Kirkpatrick’s The Facebook Effect is a journalistic approach to the development and changes in Facebook as a platform and company since its inception. The book is easy and fairly quick to read, and chock full of details. At times, I think it was a bit too heavy on advertising approaches and financial issues, but overall, it was enjoyable. The book also serves as a nice counterpart to the dramatized The Social Network, and provides some factual accounts that the movie glosses over, dramatizes, or changes for filmic and dramatic effect.

Kirkpatrick spends a chapter chronicling the beginning of Facebook, from Zuckerberg’s Facemash (23-24) to the development of Thefacebook at Harvard, which he notes was “from the beginning driven by the hormones of young adults” with the ability to mark what one was “Looking for” and “interested in” (32). Later chapters place Facebook in the context of other social networks at the time, explore how they got investors and advertisers, changes in the platform and reactions to those changes, the move from Harvard to California, and other issues and experiences.

One of the issues that Kirkpatrick discusses is privacy, and the constantly shifting privacy policies and new privacy issues that Facebook constantly dealt with as they rolled out new features. Part of the reason people trust Facebook, Kirkpatrick claims, is that the platform relies on and requires a real identity. He quotes Chris Kelly, who heads privacy at Facebook: “Trust on the Internet depends on having identity fixed and known” (13). Zuckerberg also believes that to have multiple identities shows “al lack of integrity,” and that the world is becoming more transparent, so it’s pragmatic to have just one identity on a social networking site (198). Zuckerberg also attributes people’s willingness to be open and “real” on Thefacebook to the platform’s orderliness: unlike Myspace, which allowed users to do just about anything, Thefacebook was structured and ordered from the beginning (100). Kirkpatrick devotes an entire chapter on Privacy (Chapter 10).

With almost every new feature, Facebook was critiqued for harming privacy. For instance, the News Feed, which was developed to make content more easily accessible (because before, you had to go to users’ pages to see if they’ve updated), led to many feeling that Facebook was allowing for stalking. Facebook responded with new privacy features (188-194)

Facebook’s platform itself gets a lot of attention in the book. Zuckerberg had a vision of a platform where people would use it as they needed, and he understood Facebook as helping people “understand the world around them” and other people, not as a waste of time (143). He called Facebook “a utility,” attempting to get the platform out of the way so that people could just interact (144, 160). Aaron Sittig, a graphic designer who worked for Facebook, said, “We didn’t want people to have a relationship with Facebook so much as to find and interact with each other” (144-145).

This perspective is a bit ironic given how much they tried to create the “Facebook trance,” where people would just keep clicking through Facebook. In fact, the photos app that added was designed just for this: just by clicking a picture, not by clicking “next,” allowed users to fly through photos quickly and easily (154-155). However, it’s clear Facebook was about relationships, as the photos showed. Unlike Myspace, where photos were about self-presentation, on Facebook they are about showing relationships (156).

Zuckerberg seems to have a bit of a utopian perspective on Facebook, wanting to create a platform that could be the entire Internet experience. Also, interestingly, there’s a hope that Facebook could improve relations, that somehow getting more information about others “should create more empathy” (278) and that Facebook works as a gift economy (287-288).

Overall, this was an enjoyable and easy read.

Kirkpatrick, David. The Facebook Effect: The Inside Story of the Company That Is Connecting the World. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2010.



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More on the story

At first, it was a lot of fun: I was earning badges (for example: you get a badge for checking in at a certain number of establishments in one night, and one for checking into enough different Starbucks). I was competing with friends to see who could be the mayor of certain establishments (mayorships are earned by checking in at a place the most over the last two months). It was also fun to try to get a certain place “trending,” which means that enough people are there that Foursquare would list it as trending. (This number is surprisingly small, at least in State College: 4 or 5). I also enjoyed reading tips left by other users. (my Foursquare profile)

One thing I particularly enjoyed, which Robin shared back in May, is Where Do You Go, which pulls in your Foursquare check-ins and uses Google Maps to create a nifty graphic of where you frequent. Here’s mine for State College:

Pretty interesting, I suppose. But after six months or so using Foursquare, the novelty and interest has worn off. The 30 seconds I spend on each check-in seemed to just waste time, I wasn’t getting a lot out of it, and I felt that my experiment had proven complete. Fears about privacy issues (e.g., someone could rob you because they know you’re not home!) seem hyperbolic and largely unfounded (though the risks are certainly there). Largely, the whole thing is a game, as well as a marketing ploy (for businesses that offer deals for Foursquare check-ins, which probably increase the likelihood of return customers for those who use Foursquare).

