Important April Dates

April 1: You must meet with me by this date if you want to revise your first paper.

April 10: First draft of paper #2 due

April 17: Final draft of paper must be emailed to me by midnight of this date.

If you would like to visit the writing center before submitting either of these drafts, please make your appointment well in advance.

MSN Space Summary

One big reason made MSN Space become so popular is probably because of the massive uses of MSN Messenger all over the world. It connects the space straight to people’s messenger. Just click on one friend’s name, people can see the newest updates in their friend’s MSN Space. MSN Space is not only a usual blog for people to write everyday journals. It is actually a multifunction online personal space for people to learn, have fun, and communicate with each other. There are just so many things to do with the MSN Space. Unlike many other blog spaces, MSN Space provides various templates and designs for people to choose and decorate their own spaces. Users can randomly change the way how their spaces look as they wish. Almost anything, in the space, MSN will allow users to play around. From the smallest mouse pointer to the whole background design and templates, if users have enough knowledge of HTML then they almost can do anything with their space. Even set their personal picture as the background. In fact, I learned my own HTML skill from building up my MSN Space. It even helped me got an A in my computer science class. Also MSN Space is a place can keep users’ privacy efficiently. Users can choose whoever they want to share their spaces with. They have options to open their space to everyone or just few friends or only to themselves. Overall, to me MSN Space is really a great place to keep on with my daily or monthly journals while having lots funs with.

MySpace Summary

MySpace is a social networking site which in three short years has became one of the top five most visited sites in the US. Unlike its predecessors, for one example Friendster, MySpace did “not have pre-conceived notions about how users wanted to interact with the site”. The users of the site were given the freedom to choose why and how they wanted to use the site. “MySpace listened to user feedback and quickly iterated the product [the users requested] with rapid development cycles.” At the users request MySpace added applications like blogs, comment boards, message boards and IM (Instant Messaging). MySpace became very popularity among teenage users because of its freedom and attentiveness to their users. As more and more teens joined MySpace it caught the attention of large corporations who were interested in it as more than just a social networking tool. These large corporations recognized the potential of social networking sites as great marketing tools. Corporations started paying for advertisement space on MySpace. Today there are advertisements everywhere on MySpace; there are even restrictions on the users prohibiting them from blocking these ads.

Tencent Summery

In 1998, Pony Ma, the co-founder of China's hosttest Internet company created the "QQ"which has reached more than 100 million users, or nearly 80 percent of the market.Tencent is also worrying the Chinese government, which strictly regulates the Internet and is wary of the Web’s ability to mobilize huge online political communities or perhaps to nurture underground economies. A few weeks ago, Q-Coins available which allow customers to shop online for games, music and even virtual furniture. It also an example for the convergence culture because it just use as the massenger at first, now Tencent combines aspects of the social networking site MySpace, the video sharing site YouTube and the online virtual world of Second Life, it make America’s biggest Internet companies, like Yahoo, Google and eBay, have largely flopped in China.Tencent earns the bulk of its revenue from the entertainment services it sells through the Internet and mobile phones. Next, in the United States, roughly 70 percent of Internet users are over the age of 30; in China, it is the other way around — 70 percent of users here are under 30, according to the investment bank Morgan Stanley. Furthermore, in 2006, the Q-cooins rised the profit of Tencent from 200% to 221%. Finally, the article wrote about the Pony Ma. I like his logion:“There are a lot of opportunities in the market now,” he said. “The leader of the market today may not necessarily be the leader tomorrow.”

Seeing Corporate Fingerprints in Wikipedia Edits

MySpace Conspiracy?

Assignments for Thursday, March 27

1. Dennis, Melody, and Hugo will post summaries of our discussion by tomorrow at noon. The rest of you will comment before our next class.

2. Read articles posted by Kryiakos and Claudia.

3. Finally, read Solove's Chapter 2 to page 43.