Proposal draft : Tradition & Location

Question 1 :-

Over the years, technology is getting more and more advanced. Will the evolution of technology influence the human growth?

Question 2 :-

Each day there will be different trend that is happening. Is it true that younger group of people are easily influenced by the trend that is happening around them?

Research and Background

New technologies are being invented everyday. As humans, it is in our nature to never be content with what we have and always yearn for more; especially when the latest trendy gadget or technology goes viral in the market in this current century. Succumbing to our technological lust, we find ourself having that very gadget in our hands and immediately we stay up to date with the trend in the society. The most prominent group of people who are always on trend are youngsters and teenagers. This is because youth nowadays enjoy keeping up with the Joneses of technology as it appears ‘cool’ to them.

References

All Singapore Stuff - Real Singapore News, (2015). NAIVE YOUNGSTERS SUPPORT PAP GOVT BECAUSE IT IS TRENDY & COOL. [online] Available at: http://www.allsingaporestuff.com/article/naive-youngsters-support-pap-govt-because-it-trendy-cool [Accessed 31 Nov. 2015].

Dickey, M. (2015). 15 Ways Technology Is Reinventing Society. [online] Business Insider. Available at: http://www.businessinsider.com/15-ways-tech-is-reinventing-society-2013-4?IR=T&op=1?r=US&IR=T#google-glass-will-turn-us-all-into-cyborgs-2 [Accessed 31 Nov. 2015].

Durisin, M. (2015). Here's Where Teens Spend All Their Money. [online] Business Insider. Available at: http://www.businessinsider.com/heres-where-teens-spend-their-money-2013-4?IR=T&r=US&IR=T [Accessed 1 Dec. 2015].

Hughes, M.  (2014). How Technology May Be Influencing Human Evolution. [online] MakeUseOf. Available at: http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/technology-may-influencing-human-evolution/ [Accessed 30 Nov. 2015].

Tan, S. (2015). Bustle. [online] Bustle.com. Available at: http://www.bustle.com/articles/37870-teenagers-care-more-about-new-tech-than-trendy-clothing-plus-7-devices-i-couldnt-live-without [Accessed 1 Dec. 2015].

Wu, T. (2014). As Technology Gets Better, Will Society Get Worse? - The New Yorker. [online] The New Yorker. Available at: http://www.newyorker.com/tech/elements/as-technology-gets-better-will-society-get-worse [Accessed 31 Nov. 2015].

ENTRY #13

Latest addition in the family

Facebook noticed that the main ways for them to earn money are through advertising. Mark Zuckerberg is a great strategist and he keeps acquiring famous companies that continue their operation as independent entities with a condition where their company is under Facebook’s umbrella.

Instagram

 In the year 2012, Instagram (an online mobile photo-sharing, video-sharing and social networking service) has been bought over by Facebook for $1 billion dollar in cash and stock. By that time, Instagram was less than two years in the market and it had no revenue. But by the end of the year, citigroup estimated the actual worth of Instagram is around $35 billion, based on the amount of their monthly active users which reached 300 million users. Not too long after they bought over Instagram, Facebook launched a new video features for Instagram that record up to 15 seconds of content which is the perfect length of mobile ads.  

How does Instagram make money?
Instagram doesn't make any money through their users download of their apps since Instagram is free for everyone to download, but they make money from advertising just like Facebook. A portion of income are came from Instagram, where they introduced a paid advertising service in 2013. Since then, companies like Nike Inc., General Electric and Walt Disney Co. has been using their service. 

Whatsapp

2 years after Facebook bought over Instagram, Facebook noticed the potential in Whatsapp - an instant messaging apps for smartphone. In October of 2014, Facebook officially buy over Whatsapp for $19 billion in a venture backed deal. Facebook agreed to pay Whatsapp a total of $4 billion in cash and another $12 billion in shares. Zuckerberg offers to the two co-founders Jan Koum and Brian Acton an additional of $3 billion in stock grant of they agree to stay with the company for four years.