The thing I found most interesting, though, is the compulsion to check-in everywhere, and the “regret” (of sorts) for forgetting to check-in somewhere. I think Foursquare says a lot more about our common compulsion to collect information about ourselves and each other than it does about privacy. And a lot of information it is: I accrued 888 check-ins over six or seven months — and this leaves out a period of time when my iPhone was broken. Users also share their check-ins on Facebook or Twitter, a convergence that I’ve noticed annoys more people than it doesn’t. (When I first started Foursquare, I accidentally had it connected to Twitter: a friend threatened to unfollow me. I’ve been tempted to unfollow people on Twitter who update with Foursquare, because unless there’s an interesting comment included, why share where you’re at?)

So yesterday, I moved my Foursquare app from the first screen of my iPhone to the last screen, and probably won’t be using it again.

What’s striking about Zuckerberg’s vision of an open Internet is the very blandness it requires to function, as Facebook members discovered when the site changed their privacy settings, allowing more things to become more public, with the (unintended?) consequence that your Aunt Dora could suddenly find out you joined the group Queer Nation last Tuesday. Gay kids became un-gay, partiers took down their party photos, political firebrands put out their fires. In real life we can be all these people on our own terms, in our own way, with whom we choose. For a revealing moment Facebook forgot that. Or else got bored of waiting for us to change in the ways it’s betting we will. On the question of privacy, Zuckerberg informed the world: “That social norm is just something that has evolved over time.”

and

When a human being becomes a set of data on a website like Facebook, he or she is reduced. Everything shrinks. Individual character. Friendships. Language. Sensibility. In a way it’s a transcendent experience: we lose our bodies, our messy feelings, our desires, our fears. It reminds me that those of us who turn in disgust from what we consider an overinflated liberal-bourgeois sense of self should be careful what we wish for: our denuded networked selves don’t look more free, they just look more owned.

(h/t Rachel)

Yesterday I read this piece at The Next Web, which points out rightly, “If you know how to get to the special characters like ü, é and © on your iPhone and or PC, if you know what a URL is and if you know how to use most of the Apps on your iPhone you and part of a small group of experts. Don’t assume you are the default because you are the exception. Make your apps, websites and tools as simple as possible and always test with other people.” Boris shares a number of examples of people who don’t understand or know about certain interface features, such as what a URL is or how to respond to a text message on an iPhone. For instance:

a few years ago I managed an online birthday calendar. The interface was really simple. It showed the calendar in month view with a big red button on top of it that said “Add a Birthday“. It was so big I figured people wouldn’t be able to miss it. Unfortunately they did. I got about 100 helpdesk messages a day and about 60 of those started with “I don’t know how to add a birthday“. At first I got really annoyed at those ignorant people who thought it was more convenient to just email someone than to think and look around for more than 2 seconds. But then I did some tests and found out that everybody assumed that they just had to click the calendar to add a birthday. If that didn’t work they assumed it was broken. My fault, not theirs.

In Lingua Fracta, Collin Brooke encourages us to take perspective into account when approaching rhetoric and new media. Scholars in rhetoric and technology have become rather accustomed to not solely looking through technologies, but instead also looking at them. Brooke asks that we also look from perspectives (if I am remembering his argument right; I don’t have his book in front of me). Our field has already made pushes against the “universal reader” model of interpretation (see, for instance, Rosa Eberly’s wonderful discussion in Citizen Critics), but I get the feeling that rhetoric and technology still sometimes proposes a “universal user” (particularly assumptions about the “universal net gen user”). I know I sometimes still do. There has, of course, been wonderful work that doesn’t do this. Anne Wysocki’s work on aesthetics, technology, and ethics is a great example that pushes against the universal user model used by some new media scholars (see for instance, her chapter in Selber’s Rhetorics and Technologies).

