History of Facebook

Facebook was founded on February 4, 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg. During his studies, Mark with his friends invented a project called "TheFacebookAfter two weeks of service and great success, Mark decided to extend the operation of the service to other universities.

In August 2004, Facebook expanded operations to over 30 universities in the United States. Currently there are registered over 450 million people worldwide. Every month, more than 1 million users share their photos and10 million videos!

Mark Elliot Zuckerberg was born May 14, 1984 in White Plains. When Mark was 6 years old started his adventure with computers, he took private lessons the programming. Mark in 2002, graduated from Phillips Exeter Academy, then began his studies at Harvard. The first draft of Mark was called "Course match" he allowed to see a list of students assigned to the same year. The next project was called "Facemash.com" this was a party-type rating site, where you can rate photos of students at Harvard. Porta work only four hours because the university blocked access to the Internet. The next idea was created after splitting with Mark's girlfriend a project called "The Facebook" then the name was changed "Facebook". In summer 2004, Mark moved to Palo Alto in California, where he rented a house which was also the first agency Facebook. In California he met Peter Thiel who was the founder of the famous Napster. Mark Peter gave many ideas how to develop Facebook, he got shares in the stock.

A few months later, the office was moved to the center of Palo Alto.In 2007, Microsoft acquired Facebook share of 1.6% of the value of shares U.S. $240mln. Mark in 2008 became the youngest billionaire according to Forbs magazine. He was on the 735 spot with a net worth of $ 1.5 billion. The Polish version of Facebook was created in 2008. In October 2010 on the big screen came the movie "The Social Network" which describes the history of the site. Currently, Facebook is worth $ 25 billions U.S.D.

Do you have an account on Facebook?
What do you think of social networks?

Have you watched the movie "The Social Network"?

Do you think Mark Zuckerberg is a genius?
Do you think people have a double life in the real world and on the Web?

OMAN - great escape - part 1

Traveling is my biggest hobby, especially visiting foreign countries, discovering their culture and the most beautiful places. I like to try their regional cuisine and listen to stories from local inhabitants. This time I have had a pleasure to visit a beautiful part of Middle East - Oman, country bordering with United Arab Emirates and Jemen, on the Arabian Sea and Indian Ocean.



My journey has started in the biggest city of Oman and its capital - Muscat. This amazing city is located on the coast of the Arabian Sea (part of Indian Ocean) and surrounded by high mountains.



The most fascinating part of the city is old town with the Sultan Palace and two forts that guard it. They are called Jalali and Mirani and they were erected by the Portuguese in about 15th century. The Sultan Palace seems to make the biggest impression at sunset when the sun’s rays are reflecting in the golden columns of the building.


http://www.internetstones.com/image-files/sultan-qaboos-palace-muscat-oman-entrance.jpg


While walking along the streets of Oman you can notice many highlights of the city that will catch your eye. One of them is the Grand Mosque of Sultan Qaboos. Those huge structure is an incredible show of lights and colors. The interior of this Muslim temple is decorated by the biggest, hand made carpet on the world. While visiting Muscat You have to notice that open hours for not Muslims visitors are till 11 am.


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Other very important landmarks in the city that you will not want to miss are the huge port and Arabian souk (bazaar) in Mutrah. Those old districts of Muscat have made a great impression on me. Their seemed to be like from tales of "thousand and one nights". Shopkeepers from Mutrah souk offer many Arabian items, spices and souvenirs such as antique Omani guns and jewelery, saffron and cashmere scarves. I discover a lot of great and cheap small restaurants. They can be found on almost each corner in this city but what is very important they are open just before sunset. So if you start your trip around the city don’t forget about preparing your own sandwiches;)


http://sayami.de/images/20090804184602_oman_mutrah.jpg


http://tripideas.org/wp-content/uploads/2010/11-oman-muttrah-souq-muttrah-city-oman-2ba50c.jpg/




The city is full of new constructions and new buildings that appear each day. A new project of Sultan Qaboos is an opera house in the heart of Muscat which will attract many tourists in search of a cultural experience. Shopping centers, new housing estates and hotels also are part of the city's development especially due to the fact that Oman becomes a new touristic destination.