Currently Whatsapp has a total of 450 million active monthly users. It reached that number faster than any other platform in the history, and the amount of active users are increasing continuously and it might reach at a staggering rate of 1 million users a day.    

How does Whatsapp make money?
The answer for this question is $1 dollar at a time. Whatsapp is free to use for the first year and users are require to pay a small amount of money which is $1 dollar each subsequent year if they wish to continue with the service. It may sound like a small amount of money and its possible for them to make money just by that way. But if u calculate it, with over 700 million active user and 1 million active users everyday, the annual income for Whatsapp can reach up to $700 million. Now you know how Whatsapp make their money. 

Reason behind it
Zuckerberg won't buy a company without any solid reason, the reason for Zuckerberg for buying Whatsapp is still going to be the same reason as Instagram which is advertising. With the amount of active users all over the world, Zuckerberg believe that Whatsapp is another good advertising platform and have a really good potential for it. 

Oculus Rift & Private Core

The image of a user using the Oculus Rift during a gameplay

Just before Zuckerberg bought Whatapp, Zuckerberg invested $2 billion dollar when he purchased the Oculus VR, maker of Oculus Rift virtual reality headset. This means that the future for this company is stable compare when they isn't with Facebook. 

The latest purchase in their cart list is the Palo Alto-based secure server technology company, Private Core. Reason for Facebook to buy this company is to deploy the  technology of Private Core into their existing server stack in order to have a better protection on its own server and all of Facebook users data. 



BIBLIOGRAPHY
1. Adage.com, (2015). How Facebook Is Already Profiting From Instagram. [online] Available at: http://adage.com/article/digitalnext/facebook-profiting-instagram/243515/ [Accessed 25 Jun. 2015].

2. Adage.com, (2015). How Facebook Is Already Profiting From Instagram. [online] Available at: http://adage.com/article/digitalnext/facebook-profiting-instagram/243515/ [Accessed 25 Jun. 2015].

3. Astrumpeople.com, (2015). Mark Zuckerberg Biography: Success Story of Facebook Founder and CEO. [online] Available at: http://astrumpeople.com/mark-zuckerberg-biography-success-story-of-facebook-founder-and-ceo/ [Accessed 25 Jun. 2015].

4. Dredge, S. (2014). Facebook closes its $2bn Oculus Rift acquisition. What next?. [online] the Guardian. Available at: http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/jul/22/facebook-oculus-rift-acquisition-virtual-reality [Accessed 25 Jun. 2015].

5. Omar Akhtar, S. (2015). How will Facebook make money off Whatsapp?. [online] Thehubcomms.com. Available at: http://www.thehubcomms.com/news/how-will-facebook-make-money-off-whatsapp/article/334883/ [Accessed 25 Jun. 2015].

6. Page, V. (2015). How WhatsApp Makes Money (FB). [online] Investopedia. Available at: http://www.investopedia.com/articles/personal-finance/040915/how-whatsapp-makes-money.asp [Accessed 25 Jun. 2015].

7. Perez, S. (2015). Facebook Buys Secure Server Technology Provider PrivateCore. [online] TechCrunch. Available at: http://techcrunch.com/2014/08/07/facebook-buys-secure-server-technology-provider-privatecore/ [Accessed 25 Jun. 2015].

8. Plafke, J. (2015). How much money would backers have made from Facebook’s Oculus Rift acquisition? | ExtremeTech. [online] ExtremeTech. Available at: http://www.extremetech.com/gaming/179258-how-much-money-would-backers-have-made-from-facebooks-oculus-rift-acquisition [Accessed 25 Jun. 2015].

9. Schaefer, S. (2014). Instagram Worth $35 Billion, Facebook Stock $91, Citi Says. [online] Forbes. Available at: http://www.forbes.com/sites/steveschaefer/2014/12/19/instagram-worth-35-billion-facebook-stock-91-citi-says/ [Accessed 25 Jun. 2015].

