real" friends get to see their information.

My project

For my project, I'd like to put together a presentation on sections of Facebook's "terms of use" and/or "privacy policy." After reading the article that you gave us, I'm interested to know/examine what I agreed to with the click of a button. I think that it would also be interesting to create a program about it or at least fliers to put up on the quad. These fliers would just have bullet notes that highlight the most absurd portions of what I find. They would be directly from the website. I think this would be an interesting way to really get the word out. I didn't realize how much is in those statements. How does that sound?

final project

So while I'm still trying to figure out the ramifications of my final project, there were two particular ideas that I had in mind. One was monitoring the number of people online at any given time (granted, users can edit settings for facebook Chat so that they never show up on it) and basically coming up with statistics about when people are most likely to be wasting time on facebook - the issue with this idea is that I'm not really sure how to connect it to any sort of bigger idea. I'm a sociology major, I just like collecting data! The other idea that I thought about was the effect of something like "Friends Club", a club in Allen that I created for people to get to know each other better. In terms of social networking, mySpace is more conducive than facebook to connecting to a wider audience in terms of people you don't actually know, and I think I can compare that in some way to "Friends Club". The first week of the club, nearly everyone that attended was someone I knew. I asked people to bring one new friend every week, and I'll keep track of how this expands my social network not only in real life, but on facebook too.

Reading that article: The Information We Collect

I don't remember what you said about this article, but I'm scared as hell. Is this article posted/published by facebook? Everything that they say that they're doing is backed up by how it affects us (the users). It's written in such a seemingly pleasant manner that covers up the scary truth. Everything that is ridiculous and obscene is followed by reasoning that is based on convenience, ease, or comfort of the users. The fact that facebook "reserves the right" to send notices to us about our account even though we have opted not to receive e-mails is daunting. They claim that a friend's e-mail can be removed from the database if requested...but where's the proof of that? The first part in the section about "sharing your information with third parties" seems to contradict what was written in the previous sections. "We share your information with third parties only in limited circumstances where we believe such sharing is 1) reasonably necessary to offer the service, 2) legally required or, 3) permitted by you"

All three of those "limited circumstances" are rather vague and ambiguous. I'd like to know who calls the shots on those decisions. I'd also like to be notified when such information of mine is being shared. Though, as we've discussed in class, I should expect all the information that I have provided online as potentially shared...right? What kind of "service" are they referring to?

The third bullet point is sheer bullshit. "We may use third parties to facilitate our business" what the hell? That is clearly stating that third parties will be used for the website's benefit.

The last line is the most haunting. Even "private" (emphasis on the quotations) messages "may become publicly available"

This is just scary...where did you get this article?

Journal...

My facebook profile is rather empty. I no longer receive the satisfaction of checking it. So I rarely do. Thus...and I hope this is fair...I have no reason to journal. When I go online, I only check my gmail...as of late. I have 278 friends as of now. I get very frustrated when I meet new people and they tell me..."find me on facebook okay?" I just want to yell at them. The superficiality of facebook is really getting to me. I mean...as Marx said (see previous post) our social existence really does give us consciousness. I just think that it's stupid. It's as stupid and ridiculous as the Greek system that so many people pride themselves on being part of and likewise berating. A friendship of substance will never contain facebook. I changed my name to Mia Matilda. Only a handful of people noticed...which merely proves my previous point (in some other post) about how there is this fantastical illusion that people care. Clearly, they don't. Skeptics will argue that "they" don't care about me individually, and claim that their friends would care and notice. So to all you skeptics...I say try it. See how many people e-mail you. Oh I also got rid of my wall. All my groups. It really is uplifting....almost empowering. I no longer think of how I'm doing based on what I would write in my facebook status. I've deleted most of my pictures. It's interesting.

Marx and Facebook...a post I made for my philosophy class

After rereading Marx’s article “A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy,” I started making some technological comparisons to today’s world; rather, I saw some connections to a largely used obsession. I may have read this article entirely wrong, but either way, it seems to fit within the descriptions given. “In the social production of their existence, men inevitably enter into definite relations, which are independent of their will, namely relations of production appropriate to a given stage in the development of their material forces of production” (73). In today’s society, a major element of our “social production” is facebook or other social networking sites. On these sites, we enter into various “definite relations,” and if we are to break these relations, it will greatly affect our social standing. By that I mean, if we were to delete a bunch of our “friends” on facebook, they will probably get a bit pissed (if they even realize). In addition, if I were to ignore my e-mail all of next week, I would create some problems for myself. This is partly because our society today relies so heavily on technology, but also because technological interfaces (facebook, email, etc) have replaced face-to-face and even voice (telephone) conversation. If I ignore e-mails, or just refuse to check them, people will be insulted. It is expected that I be very attentive to my e-mail. Part of this passage particularly caught my attention, “which are independent of their will.” It’s interesting that Marx made this statement because sometimes I feel chained to technology of sorts but especially facebook and e-mail. Networking online is essential in becoming who we are today. Whether it is facebook, email, aim, or texting, such networking and socializing is crucial to “the experience” of today’s youth/teens. Arguably, these relationships and the method in which they are carried out form who we are. “The totality of these relations of production constitutes the economic structure of society, the real foundations, on which arises a legal and political superstructure and to which correspond definite forms of social consciousness” (73). These social relationships (that all have some purpose or end which we strive for) compose/construct society as it stands today.