Also, did I use enough parentheticals there? *shakes head*

Bruns’s Blogs, Wikipedia, Second Life, and Beyond is a solid argument about how the Internet is changing the way we produce content. Bruns explains that content creation online “operate[s:] along lines which are fluid, flexible, heterarchical, and organized ad hoc as required by the ongoing process of development” (1). He argues that the term “production” is outmoded for much online content creation because it implies a final product, instead of an ongoing process of creation. He proposes that we understand content creation online as produsage to highlight how the roles of consumer and user are disappearing, replaced by a system where “the distinction between producers and users of content have faded into comparative insignificance” (2). This change in creation processes is made possible by develops of the Internet as a media. Bruns specifically points to differences between the Internet and previous mass media: an increased access to the means of production and distribution, the ease of peer-to-peer communication, and the ability to share, manipulate, modify, and edit content (13-14).



Bruns outlines four principles of produsage that signify when it works best: 1) open participation and communal evaluation; 2) a fluid heterarchy that leads to an ad hoc meritocracy; 3) creation of unfinished artifacts through granular changes; and 4) the development of communal property that results in individual rewards (particularly social capital) (24-30).



After extended discussions of open software creation, citizen journalism on blogs, and wikipedia, Bruns turns to how “we [. . .:] identify, collate, process, evaluate, combine, and synthesize the diverse range of content now available to us from a variety of sources” (171). Bruns explores metadata — data collected about usage, information, and behavior, often through automation, or through links and tags (174, 178-179). The book is a rather extensive and detailed discussion of various aspects of online produsage. Worth a read (or a skim, at the very least — the book seems to get repetitive at points, but offers some useful insights).



A few quotes on new media and developing relationships: “The social, collaborative basis of the content creation communities engaged in produsage also indicates this: in produsage projects, the object of the communal effort is almost always as much the development of social structures to support and sustain the shared project as it is the development of that project itself” (23). “content creation is an act of maintenance and construction (of both content and the social relationships among participants) at least as much as it is one of production” (23).



Bruns, Axel. Blogs, Wikipedia, Second Life, and Beyond: From Production to Produsage. New York: Peter Lang 2008.


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Just a few key notes that I want to remember from this text:

Wysocki: Because writing teachers are practiced in situating writing in context and situating writers, then new media studies can benefit from the input of writing teachers, and writing teachers are well-suited to implement new media in the classroom (5-7). Wysocki argues persuasively to pay attention to the materiality of texts (10-15) and defines “new media texts” as “those texts that have been made by composers who are aware of the range of materialities of texts and who then highlight the materiality: such composers design texts that help readers/consumers/views stay alert to how any text—like its composers and readers—doesn’t function independently of how it is made and in what contexts. Such composers design texts that make as overtly visible as possible the values they embody” (15).

Selfe: Selfe encourages us to understand that literacies aren’t a matter of linear progression: new ones don’t replace older ones, and new ones do not necessarily continue, but instead might disappear (49). Her second lesson explains that “new media literacies play an important role in identity formation, the exercise of power, and the negotiation of social codes” (51). Selfe also encourages composition teachers to incorporate new media texts into class, to expand their notions of what counts as composition, because to do otherwise (to neglect new media) is irresponsible to how people communicate (54-55). Selfe also provides an argument for including visual rhetoric in composition courses (67-74).

Sirc: Drawing on the art of Joseph Cornell as a model, Sirc argues against the formal essay and instead for what he calls “box-logic,” which involves the juxtaposition of already-made objects. He claims that “notions of articulate coherence, conventional organization, and extensive development seem irrelevant” (115). Arguing that students should be designers, not essayists (121), Sirc views the Internet as a virtual urban arcade where writers engage in “textual journeys” to study texts, employ them in their own designs, and annotate them (122).

Wysocki: Wysocki argues that much discussion of visual rhetoric and graphic design relies on notions of beauty developed in the eighteenth century that create the idea of universal beauty, but that this is harmful to understanding how bodies and history influence texts and their reception (149-152). Her case example, an advertisement with a naked women, shows how these notions lead us to see the woman not as a woman, but as a shape (152). The guidelines offered by graphic design are not neutral, but actually shape ourselves — thus, teaching visual in composition courses cannot just be about form (158-159).