10. Simon, E. (2015). How Instagram Makes Money (FB,NKE,GE,DIS,C). [online] Investopedia. Available at: http://www.investopedia.com/articles/personal-finance/030915/how-instagram-makes-money.asp [Accessed 25 Jun. 2015].

11. Wikipedia, (2015). Instagram. [online] Available at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Instagram [Accessed 25 Jun. 2015].

ENTRY #12

Where did all the money come from?

Everyone must be thinking how can a social networking site can make so much money and turned a student to a billionaire?

In February 2012, Facebook began selling stock to the public markets and by three months later, Facebook market value has reached an original peak of $104 billion dollars. Exactly 3 years later, their market values has increased to $212 billions. Other than making the money from outsources which is from the investor and shares market, Facebook basic earnings comes from the contextual ads on the Facebook page. It's hard to believe but only 15% of cash-flow that went to Facebook isn't from advertising, the remaining 85% of cash-flow are just from the advertising. Can you imagine how much money they actually made just from advertising???

The other way of Facebook making their money is from their entertainment service which is the Facebook games. For an example, when a user is playing a game and requires some certain items to upgrade their gameplay, they have to purchase the items using a virtual cash. This is where Facebook makes part of their money because before the user want to buy a certain stuff they have to use 'cash' to buy it and Facebook is the one that is providing 'cash' to the users. What the user bought mostly aren't real stuff, but they are virtual goods. For example casino chips, gift and bonus items, purchased by fans of the popular game "Texas HoldEm Poker" by Zynga. 

Texas HoldEm Poker - by Zynga

Facebook confirms that the game and virtual goods are serious business. The company estimates that in 2010 the global market turnover for virtual goods reached $7 billion, and by 2014 it rose more than double the amount of estimation.



BIBLIOGRAPHY
1. Astrumpeople.com, (2015). Mark Zuckerberg Biography: Success Story of Facebook Founder and CEO. [online] Available at: http://astrumpeople.com/mark-zuckerberg-biography-success-story-of-facebook-founder-and-ceo/ [Accessed 24 Jun. 2015].

2. Biography.com, (2015). About Mark Zuckerberg. [online] Available at: http://www.biography.com/people/mark-zuckerberg-507402#time-at-harvard [Accessed 19 Jun. 2015].

3. PCMAG, (2013). The 10 Best Facebook Games. [online] Available at: http://www.pcmag.com/slideshow/story/299958/the-10-best-facebook-games/8 [Accessed 24 Jun. 2015].

4. PerthNow, (2015). Where does Facebook's MarkZuckerberg make his money?. [online] Available at: http://www.perthnow.com.au/business/where-does-facebooks-markzuckerberg-make-his-money/story-fn8t4my5-1226268542943?nk=226f88f68246ee487a816804a5f636f0-1435248538 [Accessed 24 Jun. 2015].

5. Wikipedia, (2015). Facebook. [online] Available at: https://en.wikipedia.org/?title=Facebook [Accessed 24 Jun. 2015].

ENTRY #11

Philanthropic causes 

Article of Zuckerberg signing up for "Giving Pledge"

Nowadays it's quite difficult to find a generous young man that love to involve in charity, especially when they are wealth. But not for this young entrepreneur. With the amount of money that he have, Zuckerberg love to involve himself in charity. Zuckerberg has used his millions to fund a variety of philanthropic causes. The most remarkable moment is during September, 2010, Zuckerberg has donated a total amount of $100 millions to save the Newark Public School system in New Jersey. A month later, just in time for Christmas, Zuckerberg has became a "Santa Claus" and made the biggest decision of his life where he signed up for "Giving Pledge" - a commitment by the world's wealthiest individuals and families to dedicate the majority of their wealth to philanthropy. In this he promised to donate at least half of his wealth to charity over the course of his lifetime. The CEO and president of Facebook said in a statement, "With a generation of younger folks who have thrived on the success of their companies, there is a big opportunity for many of us to give back earlier in our lifetime and see the impact of our philanthropic efforts,"