“It is not the consciousness of men that determines their existence, but their social existence that determines their consciousness” (74). If you ever take the time to peruse facebook you will see how true this statement is. Rather than our profiles being a reflection of who we are, we use them to construct our identity. What information we place online, it is believed, becomes us. In an age where youth are going through some testy teenage angst, internet personalities is the best form of expression. Within thirty minutes, a person’s identity can be changed. Have you ever found yourself thinking about yourself in regard to what your “status” might be on facebook? Perhaps you feel that every change you make on your profile, be it your status, profile pictures, or information, will be noticed by ALL of your friends. Facebook gives us consciousness in the sense that it makes us feel like the entire world revolves around us. Furthermore, there is this illusion that we are in control, and more importantly that we matter. Facebook also validates your every whim. Want to feel like a social butterfly? Check your wall…no comments? Write on someone else’s wall (write something that warrants a response, such as a compliment). Surely, within minutes, you’ll have a response. Want to play a board game? No one around? Hit up one of the applications like scrabble. Feeling shitty? Check your horoscope. Want to feel beautiful? Browse through your pictures and the comments people have left you…or even better, browse through everyone else’s arguably ugly ones…that’ll do the trick. You can also leave someone a comment on one of their pictures, and then they will surely respond to you. Hungry? Play food frenzy and save some cash. Horny? Message that hook up from last weekend…flirt with a hottie who you met yesterday (she just accepted your friend request…obviously she likes you…I mean you’re the best of friends now right?)You’re the best of friends…because you went one second from seeing just her picture (hoping you remembered the right name when you friend requested her) to now knowing various pieces of information ranging from what high school she attended to what her favorite musician is. Such information…once upon a time…was what you figured out when you really invested time in people…invested time to get to know them. Our generation is quite a lazy one. Prime example: not only do we have cell phones (rather than rotary or land lines) we have voice dial. Rather than spending time to get to know the intricate details of someone’s life…you have your work cut out for you. Memorize their profile…and hope it was real…better yet…hope that they’re really who they claim to be in that profile.

“At a certain stage of development, the material productive forces of society come into conflict with the existing relations of production” (74). I wonder if this will actually be the case in the near future as we finish college. Will such social networking sites have less of an impact? Will we “grow out” of the facebook stage and resort to more meaningful social interactions? Personally, when I got sick of myspace, I moved onto facebook. “No social order is ever destroyed before all the productive forces for which it is sufficient have been developed, and new superior relations of production never replace older ones before the material conditions for their existence have matured within the framework of the old society” (74). So facebook replaced Friendster and myspace, and arguably facebook is constantly revamping the interface and its capabilities. (Or rather its creators and moderators are constantly changing things around). Nothing is obsolete until it has sufficed to the utmost its capabilities/influence. Nothing is “razed to the ground” until something newer and better can take its place. What will be the facebook equivalent in years to come? It seems, at least where fashion is concerned, that we are resorting to a modernized version of vintage clothing from years past. Will we, as a society, revert to old forms of socialization and communication?

Journal 11/3 -Lindsay

Nothing has really changed in the world of Facebook for me. I did finally get my first to videos of myself posted. They were from Zombie Mob of course and someone had tagged me in them. Lately I've been using Facebook to spread the word of To Write Love on Her Arms. I am creating a TWLOHA RSO and in order to get the ball rolling I created a Facebook group for it too. I'm super stoked and I spent quite a while preparing the group before I made it public. I don't want the FB group to be just one of those where you join just to join and you never go back to that page ever. With my RSO we're going to be active spreading the word and fundraising for TWLOHA. I can't really begin to explain how excited I am to get this going. I've covered my page in stuff about To Write Love on Her Arms and I've gotten a few responses. Even touching one life is better than touching none at all. I've decided to get people's interest in the RSO by creating the group then I will further my action and elect officers and begin to plan events. All events and fundraisers will be posted on Facebook of course to help get the word out, but I will use the university email to address the group members about important topics, most likely.

Other than being overly excited about creating this group/RSO my FB experiences for the week have been normal. No mean messages on MySpace either! :)

i have no idea when the last time i posted was

I really wanted to address the idea of purging your friends list, or deleting people when you don't want to talk to them anymore. I know it means something else, but that's what the digital divide is to me. Modern society's reliance on technology has become inherent to the way we operate our every day lives, so much so that this era in history is "The Information Age". Computers have been around since the 40s. E-mail, the Internet, and PCs have been around since the 70s. The World Wide Web wasn't invented by AOL, people were already using it the year I was born. Now we have webcams, digital television, GPS cell-phones, satellite radio, all these various ways of connecting with each other that it's almost as if we're incapable of connecting on an interpersonal level anymore.

The point of all this is, there are a lot of people that actually get offended when you delete them on facebook. To my generation, this is the way we stay in touch with each other. This is the way we share information, because it's the easiest, most convenient, requires the least work. All I have to do to create a cultural revolution is make a facebook group. All I have to do to have a party is make a facebook event. I could create an entire fake identity without even changing my name, and people would completely believe it. I just don't know if this is the best way. I've had friends that I deleted on facebook that stopped calling me, stopped talking to me because they think that I'm mad at them. We joke that "you're not real friends until you're friends on facebook" or you're not really dating someone unless you're "facebook official", but these things reflect something about the way our society, our generation views social networking. They didn't come out of nowhere...

Journal 11/03 Gedion

Just like the previous week, this week I spent a good amount of time on facebook. I spent a lot of time on facebook this week not because I was board but because I found old pictures from last year on my computer that I wanted my friends to see and have and the easiest way to such things these days is through networking websites like facebook because it is faster, easier, and people can comment on the photos. So I started tagging all my friend who were in the pictures. I got a couple of funny comments right away from some of my friends who were online as I was uploading and tagging the pictures. After I read the comments, I chatted with them for a couple of minutes before I signed out. Something that was very interesting that happened this week on facebook was that I got this message forwarded to me from my friend Sam, telling me if I don’t send it to 15 people my facebook account will be shut down.
This is the message I got. But I took the risk and not responded because I figured it could be a prank.
Attention all Facebook members. Facebook is recently becoming very overpopulated,There have been many members complaining that Facebook is becoming very slow.Record shows that the reason is that there are too many non-active Facebook members And on the other side too many new Facebook members.We will be sending this messages around to see if the Members are active or not,If you're active please send to 15 other users using Copy+Paste to show that you are active Those who do not send this message within 2 weeks,The user will be deleted without hesitation to create more space,If Facebook is still overpopulated we kindly ask for donations but until then send this message to all your friends and make sure you send this message to show me that your active and not deleted.

