Facebook maintaining control

        I've heard talk that facebook will die out and be replaced, just like Myspace. Many people seem to be under the impression that social media sites will always be short lived. However, I contend that facebook is not going anywhere. I believe that the main reason they will not be overtaken by another website is their aggressive business tactics.
        Recently, facebook has been buying up other social networks when they begin to gain small success. However, after these companies are bought, they are immediately shut down. With the exception of Instagram, all these websites are no longer up and functioning. The founders of these companies are then kept as employees of Facebook. The reasoning behind this method is to eliminate all future competition. By keeping these brilliant founders working for Facebook, Zuckerberg is able to limit the number of quality new entrepreneurs in his field (social media). Zuckerberg said "We have not once bought a company for the company. We buy companies to get excellent people... In order to have a really entrepreneurial culture one of the key things is to make sure we're recruiting the best people. One of the ways to do this is to focus on acquiring great companies with great founders." A list of facebook's acquisitions can be found here on wikipedia

Bittersweet Sympony

I forgot how cool and catchy this song is. Definitely worth playing around with and mashing up.

Tin Can and Walled Gardens

Did some looking into the "tin can" app, and I was disappointed to learn that it is only available on android devices! According to Casey Johnston, "The app is available only to Android phones for now and may soon make its way to Windows Phone, but Katakowski suspects that Apple will never allow Tin Can into the famous walled App Store garden." Here is her article: http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2013/11/tin-can-app-relays-messages-to-phones-without-internet-cell-reception/

I was interested in this comment. Especially the phrase "Walled Garden", so I searched for more about walled gardens. Turns out that it is a phrase from the early days of internet. It refers to a closed platform. It was the approach that internet providers used in the first years of internet. Today, it is the philosophy that Apple uses. See this article for more explanation: http://lifehacker.com/a-month-inside-apples-walled-garden-its-not-as-bad-a-1304272986

Repost: Internet Explorer Advertisement

Although I appreciate their sense of humor, I wonder whether or not this is an effective advertising method. There is a part of the human mind that is discerning. But there is also a part of our mind that takes in all information, regardless of sarcasm or irony. I think that showing the phrase "IE sucks" repeatedly is only going to hurt their long term prospects.

http://believeneptunemonologue.blogspot.com/2013/10/internet-explorer-advertisement.html

Internet Explorer Advertisement

While on the topic of Internet Explorer advertisements, I decided to share this commercial as well. It consists of a boy sitting in his room commenting on blogs and tweeting about Internet Explorer and how it sucks (similar to what we've been talking about with people leaving hateful comments to get reactions and conversations started).

I like how Internet Explorer makes their ads, acknowledging that they have a reputation attached to their name. They even show the boy typing "Internet Exploder". They use wit and humor to let the audience that they know how they are perceived in the world, but how this perception should now be altered since they have made so many changes to the website over the past few years.

By the end of the commercial, after the other bloggers continuously post about the benefits that Internet Explorer has, he changes his mind and blogs that "IE sucks...less." Then the screen flashes to the symbol of Internet Explorer and the words say, "Progress. Comebacks come in many shapes and sizes," proving that it will take some time for people to make adjustments, and for Internet Explorer to make a comeback and be a competition to all of the other internet browsers with better reputations.\