Since then Zuckerberg never fail to bring happiness and put a smile on everyone's face especially for those who needed it the most. He is like the "Robin Hood", except the money he gave out is the money that he earned himself. In 2013 alone, this young billionaire and his life partner has set a record for charitable giving for the year with their gift of 18 millions Facebook shares which worth more than $970 millions to the Silicon Valley Community Foundation. In 2012, the couples has also donated the same number of shares, then worth around half a billion, to the organization. There was plenty of giving in 2013—Zuckerberg topped the list in top 50 givers over the year.

Zuckerberg's Facebook post for the Ebola donation

In the year 2014, when the outbreak of the disease Ebola shocked everyone worldwide, again Zuckerberg and his wife promised $25 million are going to the CDC Foundation to help fight Ebola by posting on their Facebook wall about how critical it is this Ebola disease. Althought this young entrepreneur spent a lot of money doing the charity work, he still making more and more money everyday.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

1. Biography.com, (2015). About Mark Zuckerberg. [online] Available at: http://www.biography.com/people/mark-zuckerberg-507402#time-at-harvard [Accessed 19 Jun. 2015].

2. Cbsnews.com, (2015). Mark Zuckerberg Pledges Most of $6 Billion Fortune to Charity. [online] Available at: http://www.cbsnews.com/news/mark-zuckerberg-pledges-most-of-6-billion-fortune-to-charity/ [Accessed 24 Jun. 2015].

3. Facebook.com, (2015). Mark Zuckerberg - Priscilla and I are donating $25 million... | Facebook. [online] Available at: https://www.facebook.com/zuck/posts/10101696761533081 [Accessed 24 Jun. 2015].

4. Forbes, (2012). Mark Zuckerberg Finds Giving Spirit, Donates $500 Million To Silicon Valley Community Foundation. [online] Available at: http://www.forbes.com/sites/ryanmac/2012/12/18/mark-zuckerberg-finds-giving-spirit-pledges-nearly-500-million-to-silicon-valley-education/ [Accessed 24 Jun. 2015].

5. Isaac, L. (2010). Facebook's Zuckerberg To Give Away Half His Fortune. [online] Forbes. Available at: http://www.forbes.com/2010/12/09/zuckerberg-icahn-billionaires-business-giving-pledge.html [Accessed 24 Jun. 2015].

6. The Daily Beast, (2014). How Does Zuckerberg’s Ebola Pledge Measure Up To Other Bigwig Donations?. [online] Available at: http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/10/14/how-does-zuckerberg-s-ebola-pledge-measure-up-to-other-bigwig-donations.html [Accessed 24 Jun. 2015].

ENTRY #10

The Accidental Billionaires
After the bad incident that happened to Zuckerberg, it didn't stop there. In that year itself, Zuckerberg faced another hurdle when Ben Mezrich, an American author released book called, "The Accidental Billionaires". The story of this book by Ben is basically re-telling the fame of Mark Zuckerberg from a Harvard student to a billionaire.

The Accidental Billionaires - by Ben Mezrich

The Social Network

Zuckerberg has been facing all kind of obstacles within the year. But before Zuckerberg could even relax his mind about all of the controversy, another personal challenge appeared. A year after the controversy of the book that claimed to be adapted from the genius - Mark Zuckerberg life, a blockbuster movie by the famous director David Fincher called "The Social Network" hit markets.