Founder of Facebook
Mark Zuckerber

Journal 11/03

The trend continues, i have been showing less and less interest on facebook. Last year i would spend so much time and even earlier in this semester. Most of the time i simply check my email to see if there is any notifications and if they interest me then i sign in. Today i was tagged in a photo so i took a quick look and that was pretty much all i did. This makes me wonder whether facebook is a trend that became popular and will start dying down or if it will become more important as time continues to pass. Certainly with the internet reaching more and more people it has linked more and more poeple but its hard to tell whether it will continue to grow. Well at least for me, it dying down. I don't really spend time its simply just there in case i need it.

Journal...oh whatever date by Justin

So now that the apocalypse is finally over, the zombies have seemed to disappear...for now, and we all took an extra hour of sleep for granted, it is time to kick back into the habit of "caring" about school, sleep, and the country once again.
Numerous and possibly unprecedented amounts of photographs were taken this Halloween and while many have not yet surfaced to the world wide interwebz, I assure you, they will. So, with that in mind, I hope that none of you acted indecently and oblivious to the fact that companies, the university, and BIG BROTHER are indeed watching YOU. Yes, even FaceBook can be looked at by anyone and it seems just about everyone these days.
With the election only days away, even though I'm sure that most of us were willing and ready to vote about two whole months ago, be prepared to see the HYPEsters telling you that there candidate is so amazing and wonderful. Yup, even as the Outreach Director for the College Democrats, I feel like punching those crazy Obama supporters right in the head sometimes. Sorry, but if I hear the word "change" one more time, and it is not directly correlated with the monetary value I am receiving back in the transaction of filling up my car with gasoline, I might just put my foot up somebody's.....well you get the picture.
I'm not going to tell you who to vote for; I'm no dictator, nor am I some easily-convinced internet cruising, politico blogging, suburban kid who has a new-found hero for the first time in his/her whole life. Just vote. You get one chance every two years to vote; once every four for the general election. If you're eighteen, a citizen and resident, and not a convicted criminal just get out to the polls on Tuesday and take the hour or so to listen to your MP3 player while waiting in line and eventually...VOTE!
Oh yeah, and here's a message for FaceBook: now that you have whored yourself to any company willing to give you some dough for product placements and advertisements, you have officially turned into a confused fourteen year-old urban kid with low-self esteem and walked into the A&F/AE/UrbanOutfitters/HotTopic/etc. and have officially sold out. Congrats.

Journal 10/20-10/27 by Lindsay

   These past couple of weeks have been pretty boring as far as Facebook goes. Also, I've been really busy and haven't been able to spend a lot of time on Facebook. I've noticed though that when I leave FB open and leave the room or go to class someone always IMs me. I feel bad because they probably thought I was ignoring them. I think Facebook should allow you to set your IM status to 'away.' 

   Even though the majority of college students don't use Myspace anymore, I still do. I really enjoy posting bulletins with random videos, surveys, pictures and other things. Yesterday I posted a bulletin about Allen Hall's Zombie Mob that's coming up. I posted a video I found from last year's Zombie Mob and wrote in the bulletin "Jealous? You should be." It was meant to be funny and attract attention. A friend of mine from back home even responded and said how awesome the video looked and what not. A girl from my high school responded and simply said, "Lindsay...you're a fucking dumbass. See you on campus next year." I have no idea why I deserved a message like that and I'm not sure if that is some sort of threat. After reading that message I felt sick. Do people seriously have to act like that? If my bulletin offended you or was annoying I might be able to understand. I told my roommate and she said that even made her uncomfortable. For the following two hours I felt sick to my stomach and nervous about what could happen next. Before I could delete and block her from my Myspace she had already deleted me. This has made me want to re-evaluate my so called 'friends' on Facebook and especially Myspace. I've begun deleting people from my Myspace that I never talk to anymore and that aren't really my friends. It's pretty ridiculous how people can technically bully others through this form of communication. I didn't realize how bad it can really make you feel too. I could barely sleep last night because I kept thinking about that message. 

   From now on I'm going to really pay attention to my 'friends' on Facebook and Myspace. If they aren't really my friend I am going to delete them. 

Journal 10/27

Yesterday and the rest of the week i spent some time with the fake account just adding people and surprisingly almost everyone i added confirmed me. This just makes proves my point that the number of friends people have is quite irrelevant. Well, at first i thought that people would add those that they barely even knew and never talked to but they are also willing to add people they never heard of. Its crazy, how most of the people just added me and moved on. A few people did bother to ask how they knew me but that was actually quite rare. My imaginary character is now up to about forty. As for my account, i have been using it less and less of late. Last year i used it a lot more but i am just getting tired of facebook.

Journal 10/27 Gedion

This week was probably the week that I used facebook the least since the semester began. Some of my friends were mad at me for not responding to their messages, wall posts, and invitations. I barely logged on to my facebook account because when I got the notifications through my email, I was like whatever. I felt lazy to log in and respond to peoples messages. I guess one of the reasons I did not spend much time on facebook this week is because I was not as board as I was last week. For me personally, getting on facebook is one of those things I do when I have nothing better to do and I need to kill some time. The only time I logged on to facebook this week was on Sunday night for a couple of minutes to accept friendship request from an old friend and to clear my notifications. While I was online Danny Favela tried to chat with me but instead I ignored him, logged out and went to his room to chat in person!!!

Privacy prompt

Hey
Don't worry about the prompt for today. We are going to do an in-class writing assignment that will act as this weeks prompt. Please continue your "journal" per usual!

CLASS IS CANCELED TODAY

Today (Oct 20) class is canceled. Sorry for the last minute notification.