Johnson-Eilola: Through a discussion of intellectual property law and court cases, Johnson-Eilola shows how “For better or worse—or, in fact, for better and worse—texts no longer function as discrete objects, but as contingent, fragmented objects in circulation, as elements within constantly configured and shifting networks” (208). A few lessons: writing cannot be separated from economics; students must be showed how information is not neutral, composition cannot ignore the database background of reading and writing online (e.g., search engines are a form of writing; writing is a form of architecture) (212, 218-220, 225).

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Chapter 1 argues that there is much vibrant political communication online, and despite (and in part because of, I’d say) current “crises” in the public sphere (drawing on Habermas), the Internet has become a site activism, resistance, and political campaigns. Warnick also notes that there are challenges to rhetorical critics because rhetoric online causes us to reconsider some assumptions about rhetoric based in print and oral texts (22-23).

Chapter 2 argues for a “medium theory approach” to rhetoric online. Warnick discusses “five elements of the communication process—reception, source, message, time, and space” (27). Drawing on the work of Roland Barthes, she argues that texts online are intertextual and non-linear, always in formulation, and that rhetorical critics need to focus more on readers’ responses to online material (28-30). The credibility of online material is also understood differently than rhetoric has traditionally understood ethos: instead of grounded in the source of the material, ethos is instead understood through visuals and other signs (33-36; this is discussed more in Chapter 3). Another important aspect of online discourse is that the message of online material is often fragmented or modular, and the “author” no longer has control of the message’s content (36-37). Time and space also function differently in online environments because online “users do not constitute a mass audience” (37) producing “dispersed, disaggregated media audiences” (44).

Chapter 3 explores how credibility (ethos) is determined online. Noting that ethos has changed through history, from Aristotle’s understanding that “notions of ethos were embedded in the cultural and social mores of host societies” (47) to the modern conception that ethos was “connected to an author’s credentials and known reputation” (48), Warnick explains that it’s understandable that notions of ethos would change again. Drawing on Stephen Toulmin’s work, Warnick argues that credibility should be based in the specific field and context of the communication (49). She discusses how credibility is understood on Indymedia’s Website to help show how credibility is determined on that site.

Chapter 4 addresses interactivity online, discussing MoveOn’s Website and George W. Bush’s 2004 campaign Website as two sites of interactivity. Warnick uses Sally J. McMillan’s taxonomy of interactivity (three forms: “user-to-system, user-to-user, and user-to-document” [75:]) as well as her contribution of “text-based interactivity,” or “the presence of various stylistic devices, such as use of first person and active voice versus passive voice; additional visual cues such as photographs of the candidate or supporters interacting with other people; and additional textual content of the site” (73), to show how interactivity works on these two Websites.

Chapter 5 traces the history of the term “intertextuality” and addresses how it works on a few online videos from Jibjab.com and on Adbusters‘ Website.

Her conclusion offers a concise review of the book. Overall, I found this book helpful in understanding how rhetorical criticism might need to revisit some of its assumptions about rhetoric in online environments. In a concise, accessible overview, Warnick offers some helpful insights about online rhetoric, particularly about credibility online and fragmented or dispersed audiences. I think this book could have done more (by which I guess I mean, I wanted more), but for the goals set out for the book, it’s pretty successful.

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Starting Wednesday, I am teaching FYC as part of Penn State’s Learning Edge Academic Program, or LEAP. The program brings in first-year students early, and as a cohort, they take two courses that will spring-board them into college, generally gen-ed courses. My English 015 course is paired up with a Communications Arts and Sciences course, and I’m excited about this. My fellow teacher is awesome, and also a friend of mine, so it should be a fun time working together, teaching rhetoric, writing, and public speaking, and engaging with students.

So, I’ve got to finish a few things for the course, but first, I want to catch up on all that stuff I missed by being in a workshop and meeting so many awesome people over the weekend. Here’s a few interesting tidbits from the Internet.

• According to Daily Kos, a gay bar in Forth Worth was raided Saturday night (Sunday morning), on the anniversary of the Stonewall Riots in NYC. It seems the story is unfolding. (h/t slewfoot at the Blogora.) Towleroad has more.

• Joseph Orosco shares his thoughts on Twitter, Iran, and revolutionary possibilities.

• CNN, in an article whose title is worthy of the Onion: yep, there is.

• XKCD today is awesome: “More harm has been done by people panicked over societal decline than societal decline ever did”

• Sweet! University of Kansas is going open-access for all journal articles written by their faculty.

h/t Oregon Robot for this video.