Download: The True Story of the Internet

I have been watching Download: The True Story of the Internet on the Science Channel over the last few weeks. Visit the Science Channel’s schedule for the series to see when it will be on next (a marathon of all of the episodes is planned for April 5). The episode titled “People Power” gives some insight into the latest social networking sites and provides some background information (remember Napster, anyone?).

Some video clips are online, but I don’t think they really give you as much as the entire show does. If you can’t watch the shows, though, I would suggest viewing the one about Web 2.0 and the one about YouTube. (I hope those links work.)
It’s an interesting show in general if you like anything “techie.” I’ve found it really fun to learn about the introduction of some sites I use every day and to relive the history of some sites I remember from their beginnings. (My best friend won a Google t-shirt from the site before anyone was using it. She used to read Wired to find the newest stuff. And I’ll admit, I was a member of the Napster generation. I was a freshman in college in 1999, the year it took off.) The host is a “technology journalist” who has firsthand knowledge of the tech industry. Interviews with the founders of many of the sites, from eBay to Google, make this unique.

It would be an interesting collection of videos to add to a public library collection (high school audience or above – or middle schoolers especially interested in technology). It is amazingly up-to-date considering the amount of time it likely took to put everything together. I’m sure there were a few bits that were out-of-date beyond the 1 or 2 I noticed, but overall, they’ve done a good job with it.

The show’s website was a bit slow for me this morning when I was exploring, but I’m pretty sure that was because I was using Mozilla instead of IE (it seemed to work better in internet explorer). However, once you get something to load, it has some interesting details. For example, the Timeline will tell you the exact moment that the World Wide Web was launched – 10 years to the date after I was born, interesting enough – unfortunately it ends in 2003 and doesn’t discuss everything in the shows. The Slideshow has a mug shot of Bill Gates from a 1977 traffic violation arrest as well as a picture of Bill Gates playing Guitar Hero with Slash.

What I really liked about this show was the discussion it sparked between my husband and me. We talked about what we remembered and what was ahead. I think that this might spark some discussion among adults as part of a workshop to increase technology awareness. One thing that we discussed was the tech bubble. When we went to college, everyone was getting jobs easily, but by the time we graduated, we went off to grad school because job prospects were pathetic. Many of the episodes of Download discuss the meteoric rise of sites like Amazon (one of the sites that began the internet bubble) and the crash of the tech industry. I found it fascinating to hear more about what actually happened.

Looking to the future, in the “People Power” episode, they briefly made mention of Facebook going public, which I had never heard about (and for those of you who don’t know, I spent a lot of time last semester reading about Facebook). I decided to do a Google News search for Facebook IPO to see what was going on. I found an interesting Business Week article from March 6 that discusses the wariness of the new Web 2.0 sites to go public because of the recession and the fear of another bubble. (For those of you who were wondering, Facebook was apparently rumored to have plans to go public in 2009, but it has been pushed back to 2010 or later.) Mark Zuckerberg, founder and CEO of Facebook, noted that companies are being much more cautious than in the past: “In the past, a lot of companies viewed it as their goal to go public. We'll do it when it makes sense for us.” I’m sure a lot of people want to get their hands on a site that has 67 million active users, 45 percent of whom return to the site each day (from Facebook’s statistics site.)

As I read this, I thought that it would be a great lesson for a class studying current business trends, the history of the stock market, or even just to spark discussion about the popularity of the internet today (economics aside). Facebook is still somewhat independent (they had a big deal with Microsoft last year), while MySpace, another popular social networking site, was snagged by Murdoch’s News Corp in 2005. Students could discuss their personal habits online, survey friends, etc. They could do research about the financial history of the sites and other websites. Concerns about privacy and predators are always at the top of the list when discussing these sites, but students might appreciate learning more about them or finally hearing from an adult about something other than the dangers of the sites. (I’m not saying you shouldn’t mention these things, but that you shouldn’t make them the center of every conversation.) Now, I’m not a teacher, so maybe this isn’t possible in school, especially since so many schools ban the sites, but it is interesting to explore and discuss. Part of media literacy is understanding who owns what company, who owns the information we put out there on the internet, and what rights we have to use that information.

Media Literacy & Teenage Entrepreneurs

Stories and interviews with 10 kids who've been blogging, starting internet companies, inventing new ways to do solar heating...