Prompt 10/20 Gedion

As I was reading this speech, I was thinking to myself, we are well past this vision Al Gore had and was talking about. In my opinion I think he did a great job of painting the future. Former vice president Al Gore mentioned that their plan was based on five principals saying,
“Our plan is based on five principles: First, encourage private
investment; Second, promote competition; Third, create a flexible
regulatory framework that can keep pace with rapid technological and
market changes; Fourth, provide open access to the network for all
information providers; and Fifth, ensure universal service.”
An example of this would be, currently we have private companies like Google and YouTube and an example of some of their competitors are yahoo and Microsoft and we have an agency like the FCC monitoring things.
It was a very realistic and achievable vision at the time because currently we have managed to accomplish almost everything he talked about in his speech and we have advance even more because now we have things like cell phones with videos, global positioning systems, email, internet connections, text messaging, chatting and cameras on them helping us share information instantly. Not only have we created some crazy information exchanging gadgets like the super cell phones, but we now have social networking websites like Facebook and MySpace. I think the existence of the social networking websites will assist us tremendously in sharing information and staying connected to a larger network of friends compared to a situation where we did not have social networking websites.

Journal 10/20 by Justin

So my fake persona has been racking up the friends lately. This past week was the first time I'd ever seen Facebook tell me that I was adding too many friends and that if I didn't slow down, I would be blocked. BLOCKED...bring it on FB!
I think that I will somehow use this fake persona in my course project, but I don't exactly know how yet.
Oh, I have also been checking my "wall" via the fake persona and residents of Allen have been asking me to put a "real" picture up, not just some photograph. While I have not done so yet, any suggestions? Also, I took the liberty of responding to a girl who wrote on the wall asking if I was a friend of another resident, since that it how we might "know" each other. So, I took the easy way and just replied yeah, and that was that. Any suggestions for a picture? I obviously don't want to use mine, but I think that it would be a breach of morality to use another resident's picture, plus that's just plain creepy. Any help here would be much appreciated.

Reaction to Article by Justin

While ignoring the fact that many claim Al Gore stated once before that he created the internet, I found this article to be inspiring for the times. He opens with Americanized ideals by quoting authors and then goes on to develop five reasons why the Global Information Infrastructure (GII) needs to be created. It is clear that with the creation if a more globalized interweb, competition has spiked. However, I now see the two main competitors, Google and Yahoo!, almost metaphorically fighting each other. Which one will be the new AT&T or MicroSoft? Regardless, will we, the consumers, have to break up another monopoly in the future?
Gore's speech, clearly not written by merely himself, is both realistic and rosy. It is realistic in the case that yes, it is possible to create such an infrastructure but when he speaks of a boost in healthcare, I feel that such a crucial aspect has yet to be reached. Sure, we may be closer to developing/finding a better treatment for AIDS, but we are probably not close in finding a cure for it; and no, $183,000 injected into your bloodstream will not cure you from AIDS (all you South Park viewers understand what I'm talking about).
The fact that former VP Gore addressed the ITU alomost 15 years ago goes to show how much America had invested in the internet. Since its conception as a tool of military use, the interwebs have greatly expanded and taken over. Honestly, could any of us go a month without using the internet? I think not.
Social networking probably helps the GII because more people are able to communicate to others they never would have met otherwise. Through the GII, individuals can meet over the internet and discover things they never could have found in a book or on television. While I don't read any with the exception of this one, blogs have come to the forefront as a news-leaking source. Sure, not all blogs are legitimate and many, if not all, are biased, but individuals can still communicate on a global scale, which, if I'm not mistaken, is the goal of the GII.

Gedion 10/19

This week was a crazy week because I kept on logging in and out of facebook randomly for no reason. Now that I think about it, I must have been really, really, bored. I would just log into facebook and then go through the profiles, wall posts and pictures of some of my good friends who live in Chicago just because I was board and had nothing better to do (I was basically stalking them). This week I spent more time on facebook compared to other weeks because, other than the stalking I did over the week, I had a couple of wall posts from some of my friends and I was also tagged in a picture. I was also added as a friend by some random people I had never met before. Since the people who requested my friendship never sent me any messages telling me where or how they met me, I just ignored their request for friendship. I also requested my friend Lins roommate Junping as a friend. But the thing that took the most time for me on facebook this week was that I chatted with a friend of mine from Chicago for more than an hour. She saw that I was online and started chatting with me then from there, we went on and on until I had to go down for dinner. That about summarizes my activity on facebook for the entire week. Oh, yeah I almost forgot to mention that I ignored a lot of invitations to events and clubs I am not even a part of or don’t want to be a part of.

Journal 10/19

I have been spending less and less time on facebook recently. Facebook has become something that I do when i have nothing to do on the internet or once in a while check and see if anything important happened. Recently, I have just spent more time away from the computer but i really have not missed facebook at all. Because i talk to my closest friends in person or text. I am not like some people, i can go without facebook for a while. You can keep up with people by checking every couple of days but people have been taking it to extreme when they are spending hours a day. I know my sister would do that for some time and i found it ridiculous that people would spend so much time in the computer. I think facebook is a great tool for keeping in touch but you cannot become so dependent on it.

Global Information Infrastructure prompt

For this week's prompt please read the following speech presented by Al Gore:

http://w2.eff.org/Infrastructure/Govt_docs/gii_gore_buenos_aires.speech

Please review your initial reactions about the speech. Do you think he has a valid point? Is it realistic or too rosy? How do you feel about our progress as a globe knowing this speech was delivered almost 15 years ago? Do you think that social networking helps or hinders a "global information infrastructure?"

If this concept interests you, feel free to find out more information at:
http://www.firstmonday.org/issues/issue5_8/borgman/#b12

Do note this is the first time all semester I have assigned reading and it is a speech - please spend the 20 minutes reading it and reflecting upon it as we will be discussing your reactions in class.

