The Facebook Effect: The Inside Story of the Company That Is Connecting the World PART III

After reading the final section of David Kirkpatrick's "The Facebook Effect:The inside Story of the Company That is Connecting the World," I realized how little I actually knew about the way facebook works, despite my earlier prconception that I would be among those who were on top of their "facebook knowledge."

Although the third part did include more of the background of the company and its finances, I was mostly engulfed by the way it can and has been helping people around the globe. Regular people can become activists and leaders in their communities with the start of an event on facebook, such as Oscar Morales, who was mentioned again in this part as a speaker to a conference of youth activist groups. Facebook was one of the 5 companies who helped to organize, fund, and carry out the conference, which discussed the importance of web 2.0 and how these groups can help each other in their journeys (p. 291). Facebook acts as a 'safe' nd 'guanranteed' medium for dissatisfied people to express their thoughts, and as illustrated on page 289-290, the majority of them do get the effect they wished to get in the first place. State scholarships, drug raids, and jail expansions were among those which prompted people to speak out.

Not only do individuals gain from facebook, big companies also have the opportunity to reach out to the people and reap in benefits. For example, Mazda was able to get its name out to millions of people by asking its fans on Facebook to help design a car for 2018. Similarly, Ben & Jerry's asked its fans as to what their next ice cream flavor should be. Every time their fans contributed, their friends would see that so-and-so participated in an event hosted by Mazda or Ben & Jerry's. In other words, this was a genius way to get the companies' names out to people for very cheap, if at all. Small companies can also benefit from facebook by purchasing ads and having the ability to present them to a very specific market, made possible by the real information facebook has of its members.

Another thing that really caught my interest was the first chapter of this section, which dealt with applications, especially the games. Although I had to stop, I was an avid user of facebook games, such as Restaurant City, Country Story, and even the infamous Farmville. It was really interesting to see how the whole community of applications progressed from a small group of fun albeit useless ones, such as Food Fight and Fluff Friends. Mark Zuckerberg was "disappointed at the silliness of many of these apps" (p. 228), but I feel that's the reason why so many of these applications were so successful. People were on facebook for enjoyment and entertainment, not to be "serious" all the time.

As a final note, I was just wondering how the new facebook profiles are to be impacting the users as well as the creators. I know that a lot of people dislike the new profiles, but I wonder if we will all just get used to and come to love it, as we did for almost everything else. Also, I wonder if the creators can see all the negative responses they are getting and are considering changes.....