internet (anti)social networks cienfuegos
If you're looking for objective, quality journalism and a precise article, don't continue reading, you'll be wasting your time. This is more of a mixture of data, information and reflections. If you use an Internet social network, please don't feel hurt by what you're going to read. This isn't personal, we promise. aperitif
Since the first social network was opened in 1995, they have grown and the number of users and the volume of use have multiplied. To give an example, nowadays just Facebook alone has more than three hundred million users. And while the use of the Internet increased by 18% last year, the use of social networks grew by 63%. So although the size of these social network is already huge, the predictions that we can give, based on the rate of growth, are astonishing.
first Course
If you look into Facebook just a little, you'll see that most people use it to talk about their daily life using multimedia resources. In this way, our private life becomes public. And millions of people give information about their daily lives every day. The more they tell us, the better. The more you tell us about your experiences, the better. In this way, each contact becomes like a prize. The quality of the contact doesn't matter, not does who is behind each contact. The quantity is what counts. People collect contacts as if it were a competition. Some people have called it the new philately. But on Facebook, Myspace and other networks, people spend more time thinking about themselves than they do reacting with others. It's self-referencing communication. It's the egomaniac's orgasm. It's a paradox, individualism held up by social networks ...
second Course
As well as turning the whole world into a single market, globalisation has turned the whole of life into something mercantile. Capitalism is a quick system, it makes use of everything. So if these social networks have taken on gigantic dimensions and their main contents are about ordinary people's daily lives ... I bet you can't guess.
In order to sign up on a social network, you have to accept interminable conditions which include the contents published belonging non-exclusively to the network's owner. In this way, the users share the ownership of what they tell about their lives with the owners of the networks.
In the same way, the data that the users publish is all used to fill up data bases. These data bases are then used to segment publicity depending on the users' profiles. In this way, at least intheory, each user is shown the most appropriate publicity.
dessert
In the society of knowledge, consumerism and leisure have become work. Web 2.0 and social networks are the best example of this. Our productive work is not limited by the place we work in. We produce 24 hours a day. And while we are publishing on social networks, and reading on them... we're producing non-stop. The users of social networks create their contents. Create, manage, spread, consume... the owners of the networks only provide the resources, everything else is provided by the users. Twitter is an outstanding example. Until now, it's only been available in English and Japanese, but now, in order to make it available in German, French, Spanish and Italian, the users have been invited to translate it. And there will be thousands of users who will offer to do this translation work free of charge. In addition to this, the most used programs on Twitter, such as @mentions and retweet, have been developed by the users. So is it fair to use the terms users and consumers? Or does this terminology hide the true nature of the users and the profits that their participation creates, while the networks' owners have no intention of sharing these profits?
liqueur, coffee and Havana Cigar
Whenever you publish something about your life on a social network, along with privatising it and making it into a mercantile quantity, you contribute to a public x-ray of our relationships and lifestyle. And, in these times in which civil liberties are being cut back in the name of safety, that's important. In Facebook's latest capital increase, Greylock Venture Capital put in 27.5 million dollars. And one of the biggest investors in the latter company is Howard Cox, who is also one of the heads of In-Q-tel investment company. In-Q-tel is the CIA's new technology investment company. You can draw your conclusions ...
Since the first social network was opened in 1995, they have grown and the number of users and the volume of use have multiplied. To give an example, nowadays just Facebook alone has more than three hundred million users. And while the use of the Internet increased by 18% last year, the use of social networks grew by 63%. So although the size of these social network is already huge, the predictions that we can give, based on the rate of growth, are astonishing.
first Course
If you look into Facebook just a little, you'll see that most people use it to talk about their daily life using multimedia resources. In this way, our private life becomes public. And millions of people give information about their daily lives every day. The more they tell us, the better. The more you tell us about your experiences, the better. In this way, each contact becomes like a prize. The quality of the contact doesn't matter, not does who is behind each contact. The quantity is what counts. People collect contacts as if it were a competition. Some people have called it the new philately. But on Facebook, Myspace and other networks, people spend more time thinking about themselves than they do reacting with others. It's self-referencing communication. It's the egomaniac's orgasm. It's a paradox, individualism held up by social networks ...
second Course
As well as turning the whole world into a single market, globalisation has turned the whole of life into something mercantile. Capitalism is a quick system, it makes use of everything. So if these social networks have taken on gigantic dimensions and their main contents are about ordinary people's daily lives ... I bet you can't guess.
In order to sign up on a social network, you have to accept interminable conditions which include the contents published belonging non-exclusively to the network's owner. In this way, the users share the ownership of what they tell about their lives with the owners of the networks.
In the same way, the data that the users publish is all used to fill up data bases. These data bases are then used to segment publicity depending on the users' profiles. In this way, at least intheory, each user is shown the most appropriate publicity.
dessert
In the society of knowledge, consumerism and leisure have become work. Web 2.0 and social networks are the best example of this. Our productive work is not limited by the place we work in. We produce 24 hours a day. And while we are publishing on social networks, and reading on them... we're producing non-stop. The users of social networks create their contents. Create, manage, spread, consume... the owners of the networks only provide the resources, everything else is provided by the users. Twitter is an outstanding example. Until now, it's only been available in English and Japanese, but now, in order to make it available in German, French, Spanish and Italian, the users have been invited to translate it. And there will be thousands of users who will offer to do this translation work free of charge. In addition to this, the most used programs on Twitter, such as @mentions and retweet, have been developed by the users. So is it fair to use the terms users and consumers? Or does this terminology hide the true nature of the users and the profits that their participation creates, while the networks' owners have no intention of sharing these profits?
liqueur, coffee and Havana Cigar
Whenever you publish something about your life on a social network, along with privatising it and making it into a mercantile quantity, you contribute to a public x-ray of our relationships and lifestyle. And, in these times in which civil liberties are being cut back in the name of safety, that's important. In Facebook's latest capital increase, Greylock Venture Capital put in 27.5 million dollars. And one of the biggest investors in the latter company is Howard Cox, who is also one of the heads of In-Q-tel investment company. In-Q-tel is the CIA's new technology investment company. You can draw your conclusions ...
- www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2008/jan/14/facebook
- www.greylock.com/team/
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In-Q-Tel