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Muscat is amazing especially during sunset while red sun lights are illuminating white buildings surrounded with high mountains.

You can get to know more in my next post.


Have you ever been in Middle East? Where?
What is your the most "exotic" trip experience?

Children of marketing - Part 3

… place like Starbucks. Anyone who has ever been to London knows that there are Starbucks every five meters. Those places are populated with people from lower to middle class that treat it like we treat McDonald's nowadays - as a relatively cheap place to grab something to drink or eat.

(image source: http://blog.jakubkazmierczyk.pl)

Of course down here in our little country Starbucks , which is a destination where you go if you want to show off. In order to do so you need to grab a camera, go to Starbucks, order a coffee and make a photo of yourself holding the cup. Make sure the logo is visible! What's even cooler is that you can put your MacBook or iPhone in the picture to maximize the amount of awe you will induce in your friends. Now put it on your Facebook and profit. Couldn't be simpler! On a more serious note it is scary to think that if we had Facebook or Nasza-Klasa seventeen years ago we would see photos of people holding McDonald's cups. I am sure that Starbucks will eventually share McDonald's fate when more coffee places are opened, more people start using it, thus lowering its elitist and trendy vector. Right now though it remains the no. 1 place to show off in Warsaw.

(image source: http://2.bp.blogspot.com)

Another thing after electronics and food is the clothing. There are many different brands that are at most of average prestige in the country of their origin but are absurdly overpriced and held in a very high esteem in Poland or in Europe in general. The most prominent example is arguably the Tommy Hilfiger brand. I've done a little research to compare the prices of the same piece of clothing sold in USA and in the European Union. I've chosen a nice looking, green sweater. In the American online store the sweater costs 50 USD (~150 zloty) while in Europe one has to pay 100 (~400 zloty) euros. That's almost three times as much for the same exact thing! The reason for it is exactly the same as was the reason for the Apple products. In Poland brands like Tommy Hilfiger (or, for example, Lacoste) are considered to be premium clothing while in the United States they are associated with regular clothes (like Diverse or Reserved in our country). In other words, you pay for the ability to show off the logo in front of others. You know what to do now. Go to your Facebook and check the photos of your friends. The probability of finding a picture with a screaming white, red, blue Tommy Hilifger logo is very, very high.

(image source: http://www.dealio.com)

To sum up: many people nowadays are driven by a need to show off in front of their friends. It could be a new worthless digital gadget, a plastic cup from an ordinary coffee place that pretends to be something more or an overpriced pair of jeans but the idea is always the same: to get something that is considered to be:

• trendy


• premium (more expensive than a regular thing)


• craved by others (for example, your Facebook friends!)


• heavily marketed (you need it even if you don't know that yet)

Eventually, current show off brands will become common (like McDonald's in the past) and less exciting but there always will be something new to replace them. Because how else would you prove your friends that your life is that much better than theirs?

Questions:

• Let’s imagine following situation: you and your boyfriend/girlfriend are sitting in Starbucks opposite to each other. Now, do you talk via your mouth or via iChat? Oh, I know you can think how stupid I am but I have seen such situations many times. Is it normal thing? :/


• What is your favorite café?


• What kind of photos are presented on your facebook (or nk) profile? Is it your car, 60 inch TV, bottles of vodka (very popular) or maybe just you and your dog?:)

