How FB changed the world (Notes)

Tunisia (sidi bouzid)- December 2010- Fruit seller burnt himself alive in front of the town hall after police beat him up and no one was from the town hall was willing to listen to him…started the protests.

Tv reported nothing when the protest started, press was censored.

Police were arresting people filming.

Tunisia- 2 million Facebook users, 90% had mobile phones.

People posted videos on FB, then TV news started broadcasting as they went viral. Al Jazeera.

Streets with police and streets with no police were posted on twitter to direct people to Mohammed Ali 

square.

150 People died, protest - live stream online.

Ben Ali (president) fled to Saudi Arabia.

28 days from first protest to bring down the regime.

Egypt (Cairo)- Khaled Saeed killed by police (June 2010)

Mubarak didn’t see the internet as a threat as it had no high hierarchy/ system- FB planned protest Jan 25 2011- 40,000 people (Tahir Square)

Used FB to trick police, gave different locations of where the protest were planned so police would be all spread out.

20% Egyptians had net. - Cleverly spread the news through taxi drivers.

Jan 28- Planned protests- Government turned off internet, mobile phone coverage. More than 200,000 people gathered.

Mubarak used texts to influence people to stop( Vodafone).

Mubarak sent in vandals and his supporters to fight protestors.

The army supported protestors.

Feb 11 – Mubarak regime ended.

Weekly News

Twitter under fire in France

Twitter is coming under increasing pressure from the French government over homophobic, racist and anti-semitic tweets. The government has suggested Twitter should actively fight against the publication of tweets containing hate-speech on its platform in France, even though the ‘micro-blogging site defends itself as a champion of free speech’. In recent times there has been a trend of offensive hashtags in France ‘these included #SiMonFilsEstGay (If my son was gay) – in which users speculated on the worst things they would inflict on a gay relative – and #SiMaFilleRameneUnNoir (If my daughter brings home a black man), #UnBonJuif (a good Jew) and #SiJetaisNazi (If I were a Nazi).’ The government argued that the content of many of these tweets was illegal under French laws against publishing racist and discriminatory hate-speak. In October, Twitter agreed to remove the offensive hashtags. But its lawyer, Alexandra Neri, told the court that users' details would not be handed over.

My Opinion: Twitter has to be monitored in some way or form as a result these offensive hashtags should never be allowed to circulate the net. I know there are many active users on twitter but ‘with great power, comes great responsibility’ and due to its popularity it should be doing better to monitor tweets.

Weekly News

Twitter is preparing to take the company public in 2014 and could be worth $11.Max Wolff analyst of Greencrest, specialist financial researchers, said ‘said Twitter's value has also been swollen by speculation that Apple is interested in acquiring the company. Twitter was rumoured to float this year, but will not have been encouraged into a hasty move by disappointing performances of both Facebook and Zynga. Both, Facebook and Zynga, have struggled to convince investors. Facebook's failed to convince that, the business is ready to make money as consumers shift to mobile, and in Zynga's case that they are capable of producing enough hit games. Facebook's shares are down 26% since the IPO, while Zynga's value has dropped by 75%.

My Opinion: I believe that social networking websites are trying to overachieve. The likes of Face Book and Twitter are trying to make more revenue than they already do which I believe in the long run is not going to be possible. I think Twitter should learn from the mistake Face Book made recently.