Journal 10/16 (quite a rant)

I'm getting so sick of facebook...and it's all your fault Rebecca! I defriended my ex two days ago because I was sick of my unrelenting stalking. I would stalk her profile to see who left her comments (figure out who they were if I could), see who she was talking to...what her status was...did it apply to me? I mean really, it's ridiculous. So I defriended her. Now I can't see her her wall, but I do still have access to her page. (so just the regular updates...status...and pictures) Though, this is better. I also found myself setting my status and making posts/changes to my profile/making comments on other people's pages with the thought in the back of my mind..that of course my ex would see this. The world revolves around me after all, right? WRONG! That is clearly the point. Facebook makes you feel so important...validates your every whim. Want to feel like someone cares? Check your wall...no comments? Write on someone elses wall (write something that will make them respond, such as a compliment...they'll be sure to compliment you back) within minutes you'll have a response. Just keep checking! Want to play a board game? No one to play with? No worries...get the scrabble application..and play away....only one move at a time..this game will never end! Want to feel beautiful? Browse through your pictures..and all the comments people have left you...or even better...browse through everyone elses ugly ones...that'll do the trick. Hungry? Play food frenzy and save some cash. Horny? message that hook up from last weekend...flirt a bit with the hottie who you met over the weekend (she just accepted your friend request....obviously she likes you...I mean you're the best of friends now right?) You're the best of friends...because you went one second from seeing just her picture (hoping you remembered the right name when you friend requested her) to now knowing various pieces of information ranging from what high school she attended to what her favorite musician is. Such information...once upon a time...was what you figured out when you really invested time in people...invested time to get to know them. Our generation is quite a lazy one. Prime example: not only do we have cell phones (rather than rotary or land lines) we have voice dial. Rather than spending time to get to know the intricate details of someone's life...you have your work cut out for you. Memorize their profile...and hope it was real...better yet...hope that they're really who they claim to be in that profile...

I hope some of that made sense....

Journal 10/13

My Facebook experiences lately have been kind of crazy. Without going into details of my dramatic life I'll just say that Facebook could have definitely caused a lot more drama. To sum it up a girl could have sent me really nasty messages through Facebook and I'm surprised she didn't. On Facebook you can view other people's profiles if you have a couple friends in common sometimes. Well I was interested in someone who's ex was being a complete psycho. I could view her page so I'm sure she could view mine. I'm just glad lots of drama didn't start because of the ability to stalk other people's Facebooks.

Through the past week I've found myself checking a certain someone's Facebook multiple times during the day just to see what's going on with him. The ending result was generally nothing.

Overall Facebook has left me un-entertained and unsatisfied. Something else interesting that happened was when a guy in our dorm instant messaged me (through Facebook) AGAIN! I've talked to several female friends of mine and he always tries to start conversations with them too. I've never spoken to him in real life and I kind of thinks it's creepy that he always IMs me when I'm signed into FB. My roommate even completely closed her Facebook window so he would stop trying to talk to her.

Last week I had a friend request from some random guy who was friends with the guy I was interested in (we'll call him "John"). Every time he and I were both online at the same time he would talk to me. I'm sure he was just trying to be nice and make a new friend but I found it somewhat creepy. All in all he invited me to a party that "John" had told me about before. I hadn't intended on going unless "John" made it evident we wanted me to come. Eventually "John" told me he wanted me to come to the party. While I was there I met the creeper dude from Facebook and he came off as kind of creepy at first but turned out to be a pretty cool guy.

Journal 10/13 Gedion

This past week, I did not do much on facebook other than logging in for a minute or two to check if I had any messages, wall posts or to check if I had been requested as a friend by someone I knew. None of these happened so I would just sign out right away. The most I spent on facebook this week was about five minutes on Sunday night looking for a couple of my friends email addresses. I was looking for their email addresses because I had to choose like 10 friends and send them an email for this project I had to do for one of my classes. So I looked for their email addresses on their facebook “info” pages. That’s all the activity I did on facebook this week.

cartoon

Today in class, we will be discussing how relevant this cartoon is to present day.

Journal 10/13

I have been spending less and less time with my facebook account these days. I think because its largely due to the fact that i get email reminders when something happens on facebook, like when someone sent me a message or wrote on my wall. So i just have my gmail open and unless something particularly interesting happens i wont sign on to facebook. I only spent a couple minutes with my real account replying to a friend .

I also spent some time with my fake persona. It was really interesting that my made up persona was added by two people as a friend. My next step will be to send one of my friends a message to see how he responds.

Journal 10/13

So ever since we started creating these new facebook profiles...or rather fake personas, I have felt weird signing on to my account. I feel that (and let's take a more philosophical approach) even though the page I sign onto isn't the one I created for this class, I fear it might be the same falsification in a way. How much of who we are do we create by how we represent ourselves? Isn't facebook just a representation of us on the internet? So really, isn't my facebook account a representation of the creation that I desire to be? Regardless if I have fulfilled that desire in certain departments or not, it nonetheless remains a false construction of me.

As I've said, lately I've spent less time on facebook. This is what happened with myspace too...except at that point, I switched to facebook. With myspace, the final straw was seeing a special on tv about child rapists/molesters who set up meetings with the kids through myspace.

As for an update on my facebook life....I think I found out who the mystery honestybox poster was....yay!

the case of Facebook v. SecondLife by Justin

In my experience, I found it much more entertaining to laugh at all of the people that had agreed to friend me, or rather, my fake persona on Facebook than I did with the SecondLife project. I thoroughly enjoyed the few messages I received asking who I was. I feel like I should tell them when the class is over that the profile is just a fraudulent account created to see how social systems coexist on the world wide interwebs, but then again, I probably will not. I managed to “friend” over a hundred people in the Urbana/Champaign region, most, if not all, of whom attend the university. I know that we were supposed to post about this earlier, but it is still entertaining to write about this fake persona.
As I previously stated, I did not enjoy the SecondLife project as much as the former Facebook persona. This is for several reasons. For one, it seems like I’m playing a video game on my computer and I gave up on video games when I came to college. Sure, if somebody busts out GoldenEye or Mario Kart 64 I’ll play it, but seriously, I gave up on video games, so I was really turned off by it. Also, I understand that users on SecondLife may enjoy creating a fully detailed fake persona via image, but I did not. I just chose a standard male model and that was it; I was not motivated to change it. Another reason I didn’t like it was that when I started to explore the area, the system took too long to load. In fact, it took so long, than when it finally finished, I ended up in a pornographic area, one of which was quite graphic and completely unexpected. So, with all of those negative experiences in one session, you can see why I was so turned off by SecondLife.
I did not communicate at all with other users in either Facebook or SecondLife. That said, there is not much difference in my experience in finding others to “talk” to. I guess a major difference is that with Facebook you can just “add” friends without really needing to “explore” your virtual surroundings.

