Section 1 - Communities & Networks
1.1 What Is Yahoo!?
Yahoo the complex internet organism has a complicated name. The word "Yahoo" is an abbreviation of for "Yet Another Hierarchical Officious Oracle". It was coined by PhD candidates at Stanford University (the same place as the Google founders): David Filo and Jerry Yang, who cofounded Yahoo in 1994. As of 2009, they are both worth $3 billion each.
1.2 Facebook Facts
Facebook was originally named 'The Face Book' and it was developed by Harvard student Mark Zuckerberg. The first use of FaceBook was on the Harvard campus and it was limited only to Harvard students. It became massively popular and inevitably soon spread like wild fire around the other major U.S. Universities. Mark Zuckerberg dropped out of Harvard and pursued his Facebook dream, ultimately become one of the 4th most-trafficked websites in the world with more than 90 million active users. FaceBook has more than 24 million photos uploaded daily.
1.3 Facebook Finally Makes Money
Facebook's user base is constantly growing and now it has reached well over 300 million active FaceBook users. With 50 million mobile users, FaceBook wants you to stay connected to your friends and family wherever you go. Facebook is massive, but interestingly it has only started to make a profit in 2009. Enormous overheads, advertising costs and an exponentially expanding database pushed FaceBook inventors to re-invest everything. 2009 was the 'great year' for FaceBook even though for the rest of us it saw the greatest recession since 1930's.
All Facebook users hope that they will continue working on their privacy issues and never share our private information with companies and government agencies. Oh, and by the way, keep it to yourself, but there's a rumour going round that soon we can expect voice chat directly from FaceBook.
1.4 Facebook And Your Privacy
One of the major points that Facebook scored over all of the other social networking sites, at least initially, was its stringent privacy settings that gave you a sense of security and safety regarding the contents of your profile on Facebook. However, with the advent of Twitter and other such sites, Facebook might be in a mood to keep up with the growth of its competitors - and this might be why now Facebook content is easily accessible to strangers and gone are the days when you had a sense of privacy that only you and your exclusive friends shared on the network.
1.5 What Is Google?
Google is the Internet search company founded in September 1998 by Larry Page & Sergey Bryn while they were students at Stanford University. It got its name from the word Googol, which represents number 1 followed with hundred zeros after it. Nearly all of Google's vast fortune comes from advertising.
1.6 Google Pagerank Facts
Here are some facts about page ranks that a webmaster should keep in mind. Websites do not have a page rank, or PR, pages do. Page Rank on some levels is link referral program., for example, page "X" ranks higher when it gets referred to by another page "Y". However just the number of referrals or links is not enough for a page to rank high. The rank of page "Y" which refers user to page "X", is also important in determining the rank of page "X". You can easily check the PR of a page by downloading the Google toolbar or using a Firefox plugin. Having said all that, PageRank is becoming a bit of an outdated Google technology.
Today Google uses advanced algorithms in order to produce search results. Formulae are used to calculate many variables such as: Keyword Usage Score, Domain Strength, Content Quality Score, User Data and Inbound Links. However, webmasters around the world still compete for good PageRank since it represents popularity of your page. PageRank is trademark of Google, but the true patent owner of PageRank is Stanford University. Google has exclusive license rights to use PageRank. The cost of this right was 1.8 million shares of Google ($336 million in 2005).
1.7 Google's Quantum Algorithm
Several reports suggest that in the past three years Google has developed a quantum algorithm that is capable of automatically recognizing and sorting objects from videos or still images. This has been achieved by using physics that exists at the subatomic level. Several research teams have been working on the development of quantum processors that can store data as quantum bits. These 'qbits' represent both the 0 and 1 that are used in the binary computer language simultaneously. That dual possibility state allows for much more efficient processing and information storage. To consider an example given by Google, an average computer requires 500,000 peeks to find a particular object hidden in one of a million drawers on an average. But such a quantum computer could locate the position by just peeking into 1000 out of the million drawers. I don't really understand all that, but it sounds awesome!
1.8 Internet Addiction Facts
Are you addicted to your online connection? Are you one of those crazy people that can't wait to read your emails with your morning coffee? Doctors are calling it a serious addiction comparable with: Cybersexual Addiction, Computer Addiction and Cyber-Relational Addiction. They even managed to come up with medical sounding names for it, like Internet Addictive Disorder (IAD) or Internet Overuse Syndrome (IOS). Based on the latest research and simple human reasoning, many feel that internet addiction should not be labeled an addiction like gambling or drug abuse. Staying in touch with your friends or watching funny YouTube videos is not self-destructive behavior which usually characterizes major addictions. For example, if you gamble excessively on the internet then you are not addicted to the internet, but online gambling. However, if you find that your internet use is harming your relationships, or keeping you up late at night, then maybe it might be a good idea to walk away from your computer for a while.
1.9 Myspace Facts
MySpace was founded by former Friendster members Chris Dewolfe and Tom Anderson in 2003. They saw opportunity to beat Friendster with more options and less restrictions for social network users. MySpace was purchased in 2005 for $580 million by Rupert Murdoch, creator of a media empire that includes 20th Century Fox and the Fox television stations. MySpace has more than 40 billion page views a month. Google paid $900 million to be MySpace's search provider.
1.10 What made Amazon.com so big?
Jeff Bezos launched Amazon.com in 1995 under the name of Cadabra.com. Amazon was instantly recognized as being a superb way of selling books online. However, it wasn't alone in the market. The name change was a piece of genius.
It is hard to believe but in the early Internet days, when Yahoo was dominant search engine, search results were listed alphabetically. Amazon would always appear above its competition under book related keywords. This has been cited as a key factor in Amazon becoming the dominant force it is today.
1.11 Twitter Facts
Twitter is a micro-blogging social network service which allows users to share not-so-important things in their life by answering a simple question: "What are you doing?" Answers to this question are organized in a short messages called Tweets, the length of which are limited to 140 characters. The best thing about Twitter, is that there is no "white-noise" from boring people since "friendships" are not mutual - you can "follow" interesting people while they don't have to follow you. In February 2009, Twitter had a monthly growth of over 1300 percent - several times more than Facebook. Twitter achieved this staggering growth, partly because it is very handy for mobile device users (in 2009 there was 735,000 unique mobile visitors).
1.12 10 signs of Twitter Addiction
- All of your friends' names start with @
- You know what a tweet is and don't snicker
- Your tweeted while your wife gave birth
- Your tweeted while giving birth
- Your kids have to tweet you to get you to make dinner
- Your mom joined Twitter to chat with you
- All you want for Christmas is unlimited SMS use on your cell phone
- Your sign your work email, @wonky
- You don't read emails that aren't highlighted replies to you
- You name your newborn @babygirl1