Media Production and Technology Unit 7 - Exploring Interactive Media

Today we was asked by our tutor to complete a new unit called 

EXPLORING INTERACTIVE MEDIA 

Task Brief : In this task I want you to look at different ways that we interact with digital platforms.

I decided to choose the two social media sites Facebook and Youtube.

Facebook is a social network profile which allows you to communicate to friends, family and people around the world. On Facebook you can do variety of things such as:  

• Send photos to each other
• Share Videos 
• Post your thoughts on your profile or also know as your timeline 
• Promote your business 
• Play Games
• Add photos and create an album for memories 
• Watch videos 
• Be updated of when people post things on their timeline

And many more things. 

The History of Facebook

Mark Zukerberg

Facebook was established on February the 4th by a man called Mark Zukerberg along with his Harvard roommates, Eduaro Saverin, Andrew Mccollum, and Dustin Moskovits. 

Facebook restricted the website memberships at first to Harvard students but then it later branched out to different colleges in the Boston area, It also branched out to the Ivy league and Stanford University. After this it was then seen as a website that gave a vast amount of universities and later high school students support.

On the 26th of September, 2006 was when anyone the age of thirteen year old was able to become a registered member of the website.

Before Facebook

Before Facebook was even established Mark Zukerberg produced a website called FaceSmash on the date October the 3rd 2006 when he was a second year student at Harvard University. 

The Harvard Crimson said that the website was very similar to the dating website Hot or not and said that Facesmash used photos placing them next to each other which gave users the opportunity to rate which student is hotter. For Mark Zukerberg to produce Facesmash, he hacked into guarded areas of the Harvard computer network and duplicated private dormitory id images. The website was reached to different campus group list servers and was ceased by the Harvard Administration. This resulted in Mark Zukerberg facing exclusion and charges such as breach of security,violation of copyrights, and individual privacy, but the charges were dropped. 

This made Mark Zukerberg try and develop more on this project that semester by forming a social study tool early for an art exam. He uploaded approximately 500 Augustan images to a website with a comment section present, he then presented it to his classmates and they began taking notes.

That following school semester, Mark Zukerberg began writing a code for a brand new website and on February the 4th 2002, Thefacebook.com was launched.

First glimpse of thefacebook.com once produced.

Mark Zukerberg faced another charge where Harvard students stated that he lied to them and made them believe he was producing a website called Harvardconnection.com. They stated how he used them for their ideas. The three students made a report to the Harvard Crimson and it was investigated. He faced a lawsuit in 2008 for 1.2 million shares of his site. 

The name facebook was taken from the sheets of papers produced to freshmans (1st year students) and staffs. In 24 hours 1,200 Harvard students had signed up to the website, and after one month over half of the the university students who have been taking their first degree or have completed it  had created an account.

In August 2005 the domain was edited to the Facebook.com after the address was bought for 200,000 dollars. US highschools gained access to sign up and the website branched out worldwide even reaching UK universities. In 2007 this was when the site had increased and users were able to do a lot of things on the site such as, giving gifts to their friends and communicating. It begin to be a site that was not just used by university students. 

Facebook Controversy 

A story on the mirror about a girl who ended her life and received hurtfull messages on her Facebook and Snapchat page by two boys.

Generally there has been some controversy when it comes to using the social media site Facebook. Some people use Facebook and start to abuse people through it also known as cyber bullying.

Pros & Cons of Facebook

People tend to do a lot of negative things on social media such as make :

Hates pages 

People may use Facebook to express their hatred for a certain person. Most people that create these sort of pages have only intentions to ''troll people'' and be to an internet troll. They do this with blatant intentions of trying to make people feel bad about themselves.

People who are ''internet trolls'' tend to post un-related topics on people's social media pages in order to cause an argument, or a fight, they do this as they want a reaction to happen from the person they have trolled, as it amuses them all this drama and attention. 

Revenge Porn  

Revenge porn has been a topic that has been in the spotlight for quite a long duration of time.

Revenge porn is the action that takes place where someone posts someones nudes over the internet or on a porn website. People who normally do this activity, do this in intentions of harming someone and embrassing someone through the internet. In most cases it is normally the woman who is the victim, you rarely see cases of men who have been a victim of revenge porn.

When the person posts the unclothed picture on either a social media site or a porn site, this gives the chance for anyone to see the picture and comment on it. Most of the comments I have seen are quite awful, people would say things such as '' I would rape this person'' or say they're coming to this persons house to kill them. Making the victim feel depressed and uncapable of moving forward from this suitation. This could ruin the victim's reputation, what is on the internet stays on the internet so this picture could be seen by her boss, family and friends, and even criminals.

Fake profiles 

Fake profiles have been present a lot on social media websites. In most cases some people are unaware of who they are talking too. Their is even a hit tv show called Catfish where people are helped out to find out wether theyre talking to are really who they say they are.

 

The word Catfish means someone who is pretending to be someone they're not. They do this by using fake images stolen by someone elses account. Many people Catfish other people for various reasons such as 

• They're embrassed to show their true self to a person
• They want to intentionally harm a person 
• They want to troll someone 
• They are in love with someone but they are scared to show their real identity.

Pros of Facebook

Most of the pros I already listed in the introduction of Facebook but ill list it again and develop further on them.

Promote your business

Facebook is a great social media website where you can promote your business! People can promote their business by making a Facebook page and they can even gain some supporters through paying a small fee for advertisement. Once your page is produced you have a variety of an options and ways you can gain attention towards your business.  Along with promoting a business, you could also promote yourself if you are an aspiring singer, actor, or dancer by making  a page.

Communicate to people from different countries 

Facebook is good for long distance relationships and for speaking to relatives who are abroad. The website allows people to :

• Send messages to one another
• Video call each other
• Send pictures to one another
• Send videos to one another

In my opinion Facebook is perfect for communication, as that is what it was built for, for people to communicate to each other.