Who are you...REALLY?! (prompt)

I hope you have had a lot of fun with your fake Facebook personas and creating your avatar on SecondLife. So for your prompt today, take a screen shot of both your fake Facebook persona and your SecondLife avatar and include it in your response. Compare and contrast your experiences with the fake Facebook persona, or fake group and the SecondLife avatar. How were the experiences the same? Different? What shocked you? What happened that you didn't expect to happen? What were you expecting to happen that didn't happen? Have any crazy stories you want to share?

(I am expecting this post to be a little bit longer than previous ones because I am sure you have a lot to talk about!)

Journal 10/13 by Justin

So I signed on to Facebook today to work on our "fake account" projects. I first went on my personal fake persona, Andrew Carnegy, and to my surprise, many people I asked to "friend" me did so. In my opinion, this is quite comical. For one, they have no idea who I actually am. Also, I think due to my "profile picture" they are oblivious to who this person could possibly be. I believe I made close to 60 "friends" in less than two days of this project, so I think I'm off to a pretty good start.
As for the fake group account we (Lihy, Jay, and myself) created in class, it is also going well. It is awkward reading the messages that ask who I/we/she is. Since we created a female from LA who currently is in the Urbana/Champaign network, I think that more people are screening the account. Several users refused to friend this fake person and instead asked me via a message, “Hey, do I know you?” or “Hey sorry, but did we take a class together or something?” It actually makes me feel a little better about Facebook users, because some people have proven that not all college students are naive.
Has anyone else experienced similar messages? Has anybody had really random things sent to them that are funny? If so, I would love to hear them.

Second Life

Hello my fake personas,

Go play:

www.secondlife.com

Keep notes (mental or not) as to what goes on. You will be writing a prompt response to it.

Journal 10/6 by Justin

So nothing really exciting seems to be happening on Facebook anymore, anyone else notice that? I mean really, I don't know what else the ole'FB really has to offer that none of us have seen before. I log in, check my notifications and various requests, respond to a few wall posts, and then aimlessly keep checking back and forth between my homepage and profile page. Anyone else in this same boat?
I don't really notice the advertisements anymore, which could be either a good thing or a bad thing. It could be good because it means that I've been able to ignore them, but it could be bad if it means that I've become conditioned to them already. Either way, I don't think they contribute much to my overall "facebooking" experience.
Oh, and did you all notice that nobody is really complaining about the new layout? Yeah, like we, the consumers, are really ever going to have a say in anything that ever changes online; fat chance. It's true that we can always demand products that we pay for, i.e., hybrid and fuel efficient vehicles, but as for FB and other commodities that are currently free, really the consumers that pay nothing won't be able to change the system.
Call me a geek, but does anybody else remember SKYNET, the computer system that becomes self-aware and creates the robots in the Terminator movies? How far away are we from that? We have all this code that can relate ads to us, so how long from now will they, the codes, be able to guess what we're going to do, or worse yet, counter what we decide? Crazy right?

Fake Account

Okay, so I wasn't all too sure how I felt about creating a fake Facebook account for class. Sure, I have made a few in the past to troll crazy political and religious Facebook groups, but that's just in my own personal free time, something I lack right now. As I created my character, Andrew Carnegy (because the jerks at FB caught on to "Andrew Carnegie" and wouldn't allow me to register as that name), I had to do all this g-mail crap. First off, who needs three gmail accounts anyway? Well apparently, the answer is anyone that's trying to make multiple fake FB user accounts, that's who!
So I started by friending some people and obtaining a discrete profile picture, one that wouldn't show my face, but one that looked like a college student might have taken it. After that, I joined an Allen Hall student group or two and continued on friendind.
One piece of advice, the more people you friend with a fake account, the more "fill in the blank" boxes you have to fill out. What a bunch of crap. FB really is trying hard to stop us from having fun. I hope that part wears off soon, so I can just click "ADD FRIEND" and call it a day.

Prompt 4 Gedion

I first created a Google email account with the name Claire Baker. Then I signed up on facebook with that email and name. I created her because my roommate speaks French and likes French girls so I wanted to do a prank on him. so I created a girl that is 20 years old and has a French name and goes to U of I. I added Danny’s fake persona Lizi and you our instructor Kristin as my friends. I haven’t done much with this persona yet, but I noticed the ads I get are for weight loss and super model ads.

10/6 by Jay

To be honest, I was kind of sad this week because absolutely nothing happened on my facebook. No one left me any comments or anything and I didn't get invited to any events; pretty much a stale e-week. The question is, why does this upset me? Have I gotten to the point where my life is so saturated by technology that I expect something to happen in my e-life every day? For instance, I have facebook alerts on three different applications - Digsby (IM), my cell phone, AND Firefox. So every time someone leaves me a wall comment, three things pop up to tell me! Plus, I feel kind of nerdy when someone sends me a message and I reply within like a minute or two. Sometimes I feel like I should wait a couple days on purpose just to pretend like I have more important things to do (this week, playing the Sims 2 for like 6 hours). Anyway, apparently my idea of a relatively low amount of facebook activity is less than like, 3 comments a day. And Friday and Saturday I got no comments at all. HOW VERY DISAPPOINTING.

Journal 4 Gedion

This week I did not do much on facebook. I had some late birthday wishers who wrote on my wall wishing me a happy birthday. I responded to them saying thank you. I got a message from a group of my friends asking me to go out to get dinner on Thursday. I sent them back a message declining the offer because I had a meeting go to. The main facebook activity I did this week was creating another facebook account. I created another email then used that email to create a fake persona on facebook.

Journal 10/6

Nothing interesting on Facebook lately. I barely have any comments. I found myself forgetting to check facebook during the day. It's not something I cling to as much anymore. I will admit that when I do go online, I stalk my (recent) ex. I'm trying to see what she's up to...if she's posting anything that suggests she misses me. I know...it's beyond ridiculous. I did figure out who my honesty box person was...or at least I'm pretty sure I figured it out. I sent her another comment, and from her reply, I was able to narrow it down. I did leave a comment on the suspected honesty-boxers profile, I'll keep you posted about that...

