Hi everyone! My name is Nick Fajt and I'm a junior in Engineering. I'm majoring in Information Science, Systems, and Technology. So far at Cornell almost all my courses have been in engineering and have kind of been skewed towards the more technical side of the academic spectrum. I'm really excited about this course because of its unique structure. It seems like a great change of pace for me.
An internet phenomenon that I've found to be really interesting is the often addictive nature of Facebook. Had the concept of Facebook been postulated 5 years ago, I think most people would agree that their reactions would have ranged from tepid to mild enthusiasm. Don't get me wrong... social networking sites are definitely a very cool resource. However, if someone would have told me 5 years ago that people would have full-blown addictions to Facebook and spend multiple hours a day on it, I would have laughed in their face.
Even though I have a somewhat cynical attitude towards Facebook, I'm must admit, I'm always surprised with how long I spend on it. Anytime I try to do a "quick check" of my Facebook, at least twenty minutes magically disappear, and I think I'm a relatively infrequent user. A number of my friends are on Facebook many hours a week (and some many hours a day).
You'd be hard pressed to walk into a large lecture hall at Cornell and not see at least of few students ignoring the professor entirely and surfing facebook. Many of my friends who have graduated and currently find themselves in the "real world" complain that their companies have "blocked" facebook like it's a form of illicit material.
The most amazing thing about Facebook is that although it's made a cannonball splash in the teen to college generation, it's hardly made a ripple in others. Anyone who has tried to explain facebook to their parents (or grandparents) has probably been gotten responses like "that's all it is?" or "I don't get it."
I think that the psychology behind the rise and infatuation of an entire generation is fascinating. It never ceases to amaze me, how the internet fosters technologies that were unimagined a week ago but are indispensable today. Anyways, with that being said, I should probably go check my Facebook.
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Hey Nick! Good topic. I definatly think that Facebook is going to be an ongoing topic of discussion in this class. It is one of the most widespread internet phenomenon today, especially among our age group. Summer before freshman year of college when everyone got there college email accounts and registered on Facebook I was completely against the whole thing. I compared it to myspace which I never really liked. However, sure enough half way through my freshman year, when I wanted to look someone up, I finally broke down and signed up. Indeed older generations do not and maybe never will understand this phenomenon.
Nick, I thought you had a really interesting point about how rapidly Facebook has become an extremely popular (though addicting) social network in a relatively short time span. I’ve definitely succumbed from going on to do a “quick check” and spending much more time on the website than anticipated.
From my understanding of Facebook, one of the biggest attractions to the website is the concept that one can freely express yourself in a social network of thousands of people generally around your age. Yet, profile members are quickly growing up and suddenly are no longer high school or college students but nonetheless still active members of Facebook. I have to assume therefore that the Facebook phenomenon is starting (if not already begun) to make a notable splash in older age brackets. If having a Facebook account is no longer restricted to the teen and college generation, who’s to say that our parents won’t finally understand what the hype is about and create profiles for themselves?
Hi Nick,
I agree that the world of Facebook has become extremely popular within the past few years. With new features constantly being added, I dont think that this addiction to facebook is going to slow down anytime soon. One of the major alluring qualities about facebook is that there are so many options that can appeal to almost anyone. For example, there are thousands of different groups one can join that can help to bring people together with similar interests. I also find it interesting that facebook has become so popular that even employers who are recruiting for jobs after college now check their potential employee's facebook profile to see what they are all about before deciding whether to hire them or not. Using facebook is a great way to network with other people within your own school or other universities, meet new people, and find others with similar interests. The popularity of facebook has led to the creation of other similar websites such as my space. I think that even though our parents generation might not understand the hype about facebook now, there might be similar websites created in the near future for their generation to enjoy.
Interestingly, the concept of Facebook essentially was postulated 5 years ago, in the pioneering social networking site Friendster. Friendster was apparently -the- phenomenon of 2003, but in the age of MySpace and Facebook has drifted in obscurity. Facebook really is amazingly compelling, though, more so than any other social network I know -- I personally think what really makes FB different is the distinctly 'real' nature of profiles, since FB users typically use real names and are tied to a real geographic location, unlike MySpace, or really the Internet at large.
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