Children of marketing - Part 2

Let's start with something simple. I want you to think of a type of notebook you think is most trendy nowadays. What was your answer? Of course, MacBook. Now think of a most trendy phone. iPhone. Most trendy mp3 player? iPod. Most trendy tablet? iPad. Now guess what all of those products have in common. That's right. They are all manufactured by Apple. We have reached an absurd level of worship towards that company and Steve Jobs. It doesn't matter that MacBooks are manufactured from poor quality components and enjoy one of the highest failure rates in the whole electronics market (even higher than the average failure rate of Xbox 360 which is around 30%!). It doesn't matter that those computers are highly overpriced. It doesn't matter that there are cheaper, faster and better alternatives for every single Apple product (apart from, maybe, iPad). It doesn't matter that Apple uses a lot of monopolistic practices like centralizing the distribution of software on their products (meaning you either use Apple's App Store or you can't sell your creations at all). That is because MacBooks, iPhones and so on are icons. Icons created by superior marketing. Everybody has it! Superstars and celebrities use it! Everyone seems to be telling you that your life is worthless without an Apple product. A brand new iPhone 4, no matter how crappy it is, will show everyone what a cool and trendy person you are! It will make you much better than your neighbour. This movie below quite accurately illustrates a typical iPhone buyer attitude:

Now check your Facebook (if you have an account there, of course). There is a good chance that you will find a person on your friend list that has a photo uploaded of his Apple product. That proves a simple rule that social status icons are worthless if you cannot show them to other people. There's a reason why new iPhones add "sent from my iPhone" by default to each text message sent.

(image source: http://www.pastemagazine.com/)

If you think that nowadays people show off only with their digital dongles then you are mistaken! The second rule of a child of marketing is to eat and drink at trendy places and be sure that other people see it. Think of coffee. You cannot drink a simple coffee at a local bar and expect it to impress your friends. No, no, you need to go to a cool place like … (be continued).

Questions:

• Would you like to have any “quietly brilliant” Apple Product or may already have one? Yes? Tell us which one and why is it better than others?


• Do you like coffee? :)

Children of marketing - Part 1

Did you know that when McDonald’s first appeared in Poland in 1992 (in Warsaw, Marszałkowska street) it was a favorite place to eat of the local upper class? The food served there was as junky and unhealthy as it is now but it did not matter. McDonald's was a brand associated with the 'glorious' West and people went there to show others that they eat American food. Not much has changed since then. Of course, McDonald's reputation quickly deteriorated but new brands and products have emerged and became a symbol of social and material status for the people. Let's take a look at some of them now.

(image source: http://www.networkingaudiovideo.com/)

How all of this started in our country? Ironically, the one to blame is the universally hated Telekomunikacja Polska S.A. (TPSA) and their famous internet access: Neostrada. It was the first non dial-up (where you paid one, fixed bill at the end of the month instead of paying per minute) connection that reached the masses. Suddenly many people, especially the young ones, were exposed to the vast depths of the Internet. The term 'Dzieci Neostrady' (Children of Neostrada) was born. That Polish piece of the World Wide Web suddenly became a very crowded place. Before it had been mainly for engineers and hobbyists. After Neostrada hit, an average user had to deal with immature children, raging teenagers, frustrated adult women, frustrated adult men and many different creeps and strange people on day-to-day basis.

image source: http://blog.bachmatiuk.eu/)

Neostrada was a first step towards a Polish global village. People started pretending that they were someone else than they really were in the real life. Someone better, more confident, more beautiful, more successful. It was difficult, however, to broadcast that brand new self to the wider public. That is when Nasza-Klasa and Facebook appeared.. One individual could now have 'hundreds' of friends and show them how hip, how cool she/he is. And so it began. Below is a good clip illustrating this situation:

Questions:

• Have you ever had an account on naszaklasa or facebook? Why?


• How many “virtual” friends do you have?


• How many of them are your real-life friends? (Keeping regular contact etc)

Research

INTRODUCTION

"The youth today ... when I was a young child used to ...." I am sure that you have heard similar statements many times. Thinking about this, I started to search for knowledge about what other people mean by "my times". In this way, I came across a website Nonsensopedia (Polish encyclopedia of humor), where we read:

My times is a period in world history, when everything was better. Times when men were real men, women, real women (...). Before the war, in every village was coal. "My times" can be pre-war period or anywhere, when we were young.