I got an event invitation from Rabbi Dovid for Yom Kippur at the Union. I keep getting those kinds of invites for Hillel functions. I just wish I could somehow let them know that I'm simply not interested in getting involved.

This is weekend number three for me of staying in. Though, this is the first time I really had to. I was in too much pain (I'm getting better, but I was really sick last week). So yet again, Monday has arrived, and people have posted pictures from the weekend. That is always annoying for me...I can't figure out if the annoyance is because I stayed in and didn't party...or because they're just stupid for posting such incriminating pictures.

Journal 10/6

I logged on to facebook and glanced over the news feed and then quickly checked my profile. Someone had superpoked me so i took the time to reply. An old friend had sent me a message on facebook so i took the time to reply to him. I didnt have much time to spend because of all the work that i had to do sunday night. So i logged off pretty happy that i only spent ten minutes on facebook.

New FB Identity

So I asked you on Monday to create a fake persona and mess around on Facebook with him/her/it. How did that go? Who did you create and why? How was/is that person different than you? What did you do with this new persona? Did you get anyone to friend you? Answer these questions and detail any other funny/interesting/scary stories about your new persona.

I logged on facebook to check if I had any messages or wall posts on September 29^th. After I had logged in, I found out I have many wall posts because it was my birthday and a lot of my friends were wishing me a happy birthday. After I saw that, I took the pleasure of writing a thank you on a lot of their walls. So I spent a good 15 minutes writing a thank you on my friends’ walls and about 10 minutes at the beginning reading all the messages. After that I just logged off because I felt like 25 minutes of facebook was too much.

Journal 9/29 by Lindsay

I logged into Facebook today with nothing in mind except to attempt to be entertained. I get Facebook updates on my phone and in the middle of the night I got a comment from a really nice guy I had met a party a couple of nights ago. I've found myself being a stalker lately and I'm actually creeping myself out. If I'm stalking other people's pages of people I've just met, imagine what they are doing on my page. By stalking I mean finding people on Facebook that I've just met and going through their pictures and just checking out their page. Cruising Facebook is almost always uneventful for me but just something to pass the time.

9/29 by Jay

So this week, I've been thinking about how we portray ourselves to the world by using facebook. I mentioned in an older journal about how Stewie from Family Guy had it right on spot when he said that social networking sites give me a chance to list "movies and things that other people have created that I use to express my individualism." It's our public image and we have to make it appealing, disregarding our faults and shortcomings. It's just another part of the human psyche, it's just another part of the internet - you can be whoever you want to be because no one's going around checking that this is really you. For instance, maybe you really love musicals and showtunes but under "Favorite Music" you only list the latest Top 40 hits. Or maybe you only tag flattering pictures of yourself. Or put that you're in a relationship when you really aren't. There's this aspect of social networking that we haven't explored yet - ego.

In other news, another thing I think is really interesting is companies using facebook to "scope out" potential employees. With Illini 4000, I kind of feel like we could do the same thing (or any organization on campus that you have to apply to). As a prospective member, you could be added by an officer of the organization and they could see all these various aspects of your life that you might not have wanted to show just yet. Pretty interesting stuff, just saying.

Journal 9/29

Today I logged into facebook with a different idea in mind. Last night I talk to the "boingboing" guys who are guests-in-residents at Allen. I told them about my ideas in relation to the social networking site, and they told me to look at other sites and figure out a clear vision. If my concept of what I want the website to look like is clear, then it will be easier to explain that vision to the tech people who program it.

So this time, I was on facebook looking to see what I liked....didn't like...and hated. I like the birthday notifications. I think that in a connected world (such as the internet) automatic reminders and updates are important. I like the wall. The applications have got to go. Pictures are a yes, but you can't tag someone in a picture without their approval. A post on their wall also has to be approved before it shows up on their wall. In addition, the advertisements would be LGBT related.

I was also thinking that I need some sort of calendar on the site that everyone can access, but things will only be approved once they're verified by the site facilitator. This calendar would be a big nation-wide calendar. It would provide information for students about various ongoings throughout the country.

These are just some of my thoughts as I perused facebook...

Journal 3

I logged on to Facebook only once in the evening and nothing eventful seemed to happen. Just a couple invitations to a paintball outing which I don’t think I will be attending. I looked through the news feed and glanced through what people were doing right now. Ever since the new Facebook started, people have been putting how they are doing right now. I think its because they put that bar right in front of your screen. This has definitely made Facebook more of a live website rather than just placing messages that people will see days later. Well that’s pretty much all I had time to do cause the Bears were playing, and yeah, THEY WON!

Value in my social network

Its tough to measure one’s value in their social network, let alone put a dollar value on it. I can think of two ways of measuring your value in your social network; popularity and the size of the network. Starting with high school of the more than one thousand students in the school its tough for one person to be that valuable unless you are a star athlete or most attractive person. I was certainly not the most popular kid but I think I was still of some value because I was able to befriend a lot of people. The network of UIUC is a lot different. Having about 40,000 kids in the school I don’t really think I add much value to the network. Because the larger that the network becomes, the lower that value of each of the individual people. There are exceptions, but this is generally the case. It would be impossible for me to put a dollar sign on my value to each of these two networks because I really have no idea of how much the network is worth. I think most people would be worth the value of the network divided by the number of people. Some people might hold more value because of some characteristics and other not as much. As for putting a value on the network, I have no idea where to even begin.

Journal 2

Sunday, September 21, 2008
I have been out most of the day so I only checked Facebook once during the evening. An old friend added me as a friend so I quickly confirmed and moved on. I glanced through the even invitation that appeared on the page. I quickly erased it but the second caught my eye. A group of friends were going to go paintballing. I had seen that invitation before and like I did before I left it alone for now, not really sure of whether I should attend. I went to my profile page and looked at my wall but nothing new had been written. I checked Facebook chat at the bottom of the screen but no one really caught my attention. I decided that it was best to do some homework so I logged out without really doing much today.