Meet the Whiz Kids: 10 Overachievers Under 21
by Dan Tynan, PC World (March 9, 2008)

These kids are all pretty awesome, but I love the last line, from Catherine Cook:

"When you're a teenager, it's virtually risk-free to start a business: You're still dependent on your parents, so really there are no major risks," says Cook. "Even if you fail, you'll still have a really really great college admissions essay, so just do it already."

Privacy & Connection - An Introduction to Social Networking

Can I brag a little? I am very lucky to work with a fantastic electronic resources librarian. She just wrote an article outlining her concerns with getting into online social networks and explaining the differences between them. I think it's great for users at any level, but would be particularly useful for people who haven't begun to poke around these sites yet.

It's published in a legal website, but totally applicable for anyone else and you might find her extra insight into privacy issues helpful if you haven't set up a "public" web presence before.

Social Networks for Law Librarians and Law Libraries, or How We Stopped Worrying and Learned to Love Friending

By Debbie Ginsberg and Meg Kribble, Published on January 19, 2008
LLRX.com: Law and Technology Resources for Legal Professionals

In the article, she covers 4 networks that would apply to any of us: Facebook, LinkedIn, MySpace, and Ning. If anyone would like to check out an example profile, or if are already "on them" and would like to link to classmates, here are links to my profiles:

MySpace Evolves... Facebook games in court

Last week I posted some links to new security controls added to MySpace as part of a deal with 49 state legislatures.

Today I saw this article in the New York Times describing the push for MySpace to continue updating its site design and features as part of the ongoing push to keep at the head of the social networking sites pack: From MySpace to YourSpace by Brian Stelter

MySpace is in a funny position - many people (kids especially) like it because it's so easy to customize and MSM industries like it because its easy to use to promote products (especially music & video). But other users are leaving because they dislike the cluttered pages, anarchic social contacts and pushy marketing ("MySpace refugees," the article calls them).

With new security settings protecting kids and increased privacy controls on the horizon, will MySpace keep its loyal fanbase and draw in new users? MySpace's answer to keeping people engaged with their website has been more and more media content. But how long can they continue to compete with YouTube and the hordes of other video and music sites that provide content more flexibly and with more interactive features? The article mentions new celebrity content guides, but will that compete with IMDB and AllMusic.com, which are easier to browse and have giant databases of information?

Facebook, the lead competitor with MySpace in the U.S., tries to keep its users loyal by providing more and more content to keep them in the site. The "applications" approach has been a mixed bag - some people object to them as "cluttering up" the previously pristine profile pages, so they've added a way to minimize their appearance while you browse through your friends sites.

For the most part, though, their hands off approach to letting outsiders create content and add it to their website has been very successful. But how long will they keep up this approach? Scrabulous, one of the most popular apps on facebook (there are over 46,000 people using it to play "asychronous" games with friends) is facing challenges in court from Hasbro.

Will legal challenges force them to take a more direct role in managing the content on their site? Will their marketing strategies that rely on "word-of-mouth" connections between friends take off, or will people migrate to yet another new social networking site that hasn't been infiltrated by commerical interests?

Social Networking Sites, Teens & Government Deals

I just caught this story on techcrunch, my default source for all breaking news on techie stuff. Of course it's also on traditional news sources too, like the AP and Reuters.

MySpace just changed/upgraded several policies for younger teens using their site to try to protect them from contact with sexual predators and any other adults they don't know. Some of the new policies are aimed at giving parents more control, some are aimed at changing the visibility of younger teens' profiles and some are simply upgrading the response time for complaints.

It will be interesting to see how teens themselves respond to the policy changes. Will they mind having a separate high school section? Many teens already lie about their age to use the site, I wonder how these changes will affect that sort of behavior.

The teens I know on MySpace are pretty careful about the way they use it, using fictional locations and fictional names and posting pictures with multiple people in them so it's hard to tell who they are unless you know them. They've figured out the security settings for the most part but they still get unwanted messages from people sometimes (I do too, not necessarily age inappropriate people or "obscene" messages, just unwanted contact). I'm not sure how much their parents understand about the way they use the website but I know they share tips among their friends.

It seems like most of this legislation/tutoring stuff tends to come from a top-down perspective, but I wonder how much they try to take advantage of the "horizontal" relationships to spread information about the site and the best security tips. Besides updates from Tom, which are kind of annoying. Also I wonder how the new limitations about adult/teen interactions will affect libraries trying to make themselves available on MySpace. I don't have any experience with institutional use of MySpace- my younger sister got me to add a profile but I barely use it since facebook took off. Anyone else have more to add on that front?

[From Carol: There's even more about the MySpace story available at cNet.]