The social network which has about 400 million people--presented some new surface changes to its home page Thursday night.Facebook began only 6 years ago, founded by Zuckerberg and his roommates. The initial purpose behind Facebook, was to create a service that made sharing and connecting with people easier and more accessible. Facebook has grown significantly adding around 200 million new users last year alone. It is said that if facebook were a country it would be the 3rd largest country behind India and China. For that reason it is no surprise that the networking site has tried to re-vamp its applications and services.Some of the changes that facebook made were minor. The changes included splitting up news feeds into two categories "Top News" and "Most Recent" . The site also tried to make finding friends and new messages accessible through all-in-one hub for online communication. "For example, when you receive a Facebook notification about someone writing on your Wall or tagging you in a photo, you'll see a red bubble appear in the left-hand corner near the search bar," Facebook engineer Jing Chen wrote in a blog post on the site. In conclusion, it will be interesting to see what the 7th year brings in terms of changes to the very popular social networking site.

According to this article, the Warner Music Group was planning on making the music from artists on their label available online to US subscribers through. The deal would not include latests hits or songs. The idea is to expand its 400,000 subscriber base.

The CEO said they were in talks with label partners for new licensing deals to allow the website to steam songs. There are companies that already allow this such as Last.hm and LaLa. EMembers have to pay a monthly fee for the services.

Read more http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2010/01/emusic-inks-warner-deal-plans-for-streaming

2010 stands to be the most innovative year yet at the Consumer Electronics Trade show. Everything from 3D television to internet enabled cars are set to be introduced. These products will bring about a new level of online connection on the go. Another product of note is the next generation of smart TVs that may bring an end to cable.

This article talks about how to build your personal brand using YouTube. Because YouTube is one of the largest sharing networks out there it is extremely useful, consumers who view your post will feel like they know you by watching the video, which is an extremely powerful medium. Users can then link their YouTube posts to their facebook, linkedin, myspace, or blog account, giving them the advantage of distribution to friends and followers.
I thought this was pretty interesting, espeically because it is about personal branding and how to use a medium that is extremely powerful and popular, but extremely simple and easy to do.

Read more at....
http://mashable.com/2009/11/04/youtube-personal-brand/

I Blame Twitter for the Fact That I Totally Hate Kittens

I found this article to be really interesting because it states what everyone already knows or bring it to your own attention. Basically it says that everyone is so excited about posting blogs and putting there two cents in that no one reads the whole story about what they are going to post about, so instead of getting the full picture they only get half and then make up arguments that are not even legit. The truth is that most people do not read the whole of what they write about and then their story is flawed, but gets passed around the internet like popcorn at a movie theater. So now instead of everyone else checking up on the first post they just put their two cents on what the first guy wrote...
I thought this was kind of interesting.. It doesn't really have anything to do with kittens though.

read more at...
http://adage.com/mediaworks/article?article_id=139550

I thought this article was interesting because it really shows us how vulnerable we are on the Internet. In one case one program infiltrated the French military computer system as well as surgical ward in England.
Basically what they are suggesting is that instead of trying to fix the current Internet, we should start raising funds to start over. According to the article this would be the only way to make the Internet safer in terms of viruses and other Internet based infections of computers.
They referred to what could happen with the Internet we have now as waiting for a "digital Pearl Harbor".

Read more at...

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/15/weekinreview/15markoff.html

Ashley Highfield of Microsoft UK believes that TV needs to find ways to generate significant revenue from online video and to make it easy for advertisers to buy ads in bulk for online TV.

The real question is, would consumers continue to embrace TV shows online if advertising increased to broadcast TV levels? Is this a reflection of an overall cultural change of consumers demanding TV on their terms.

Read more at
http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2009/aug/29/ashley-highfield-edinburgh-tv-festival