My friends

On facebook I have ninety-two friends. That is not a lot because looking through my friends most have more than me. Some have well over two hundred while others have much more. Sometimes I feel bad for not having that many friends but then I think about how the word friend has lost its meaning. I would imagine that a friend would be someone that you get along with and talk to on a regular basis. But this is certainly not the case on facebook. Many people just add people that they remotely know and have talked to once or twice. So the number of friends that a person has really does not say much about how many real friends he really has.
As for the networks, my friends primarily associate themselves with their schools, whether it’s their high school or college. Some have added other networks like Chicago but the majority just put their school. I just have U of I and my high school, Northside College Prep. I never really thought too much about the networks or groups that I am in, cause to me they don’t have too much meaning on facebook. Often times, it seems like people just invite everyone on their buddy list to join groups. Facebook has certainly connected many people but the online connection is not very strong. Because it is so easy to accept invitations and not do anything, being part of a group does not connect people in the way that it used to.

Journal 1

Sunday September 14, 2008

I spent the day in Chicago and driving back so I only logged on to facebook once at night. I looked through the news feed to see if anything interesting happened. Then I checked out my homepage and saw the I had been superpoked by my girlfriend. I responded and spent some time just looking through the profile of some friends. After about half and hour I decided that it was best for me to just continue the homework I had to do. I felt bad afterward though, because I really did not have time to be killing on facebook but somehow I always do it.

Journal 9/29 by Justin

Well it has been one of the busiest weeks of my life and I am glad to say that the internet had nothing to do with it. Facebook did not tell me what my plans for the weekend were; instead, I relied on my trusty calendar to tell me where and when I had to be at all times. Living by a strict planner is not enjoyable, but it must be done.
While that above comment had absolutely nothing to do with Facebook, I felt that since this is a journal entry, I could post it. The few times I had to participate on Facebook this past week included creating and event page for Critical Mass and keeping up with what others had written/posted. Honestly, that was about it besides for a birthday wall message or two.
With this new layout, I am not too sure about how I feel about it. I keep getting invited to groups stating “If I get 1,000,000 people…switch back to old Facebook.” I have denied them all because a) there are too many of them, b) they will most likely not work, and c) I do not actually know the people who invited me to join them. So, in a sense, I guess Facebook, or at least the people using it, have sparked my pessimistic side regarding this issue. I never thought that I would actually have a “feeling” while cruising or exiting Facebook, but I have definitely now experienced apathy. I hope that my above comment does not offend anyone who has joined such groups; it is just my opinion that they are bunk.

Real capital

Sorry! I thought this had posted but I "saved" the blog instead of posting it last week.

The United States has a history of commercialized media. It seems that the Internet has finally fallen into this realm. How do you feel about advertising on Facebook? Have you ever felt offended by the ads that are targeted toward you? Do you think there is a better way to support Internet companies other than selling advertisements? Would you pay to be a member of Facebook if it meant having no advertisements?

Check out this NYT article

Hey!

This article is absolutely fantastic and does a great job going over everything that we have/will in class. It is a bit lengthy as far as online articles go, but definitely well worth the read. You will notice some key phrases like "loose ties" and "social capital" that we have already studied!

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/07/magazine/07awareness-t.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1

Feel free to comment on this after you've read it!

Journal 9/17 by Justin

Today I signed on to check up on what was going on this week and to see how my friends were doing. When it came to the homepage, I noticed which friends’ birthdays were coming up, events that were set to take place, and what photos had recently been added. I then went on to check on the new photos of my friends and myself. When I went to my profile, I checked my wall to see what others had written. I also checked my messages, which were from friends and events. As for what shocked me, I saw some newly added photos of me when I was starting to get tipsy at a party, which are arguable comical. The “old news” consisted of photos and events I had known about for a while. I hardly ever use applications unless someone uploads a video of me, so I only used photos, but I don’t think that’s an application.
After using Facebook, I felt fine. Facebook hardly ever affects me in any way, unless I find out some bad news about a friend. I realized that I should soon create an event for the date that I play the Pygmalion Festival and invite as many people as possible.

Journal 9/22 by Justin

Today, as I cruise around Facebook I have one main priority: my event page for my show on Friday. I believe I created the event on Monday, so after a few days I am anxious to see who will be attending and who will be missing out. I notice that my close friends claim that they will be in attendance of my performance, while more acquaintances have either flat out denied my request for them to come or have responded “Maybe Attending”. Also, to my surprise, many have replied, “Awaiting Reply”. In my opinion, when individuals reply in an undecided manner, it is the cheap way of saying that they will not be there. Oh, how Facebook can even make a denial informal and impersonal.

There is nothing out of the ordinary on Facebook as far as I can tell. Many people are posting photos, changing their picture, and publicly stating that they are outraged by the website’s new design. Also, it seems that some of my friends are starting to get more political or are just more interested in the election than they have been in the past. As a political science major, this is interesting. As a student and analytical individual, this just means that Barack Obama is merely a trend. Well, that’s just my pessimistic opinion.

Journal 9/22 by Jay

My question of the week is "is facebook stalking okay?" Not in like, a creepy way, but let's say you meet person A and you know their first name and that's it. So is it okay to look through a mutual friend's list to see if person A is on facebook? Or what about without facebook? For instance, I see person B EVERYWHERE. I have no idea who they are but one time in Allen I saw them wearing their high school t-shirt and another time I saw them wearing an engineering t-shirt. So am I stalking them because I know they went to so-and-so high school and that they're an engineer? Or is it not my fault that they wear clothes to identify them?
Second, is it okay to approach people under false pretenses? People that I KNOW know me have come up to me and asked me if I know so-and-so or went to my high school and I kind of give them a stupid look because they know who I am, just say hi. But let's say I approach person B at some point and I'm like, hey! Did you go to ____ high school? And they're like yeah! I did! And so I can continue a conversation with them. Or let's say I see that we have mutual friends and I'm like hey! Do you know ____? As if I just saw them together sometime. I think people must do this a lot. It's really difficult to just go up to someone and be like "Hi, my name is ___, what's yours?" Especially for guys.
Stupid double standards.