You can share your thoughts and opinions

Facebook is a place where you can express your thoughts and opinions towards others.  You could find that you have similarites towards someone else on Facebook and this could transiton to you joining a group or a club on Facebook. You could be yourself on Facebook and share and like anything you like from your profile without being ridiclued for it

 

Youtube is known to be a website that allows users to share videos to one another.

You could say that Youtube is a social network website as on the site, people are allowed to leave comments on videos and messages to other users of this site.  But other than Youtube is highly used to just upload videos.

The different between Youtube and Facebook

 I decided to make a chart and to write the different features that these websites had and also simmilarites that it had. What I discovered the most  is that Youtube is a website that is mostly built of video sharing and making, its more of a site that promotes video making and helps people to promote  themselves  through a channel. Whereas Facebook is a social networking site where people just want to to communicate to people, add photos, and even videos on their timeline.

Facebook consists of a lot of communication,  Facebook is just one big chatroom where people interact,whereas Youtube consists of the circulation of clips. You could reply to things on Youtube however you would not use Youtube as a form to communicate to people. You would just use Youtube to brand yourself, watch videos, and upload them.

Of course they were similarites such as you can send people messages etc and that you can share videos but it is very generic for websites to have some sort of method where you can share things.

The History of Youtube 

Youtube was produced in February 2005 by three Paypal workers

  Steven Chen

 Chad Hurley                                                 Jawed Karim

Date Published : April 23rd 2005

Interesting fact : Jawed Karim was known as one the first peope to upload a video on youtube in 2005 once Youtube was produced. His video was 18 seconds and in the video he was just talking about his trip at the zoo.

That is the original video that he had uploaded and if you visted the video now you would see that it has 30,046,428 million views.

 

 

 Layout of Youtube in 2005

The content of this website varies from people publishing music videos, video diaries, educational videos and even movies along with their trailers. 

People have the freedom on youtube to comment on videos, thumbs up or thumbs down on a video basically stating if they liked the video or not. Reports say that Chad Hurley one of the co-founders and Steven Chen expanded the concept of youtube during the early days in 2005, This was mainly because they had problems sharing a video that had been recorded at Steven Chen's Apartment, However Karim said that he never showed up at the party and stated how the idea was not formed like that. 

Karim stated that the idea of Youtube came from events that could not easily be seen online such as the infamous Janet Jackson super bowl performance in 2004 with Justin Timberlake, where he touched her breast and it fell out of her attire.

and the tragic incident in 2004, where an indian ocean tsunami occured in Indonesia.

 ↓

He wanted to create a website where you could find this clips which resluted in the idea of a video sharing website. 

It has been said that Chad Hurley and Steven Chen's ideas was to make Youtube a video online dating programme which was inspired by the dating website hot or not. Which is kind of similiar to Mark Zukerberg idea, as before he made facebook he made Facesmash which was said by The Harvard Crimson that it resemble the website hot or not.

(The website hot or no)

The domain name www.youtube.com, was finally launched on feburary the 15th 2005 and since then the website has progressed over the following months and has developed into a video sharing website rather than a dating site.

Pros & Cons on Youtube

Along with Facebook this website also has some pros and cons when using it.

The cons of Youtube is that:

Publishing of fights on it

People tend to post violent videos on Youtube, which could consist of people having fights, people having arguments and many more. Nobody wants to be published on Youtube without consent so one of the cons is that your personal moment could be published for the world to see if you're not careful of who is in your surroundings.

Anyone can see your videos if you publish it on Public (Con & Pro)

When uploading a video on public on Youtube, it gives anyone the permission to see it, comment on it, and rate it. This means that people can write what they want negative or positive. It is very common to see Youtube comments with a lot of comments that are bad or indecent. So if you're a sensitive person i recommend to put your videos on private or unlisted.

The con is that anyone can see it from any country and you can get views, because of that.

Vulgar videos 

On Youtube you may stumble or actcidently get a video that recommends you to watch it. On Youtube they are alot of videos that are quite vulgar and not for teens or children too see.  These videos consist of people :

• Harming Animals - (ripping their fur off or burning them)
• Females acting in a provocative way - (Stripping or dancing)

 The Pros of Youtube is that :


It had Educational aspects to it 

On Youtube there is a range of videos you could browse and view if you needed help on different types of subjects, you were studying. They are tons of Youtubers (Youtube users) who provide educational videos and tips to their viewers wether it be makeup tips, DIY tips, or weight loss tips.

 It could be your source of income 

If you gain a lot of views on your videos and a certain amount of subscribers, you could get paid for every video you make. They have been many youtubers who have made a huge income of Youtube, enough to the point where some of them have quit their jobs. If you are quite entertaining to watch and popular on Youtube, Youtube will start paying you.

Bibliography : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facebook

 http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2007/jul/25/media.newmedia

 http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3043651/Parents-teen-committed-suicide-suffering-vicious-bullying-Facebook-demand-greater-protection-kids-online.html

 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/YouTube

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jawed_Karim

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ckPPOpqNVc

 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2004_Indian_Ocean_earthquake_and_tsunami

https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=janet+jackson+superbowl&safe=active&client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla:en-GB:official&biw=1273&bih=809&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwig6t7zl9TLAhVKaxQKHS4KCtMQ_AUIBigB#imgrc=d2iZ04MewSOthM%3A

https://hotornot.com/

https://www.wow247.co.uk/2016/03/21/leafy-youtube-bullying-controversy-whats-happening-and-why/

http://www.surfnetkids.com/tech/1197/pros-and-cons-of-youtube/
http://puresight.com/Useful-tools/the-pros-and-cons-of-facebook.html