During the search we came across the rankings list of events and trends in popular culture from the past years. They included, among others "Top 30 of the 90s" and "Crazy years of 90s.". Intrigued by the past I decided to examine in an objective way possibly with scientific methods, distinct of the leisure time preferences, tastes, dreams and needs of young people born in the 90s and the generation growing up today. The examination covered the four groups of people: our peers born in the years 1983-1989, their parents, current primary school pupils and their parents.

Do you remember that song?

Dr Alban - It's My Life

With my schoolmates we had 86 meetings. With each person we made an interview and filled in a questionnaire. We analyzed the results , using software designed to analyze qualitative and quantitative data. As a result of our research we have developed a report showing the changes that have occurred over the past 15 years. I would like to present you the summary of the one part from our research.

Mr President - Coco Jambo

CHILDREN born in 90s
MULTIPLAYER GENERATION

"Multiplayer" is a word derived from the world of computer games in which multiple users simultaneously play. Our research shows that in the 90s most games had a group character. We realized that these games had only "sense" when a lot of kids participated in a competition. The media such as the Internet, television, newspapers - did not provide as large number of ideas on how to manage your free time. The children themselves invented games and looked for resources to implement them.

They had to use their own imagination to create something new. Let’s take for the example temporary mini-baseball field, which was made from the rocks found nearby the playground. It was sufficient only to have a ball and a baseball bat or a tennis ball, to occupy large group of boys and girls. This would not be possible without the other children- friendships determined social capital, which was needed to create a successful play. That's why we felt that the phrase " multiplayer generation " best describes the nature of past years.

• If you could make a rating of the most popular things of the 90s what would it be?

• How do you think – what are the leisure time preferences, tastes, dreams and needs of current primary school pupils?

Another feature of the 90s generation is the social capital which means to have friends ­- preferably a large circle. This follows from the fact that the finalization of an idea for a play could not be often done without the aid of others. Children with one another exchange their collected Printed Notes or the notebooks called “Golden thoughts”. These games were a form of establishing new social networks and / or entry into other groups. In the 90’s there was also a very popular game called “the cow”. If anyone ever wondered why at 4.15 p.m. the life in the yard disappeared, then we want to provide the answer – we should blame emitted at Polonia 1 cartoons such as Gigi La Trottola, Sally The Witch, Capitan Tsubasa, Tiger Mask Nisei or Sailor Moon.

We have to remember to say something about the console PEGASUS which gathered groups of children wanting to shoot with a gun to ducks, ride in tanks or play Mario, although the games were not explicitly provided for the possibility of playing in such a large group of people (usually they were for a single game player or two players).

Children had also many fun playing in “the house” building it from just a few blankets and the table. This state of affairs in our opinion, was a result of the times in which was then Poland.

The 90s were characterized by scarcity in objects games; however, examined people mention that they were very happy then . Forms of leisure activities are not just confined to the backyard playground. It was a period when the Polish economy was just opened to the world. As a result, the offer of products aimed at children was much smaller and less varied than what is available to kids today.

• What were your favourite games when you were a child?
• Do you think that multiplayer generation was more creative?

Also, the media played a much smaller role than today in shaping attitudes and beliefs of minors. Many respondents believe that the lack of wide range of toys forced their children to use imagination and creativity.

Toys on the market in the 90s had a significantly higher price than at present. However, the realization of children's dreams of those years required less money, due to a smaller selection of available toys / products. Children did not have much choice in what they would like to have. Most frequently cited toys were: bike, ball, Barbie doll and a computer.

HOT TOP five desired toys of 90s:

1. bike
2. football
3. Barbie
4. PC
5. tamagochi

In summary, children's games in past years required more creativity and had a group character. Children had significantly more free time to play. Most respondents from the generation growing up in the 90s recall their early youth with fondness because it was a carefree period of freedom, fun and time spent with friends.

• Can You create the hot top five desired toys of current times?
• How do You ting – are there any differences in lifestyle of these two generations?
• If so - what are the reasons of it?