The End To High School Reunions

 

    High School is an interesting place, you don’t really learn a ton, the whole construction behind High School is that you learn how to learn, you learn the social dramas you’re going to face for the rest of your life and basically in a general sense learn who you are and where you fit in this world. This transformation takes time and there is a very real distinct evolution that occurs in each and every student, even those that seem to not have evolved at all have done so, everyone takes something away from High School, some love it, some hate it, but in the end one thing is true for everyone, High School was a little preview of what you would face for the rest of your life. 

     

      This introduction to High School is important, the fact that through your four years you experience a bit of the world at large is a big deal and the people you share those experiences with become a large deal in your life later on. It’s not like you talk to everyone you knew in your class or that you particularly care about any of them but there is a thread there, a chord that keeps you all in touch and thus the High School reunions came about as a logical conclusion to this ever occurring phenomenon. High School reunions have always been a bit silly, there are always some people that care a ton about them and some people that could care less about them. There are those that have grown in stature and as people, and those that have wrecked their lives and clearly need help. In short it feels like you’re back in High School again. 

       The Concept behind a reunion was simple, after graduation the majority of your High School class will disperse and you won’t talk to them again, some will stick around and you’ll see them from time to time, and if you’re lucky like myself then you’ll remain close friends with your best friends from High School even years after graduation. The fact is that reunions where created so that people in the class could come together and catch up on life, where they could be whoever they choose to be and either mock the event or have fun with the event, the whole point was that you haven’t heard news about one another in years and want to catch up now. Even though High School Reunions are a good idea they can’t be executed anymore, they no longer are relevant, I predict that reunions will soon become a thing of the past. 

       The concept here is simple actually, reunions will soon be a thing of the past because of one life changing bit of advancement, Facebook. Social Networking has made the whole point of High School reunions become obsolete, everyone is connected to everyone and by the click of a button you can find out what they are doing with their lives, who they are married to, what job they have, where they studied, and if you feel like you can even have a conversation with them and learn all the grimy details about their personal life or marriage, the world got way small and reunions began to be unnecessary. Here’s something that would not surprise me one bit, Facebook High School reunions, I’ll be very surprised if this is not already happening on the site, it’s just the logical step, it’s convenient, simple, cheap and you only engage the people you really feel like engaging, sounds like a dream really. 

    High School reunions are kind of a drag, yeah there’s the element of seeing some people you really love and have missed over the years, yeah there’s the element of being able to catch up and have spouses being introduced to you and so forth but with Facebook in the picture all this meet and greet becomes redundant, someone will go “hey I just had a kid” and you’ll be thinking “yeah I know, you only posted 50 freaking pictures and blew up my feed with the little guy”, it just ruins the whole point, thus I propose the prediction that in coming generations reunions will be a thing of the past, because, well, they are a thing of the past, they are outdated and silly, specially with us all now being friends with each other and connected through social networking, the point is just not there anymore.

     Go go social networking, destroying bad traditions and allowing us to stay close with people we love and those we don’t all in one place in harmony. Hope you had a fantastic weekend and that this week might be awesome.

  Love from your humble blogger, 

SOPA/PIPA Vs The Internet

      There is something to be said about the power of the Internet, the ability that the Internet community has is paramount. From celebrity scandals to bringing injustice to justice the Internet community pulls through every time. Though this can also be a force for bad in the end the good out-weights the bad when it comes to defending people's rights and bringing those who prey on others to justice, this is the power of the Internet now has. It truly is amazing to see people come together to fight against a mutual threat, this is not something that could be a reality anywhere else except on the Internet, the numbers alone are astounding, but also the impact that the community has could not be imitated by anyone outside of the Internet, there is power in the web.

    There are many cases that illustrate this phenomenon for instance last week there was a hate crime that was video taped and put on the web, a few kids beating up on an Asian kid, the video was graphic and crude but it was put on the web. After seeing the video the web stood up in revolt for this act and sought to identify the boys in the video, this whole thing happened in a day, it took one day for the Internet to ID, send the info to the police and have them all arrested. Later on we came to find out that this was a retaliation beat down being delivered, for the Asian kid had previous gathered friends to beat down the other kids, though there is no proof of that thus the kid in the video getting beat up was not charged with anything, the other children and the girl holding the camera all got arrested though. This is an important case for two reasons, 1. we were talking about how racism is still around us so here it is (exhibit A) and 2. how we should be watchful of these situations, but also  2a. how people coming together to solve the issue got it resolved in a day. The Internet is a powerful thing.

