“Guys, Facebook just told me that they found a site that ‘I may like.’  How did they know that I love strappy black pumps?!”

Websites often feature advertisements to its users with the intention of luring them in to buy their products.  However, as there are various types of users all over the web, advertisers have found ways in which to target their audiences through extracting information about users through monitoring a user’s presence on social media.

With so many individuals carrying around smartphones, one article that I found talks about how Google and Android smartphones often submit information back to the databases about information through tracking a user’s history.  As this raises a multitude of privacy concerns for many, John Sileo wrote an article called, “iPhone and Droid Want To Be Your Big Brother” in which he writes about how “the Wall Street Journal found through research by security analyst Samy Kamkar, the HTC Android phone collected its location every few seconds and transmitted the data to Google at least several times an hour. It transmitted the name, location and signal strength of any nearby WiFi networks, as well as a unique phone identifier.”

As this is a high concern for many who believe that their privacy is at risk, some of have gone through drastic measures as to boycott smartphones altogether.

The fourth proposition of nine towards a cultural theory of YouTube primarily states that “YouTube’s value depends heavily upon its deployment via other social networking sites–with content gaining much greater visibility and circulation when promoted via blogs, Live Journal, MySpace, and the like.”

Today, YouTube does indeed fulfill that proposition, but also goes beyond it.  Many individuals, bloggers, musical artists, comedians, companies, etc., all promote themselves through YouTube as well as other forms of social networking, blogs, and websites.  YouTube goes beyond the fourth proposition because presently, bloggers, musical artists, comedians, companies and individuals alike primary utilize YouTube as the main factor in gaining greater visibility and circulation because YouTube is entertaining and interactive.

For example, YouTube sensation artists such as Karmin, and comedians such as RayWilliamJohnson primary started off their circulation through YouTube, and then utilized social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter as a means to continue developing themselves.  As a result, YouTube has become more valuable than most social networking sites as their content is readily available (viewers on YouTube do not necessarily need to sign up for an account to view its content), entertaining, and has become the primary platform for many.

In these ways, YouTube has fulfilled and has even gone beyond its primary proposition, as it has become the most valuable site as it has become the primary promotional foundation for greater visibility and circulation.

Karmin’s cover on Chris Brown’s “Look At Me Now”: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=khCokQt–l4

If one looks at the description under this and all of Karmin’s YouTube videos, they promote themselves on Facebook and Twitter as supplementary sites under their primary source (YouTube) when promoting themselves.

The Webby Awards site and the Six Revisions site are incredible resources to reference successful, professional, and downright amazing sites for tips and examples on website design.

The Webby Awards site offers seventy categories for websites, some of which include websites centered upon topics of art, aesthetic visual design, celebrities and fans, health, music, news, personal blogs and websites, sports, and much more.  The category that intrigued me most was the “personal blog/websites” category.  Under this category, the blog that intrigued me the most was the personal blog titled, “What I made.”  Curious, I decided to check out the website, and found a website that was decked out with fun, funky colors and fonts that featured photographs of random cool items that adults have made.

With the website description being “What I made…why being an adult doesn’t mean you can’t play with crayons (an illustrated guide),” this blog’s website design corresponds to its website description as there are illustrations and cartoon drawings in the background.  The font too, is something different all the letters are in a 3-D type block lettering.  What I really like about this particular blog is that the blog’s theme can be seen through the entire website.  From the colors, to the font, to the photographs, everything ties back to the website’s main theme.  For my own website, I plan to do the same so that my personal blog’s theme can correspond through all aspects of the blog.

The Six Revisions site is also very beneficial and can ultimately aid me in my English 138 personal hypertext project.  This website is amazing because it offers tutorials such as “How to Create a Grunge Web Design Using Photoshop,” and “How to Build a Vibrant Professional HTML5 Web Design.”  Through this site, I conveniently have access to tutorials that provide me with clear step-by-step instructions that can help me improve my website’s design as well as the technical aspects of the project.  What is also great about using this site is the fact that it also shows pictures of each step so that I have a visual aid to help me when the instructions get complex.

Overall, these two websites are interesting and amazing on their own, but will definitely aid me in inspiring and helping me with improving my project.  Looking through the websites, I have already gained some insight into what I should integrate into my project, and have found tips and tricks that I can refer back to, to ultimately aid me in displaying my theme as a whole through my project.

In Danah Boyd’s research, Boyd discovered through a young, white, fourteen year old student named Kate that there was a kind of segregation between MySpace and Facebook.  Not wanting to be “racist,” Kate is embarrassed and hesitant to tell Boyd about the separation that she sees between the social backgrounds of those who have  MySpace or Facebook.

At one point, Kate explains how having MySpace is considered “ghetto.”  In her research, Boyd finds out that the segregation that Kate and her classmates experience is not only a social networking separation at Kate’s school, but is actually a segregation happening among teenagers nationally.  Through Boyd’s research, she discovers that what Kate had informed her about the segregation between the “ghetto” students who have MySpace, and the affluent white students who have Facebook, is valid.

Boyd specifies that the students who are found on Facebook generally tend to be White and Asian, while those who have MySpace accounts are generally Black and Latino.  Boyd tracks back the reasons as to this separation stating that friendships and friendship networks helped in the transition.  However, Boyd ultimately concludes that though some students may argue that the transition  from MySpace to Facebook are simply for the reasons of it being more current and aesthetic, there still lies the inevitable contributing factor that the change of social networks trace back to race, ethnicity, class, and background.

