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Sarah's First Analysis
Sarah Chilmeran
Facebook.com
Facebook, the “social utility…made up of many networks...” was launched in February of 2004 and took off from the very beginning. The site’s conjoining of many different social utilities existing at the time into a newer, more modern site, compares with Roger Fidler’s ‘adaptive technology’ and ‘convergence’ principles of mediamorphosis. Facebook is a unique union of a variety of communication medium and technological innovations from the Web. Each member is in control of their own page and can upload a picture of them as their “profile picture” as well as include information about themselves that ranges from gender to interests to their major of study. Every member has the ability to create photo albums by uploading as many photos as they would like, organizing them into albums, writing captions for each photo, and even “tagging” people in the photos so that others may know who they are. Every person belongs to a network comprised of all members who are attending the same high school or college. Anyone within your educational network may view your profile; however, others outside of the network must befriend each other in order to view each other’s profile.
Facebook incorporates email and a variation of instant messaging in the same utility. Each profile has what is called a “wall” in which others can post small messages or greetings to that person. If two people want to have a conversation they may choose view only “wall-to-wall” and communicate with each other. However, this form of communication is public, everyone in that member’s network can view the messages on the wall. If a more private conversation is preferred, it is possible to send a message quite like an email. Members can also form and join “groups” that share common interests in order to start a petition or just for fun as an inside joke. Each group can have leaders and the level of privacy is up to the creator; they can allow for anyone to join the group or they can choose to only allow entry by actually inviting others, or by making it necessary to grant access to others who request to join. Pictures pertaining to the group can be uploaded by any member and each group also has its own “wall” where members can communicate with each other, almost like a chat room of people with a common interest. Therefore, Facebook’s incorporation of two different communication medium classifies it as a Multimedia form of communication.
Facebook is user-friendly as it is easy to navigate and guides you step by step through different available options. Although it is organized in such a way that makes it simple to understand and utilize, Facebook is a complex system of different networks. People are joined through their own educational networks, through others they befriend, and through the groups they join. Those who are browsing through another person’s profile can see how many friends that person has and how many of those friends he/she has in common with that person. If someone wants to find another member who shares a common interest they need only to click on the interest of theirs and Facebook will automatically search for others who have claimed they have that same interest and will display the findings like a search engine on the Web. With such a vast and complex system containing so many members, Facebook is constantly adapting. When the site underwent a major change in its organization that was not popular with its users, an immediate flow of petitions and groups against the change was seen. When the creators saw such an immediate negative response, they adapted the system a little bit and explained to their users the benefits of the changes and how they could be utilized. By compromising, everyone was pleased with the outcome of the new adaptations in the end.
As Fidler states: “existing media forms evolve and adapt to the changing communication environment in a gradual process that is comparable in some ways to the evolution of species.” Social utilities such as Facebook are complex and will forever more be adapting and incorporating new forms of media.
schilmeran |
Latest page update: made by schilmeran
, Feb 10 2007, 11:25 PM EST
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