   There was a more graphic case last year, one that brought the Internet to a full riot, so much so that even the 4chan guys jumped on this and brought this girl to justice. Last year there was a girl in Bosnia that decided that posting a video of her drowning puppies in a lake was a good idea, and said video made its way through various sites within the web. Needless to say people where outraged, the hate this girl received was palpable. No one knew who this girl was, no one knew where she lived, all they did was put out a man-hunt on her and it took two days, where talking two days time, for the Internet to not only find her and get the police to arrest her but also also her Facebook got hacked and spammed, all her online communities where shut down and she was brought to justice. This is a beautiful thing, the fact that people have found a medium to come together and fight for good, this was a case that brought tears to people's eyes, a true portrayal of hope, hope that we can still come together and fight for a common cause, but also it demonstrated the power present in the web.

    Last week Reddit organized a blackout for SOPA/PIPA that was adopted by many major online companies like Google, Huffington Post, Wikipedia, and even XKCD made a cartoon voicing how they are against the bill going through. From this protest Google attained a petition with over 7 million signatures, and awareness of the bill skyrocketed significantly. This protest in a sense highlights what protests will be like in the future, this singular protest day did a solid amount of damage to the bill, they lost various sponsors and its looking like it will definitely not pass. Thus again illustrating how powerful the Internet has become, showing us that we can all make a difference and through this medium we can all be a part of it, from the young to the old, to those that can get out of their house to those that are in bed rest, the Internet brings us all together as one.

     If for some crazy reason this bill goes through or other bills like it go through, we fear the war that might rise up. When the Internet has fought against people before it has been against individual people that had brought harm, but if a censor bill is passed then the Internet will be facing the government, thus possibly bringing about a war that no one wants. The players in this war come to mind, most hacker communities would rise up against it, specially the famous group Anonymous, Anonymous would have a field day with this whole thing and they have already issued a message of challenge against the bill so this does cause us to fear what this whole fiasco might bring about. If any censor bills goes through a user vs censor war would occur, one we should all not want.

      The point here is this, there is power within the Internet, we have seen that time and time again. When we talk about people rising up on the web we aren't talking about a small number but millions of people that when awakened could represent a significant fighting force. This is the predicament the people pushing this bill should be thinking about, it seems that they have forgotten what happened to Sony last year when they attacked one person, that was one person, this is the whole community being censored, the fiasco that could be brought about by this singular bill could be a scary thing. Thus those pushing this bill should remember that the people have a voice, and that people do fight for their rights, and with the Internet the fighting community becomes 10X larger.

      As Google said last week Internet piracy is something we should be fighting against, so the initial purposes of SOPA/PIPA are understood, but this is not the way to go about it. The abuse that can come from this bill is significant and thus why we are in retaliation against it. Here is Google's statement:

   "Fighting online piracy is important. The most effective way to shut down pirate websites is through targeted legislation that cuts off their funding. There’s no need to make American social networks, blogs and search engines censor the Internet or undermine the existing laws that have enabled the Web to thrive, creating millions of U.S. jobs.  Too much is at stake – please vote NO on PIPA and SOPA."

    We stand by Google and other companies that have risen up against this bill and the injustice it would bring, please do go and sign the petition at Google, here is a LINK to it. We encourage you to write to your congressman on the issue and continue to raise awareness to those that are not in the know. We look forward to seeing the Internet continue to grow and the community continue to band together to fight injustice.

In case you want more info on the bill in order to understand why this whole thing is a big deal, a YouTube user recently posted a very informative video, find the video HERE.

   We hope you had a fantastic weekend and may this week be a great one,

Love from your humble blogger,

YouTube's Downfall?

      Recently YouTube has taken to inserting more and more advertisements within their site, and that's never a good move. In the beginning there were no advertisements within the Tube and all was well, we could go and watch videos at our own leisure without having to bother with pesky ads popping up. Then one day the ad popping started, we were annoyed about it, but the ads were easily closed down so there were no lasting effects. Some of us started to worry about the future of the Tube, will they sell out? Will this site see its doom? Will we ever get to see the good old days of no ads again? And then the Tube dropped the ball, big time.

      YouTube has a large number of users, true, thus they feel that they have finally hit the point where they can do whatever they want on their site and it won't matter, that the people won't rise up to say anything, boy are they wrong. How did the Tube sell out, you may ask, it's simple. By adding full length ads before, and sometime even in the middle of videos, these are not pop up ads like before, no, these are full length ads. Now you might say, "but this has been happening before!" and I would agree with you, but not to this scale. YouTube was originally making big companies add the beginning ads but the other videos had no reason to suffer such a fate, now though everyone is on the same boat, and it's a crappy boat.

 
    If we start thinking about other video streaming sites and what happened to them we can see a trend occurring, and also we can begin to speculate as to what the future of the Tube might be. Let's take Hulu for example, Hulu progressively got worse on their ads as well, to the point that now watching regular Hulu is a tedious and almost ignored feature within their site. To make matters worse Hulu created a paid portion, Hulu Plus, but to make matters even worse still Hulu Plus now has ads within it. Yeah, you read that right, there is no escape, you start selling out, you start thinking that you can do whatever you want and the quality of service starts to drop.