Though it is unfortunate to discover that Facebook was at one point the “classier” social network, it is definitely safe to say that individuals from all social backgrounds, races, ethnicities, and classes have overcome that period of segregation as Facebook is currently the top social network site.

In Andrew Keen’s book, The Cult of the Amateur, his main argument revolves around his criticism against the Internet and how companies are losing money because of websites that provide free advertising and free information.  He makes an excellent point that though the information that Internet users find on the web are free, e.g. Wikipedia, that means that it is costing money and losing business for the websites that make money from users trying to advertise and find information.  With the Internet making every so easily accessible and expense-free, Keen argues that it is costing users nothing, but is costing some companies millions of dollars.

At one point in the book, Keen brings up how the Internet has made users become “parasites,” feeding off the information of others instead of creating original works.  He utilized the example of Walt Disney, and how Disney’s creations are purely extracted from his own genius mind instead of being a cartoon that he happened to stumble upon while surfing the world wide web.

Similarly to Keen, Lashinsky also brings up Disney in his argument on “How Apple is Organized Like a Terrorist Cell.”  However, his about Disney was in relation to the death of Steve Jobs.  Lashinsky says, “There is no blue print for how a company can thrive without its visionary when that person is the single most important person.”  Lashinsky’s and Keen’s argument parallel when discussing the importance of originality.  For example, as stated earlier, Keen praises those who are not “parasites,” but individuals who create come up with their own original ideas.  Lashinsky too praises this idea of originality as he argues that Disney, similarly to Steve Jobs, was the driving force and visionary of their respective companies. It is through their original ideas and works that made them brilliant and successful.

Larry Lessig sheds light onto a troubling and cumbersome issue in his book, Remix: Making Art and Commerce Thrive in the Hybrid Economy.  In Part One of his book, Lessig discusses the cultures of our past and compares it to the cultures of our future.  While discussing the cultures of our past, Lessig writes about the “RW Culture Versus RO Culture” and later goes on to discusses how “nature is remade,” as well as “re-remaking nature.”  Lessig also discusses “RW” which he sums up as “revived” and discusses the importance behind remixing text and media.  Moreover, Lessig discusses in RW how writing is beyond words, and how our society and generation are in an era that is changing.  He writes, out with “the old in the new.”

What was interesting about Lessig’s point about “the old in the new” was when he wrote “Remixed media succeed when they show others something new; they fail when they are trite or derivative.”  Though this may be true that individuals get easily bored when something is boring and repetitive, isn’t most media repeated?  For example, aren’t romantic movies have a same general storyline structure?

In Jonathan Lethem’s article, “The Ecstasy of Influence,” Lethem discusses how William S. Burroughs, author of Naked Lunch, incorporated writing from other writers’ texts into his work.  Though Lethem was shocked as he was taught by his teachers that this “cut-up method” is considered plagiarism, Lethem explains how he could not contain his excitement and that “the hairs on my neck stood up” while reading Burroughs’ book.

Instead of condemning Burroughs’ stealing technique, Lethem boldly states in his article that Burroughs “was no plagiarist at all.”  Though I sometimes agree that imitation is the best form of flattery, I strongly believe that plagiarism is no form of flattery.  More so, it is a form of stealing and is thus just for one to sue due to the stealing of one’s property.  In Lethem’s article, he also discusses intellectual property.

While discussing intellectual property, Lethem highlights how technology expansion is making it more difficult as “technology is exposing those restrictions…”  As technology is in fact getting faster, easier to use, and more universally accessed, this should be even more of a reason to protect one’s ideas, thoughts, copyrights, etc so that no one experiences stealing and plagiarism.

Though Lethem writes about the “beauty of second uses,” even he agrees that copyrights and intellectual property should rightly belong to the individual who created it when talking about “usemonopoly.”  Hence, as copyrights are a form of intellectual property as are ideas, words, song lyrics, etc, one should believe that imitation is not always flattery as imitation in the context of plagiarism is stealing and cheating.

The Huffington Post is a news website and blog that features a range of topics including world news and politics.  It is often utilized as a site that features commentary from other news sources, columnists, activists, bloggers, etc.  This excerpt was published here because it includes information that about the controversial website, WikiLeaks, and Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks.  Assange and his site are known for posting private information about our nation that our government may be keeping secret from our nation’s citizens.  Micah L. Sifry is the author of “WikiLeaks and the Age of Transparency.”  His interest in writing on this topic and Assange is because Sifry firmly believes that “the knowledge of how to build and maintain such networks is now widespread.”  WikiLeaks is not a Wiki, but is website that publishes and allows commentary on government documents that have been leaked.  WikiLeaks is known for its controversial material, and have often been sued over its publications as they can pose a threat to national security.  WikiLeaks is important because it is providing information and even giving security to individuals who believe that the government is keeping vital information from its citizens.  Sifry’s main point in writing this excerpt is to make light of the fact that technology is changing politics.  In this day and age, with the ease of being able to link together publicly, technology is making it easier to spread information and connect ideas from individuals from countries all around the world.  Silfry makes a convincing argument as he makes the defensive argument that “anti-WikiLeaks backlash is futile” because “the transparency movement is not going away.”

I like Silfry’s argument because he makes logical points backed up by hard-hitting evidence of the awareness success that WikiLeaks has brought.  I personally think that WikiLeaks is just as it allows individuals to exercise their First Amendment rights, however, it somewhat terrifies me as I realize what the government really may be keeping secret.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/02/09/wikileaks-assange-transparency_n_820348.html