    Now you might say, "so whats the point here?", the point is simple Hulu is dying, and will soon pass away, and thus will YouTube follow its opponent to the grave. This will occur when another site arises, another site that decided to take up the mantle that YouTube has dropped, which will definitely happen. The internet is a fickle thing, one must keep moving forward in order to stay afloat. Even the Titan Facebook has its own fair share of battles, the latest being against Google + and Facebook has come out victorious so far, but only because Facebook started to improve on areas that they were slacking, competition is a beautiful thing really.

    So what does the future hold for the Tube? Only time will tell, its silly that companies think that they will never be overturned, the internet is not a mistress to be trifled with, he who thinks he is a master of the internet will surely see his doom, if history has taught us one thing it is that this statement is true. What do you think will happen to the video sharing Titan?

    Love from your humble blogger,

Google + And The War on Facebook

            We've recently done a post about the sale of Myspace for considerably less then it was bought for, and how much the market changes so quickly. Also we mentioned Google + and how it is now engaging in war with facebook for the social network standard. The war of the social network titans has begun, and it has been a fierce battle. Not that the other two titans in the industry mind of course.

             I got a Google + account about 2 weeks back and after playing around with all the features within it, I've become a very big fan of Goggle + fast. They won my loyalty over facebook by their slick looks, their security/privacy set up system (social network bubbles), no ads anywhere, and just information sharing at it's best. Plus it's invite only right now so there's only a portion of the populace exploring this new domain, thus so far rounds one through three of this epic titan fight go to Google +.

Goggle+ vs Facebook by Zirta

             Of course facebook will remain relevant for the years to come, it's not as if Google + will be successful in defeating facebook in a year or so, but maybe in two to three years either we'll be seeing some significant changes to facebook (in order to compete) or a massive amount of people flow leave facebook to join Google +.

 

             We've seen facebook battle many an opponents who were hungry for the title and win, but facebook has never come face to face with something as massively awesome and powerful as Google +, and thus I look forward to this battle continuing, in the end we are the ones that win, we get more content, better services, and a better social network, all thanks to competition.

Google+ by *Octans

         
          How do you feel about Google +, better or worse then facebook? Do you think Google will win in the end?

          Hope you all have a fantastic weekend, and a glorious Friday,

   Love from your humble blogger,

myspace.com Sold!

     Myspace was the first big social media site to come out years ago, leading us to a new era of sharing information and being connected via the internet. Though it was the Godfather of social networks at one point, as of late myspace has been forgotten, not just forgotten but has become irrelevant. This is a scary thing about the internet, you're talking a site that got first sold to News Corp for $550 million has now been re-sold to Specific Media for $35 million, for those of you at home not wanting to do the math that is a $515 million dollar loss, truly a significant loss.
     The scary thing about the internet is how quickly it all happened, we're talking a 6 year period for myspace to not only devalue significantly but for it to become utterly irrelevant in the market. Which raises the question of is $35 million too much for a site that has such little traffic and customer loyalty?
     But there is another competitor on the horizon, Google has just recently released beta of their own social media program Google +, which is invite only for now, and looks fantastic. Everyone that has taken a look at it has only spoken kind words about the program. So is facebook in trouble?
     Facebook is an empire, true, I understand, but so was myspace and look at it now. Google is a big enough name and has big enough funds to take over the social network scene if they desired. Can anyone stand up to Google, well Facebook surely could, we are about to witness a battle between two internet giants, and also let's not forget that with myspace being sold, that this can only mean that Specific Media has plans of trying to get the fallen giant back in the game. Which brings us to a vicious battle that will soon take place between the industry Giants and the fallen underdog.
      This is not all bad, this is actually a very good thing, this means that Facebook and Google will both begin to evolve and offer us the consumer more options, better services and so on, in order to get our loyalty. Which is always welcomed, evolution is always a good thing.

        One big advantage brought up by XKCD this week is that our families are not in the Google social media, facebook has become so big that parents, grandparents, great-grandparents, all have accounts, meaning they all have access to your posts, pictures and so forth. The argument for different security settings can be made, but honestly, who even messes with that stuff anyway, a very limited amount of paranoid people, the rest of us just don't post very personal pics and posts there as to avoid being reprimanded by a family member or getting in trouble at work/church/school/etc.
       Phillip De Franco does a pretty good job covering this whole story too, check his Thursday vlog HERE
    
 What do you think about this whole social network battle that is underway?  Leave a comment bellow and let us know what you think :)

   Anyway, hope you all had a fantastic week and that this weekend is a great one,

      Love from your humble blogger,