The Social Network (2010) - by David Fincher

"The Social Network" is the adapted from the book by Ben Mezrich which is telling about the life of Mark Zuckerberg from a ordinary student to a youngest billionaire. In this movie, it shows how Mark Zuckerberg started involving in the programming world while he is in the ivy league institution where he first created a program for Harvard called "CourseMatch" which helped the students to choose their classes based on the course selections of other students in Harvard. Basically most of Zuckerberg's life in Harvard is in this movie, from how he invented "CourseMatch" to the most well known by everyone nowadays which is "Facebook.com". During an interview with Zuckerberg regarding this movie, Zuckerberg strongly oppose the narrative for it and claimed that the story in the movie isn't accurate. He also said, "It's interesting what stuff they focused on getting right; like, every single shirt and fleece that I had in that movie is actually a shirt or fleece that I own," Zuckerberg told a reporter during his interview in 2010. "So there's all this stuff that they got wrong and a bunch of random details that they got right."

The interview regarding the movie "The Social Network" 

Yet after all the things happened to him past year, Zuckerberg and Facebook are still going forward and make a fortune. In the year 2010, Time magazine has listed Mark Zuckerberg as Person Of The Year 2010. Other than that, Forbes also ranked Zuckerberg at No. 35—beating out Apple CEO Steve Jobs—on its "400" list, estimating his net worth to be $6.9 billion.

Forbes

TIME : Person of the Year (2010)

BIBLIOGRAPHY

1. Astrumpeople.com, (2015). Mark Zuckerberg Biography: Success Story of Facebook Founder and CEO. [online] Available at: http://astrumpeople.com/mark-zuckerberg-biography-success-story-of-facebook-founder-and-ceo/ [Accessed 19 Jun. 2015].

2. Biography.com, (2015). About Mark Zuckerberg. [online] Available at: http://www.biography.com/people/mark-zuckerberg-507402#time-at-harvard [Accessed 19 Jun. 2015].

3. Chowdhry, A., Warrell, M., Warrell, M., Holmes, F., Murphy, M., Chaykowski, K., Estevez, D., Solomon, B., Solomon, B., Savchuk, K., Savchuk, K., Thier, D., Tassi, P., Hof, R. and Guerrini, F. (2015). Mark Zuckerberg. [online] Forbes. Available at: http://www.forbes.com/profile/mark-zuckerberg/ [Accessed 22 Jun. 2015].

4. IMDb, (2015). The Social Network (2010). [online] Available at: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1285016/plotsummary [Accessed 21 Jun. 2015].

5. Mezrich, B. (2014). Summary: Ben Mezrich - The Accidental Billionaires. [online] Reading log: The Accidental Billionaires. Available at: https://sonja2345.wordpress.com/2014/01/12/summary-ben-mezrich-the-accidental-billionaires/ [Accessed 22 Jun. 2015].

6. TIME.com, (2015). Person of the Year 2010 - TIME. [online] Available at: http://content.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,2036683_2037207,00.html [Accessed 22 Jun. 2015].

7. Wikipedia, (2015). The Social Network. [online] Available at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Social_Network [Accessed 21 Jun. 2015].

ENTRY #9

From interest to business

By the year 2005, Facebook has started to be commercial and became accessible by all of the educational institutes and University all of the USA. The purpose behind all this project is to create a social network exclusively for Harvard students, many of whom were suffering from emotional stiffness and not have ‘aliens’ engaged into the network. But the amount of subscribers in Facebook grew exponentially throughout the years. Then Zuckerberg decided to make a registration accessible to the public for everyone to use it, not just for the students in the campus. And after this a Facebook ‘epidemic’ started.

www.facebook.com

Mark Zuckerberg started looking for investor. The first investor was from one of the founders of PayPal, Peter Thiel. Peter Thiel has invested a total amount of $500,000 dollars into the company and it is sufficient enough fot immediate Facebook purposes. In that year itself, a big firm named Accel Partners has noticed the potential of Facebook and invested a total of $12.7 million into Facebook, from there Facebook began to improve their operating system and pushing the site's membership to more than 5.5 million users by December 2005. Later Facebook began to attract some other big companies like Yahoo and MTV Network, who wanted to advertise with the well known social hub, Facebook. However, Zuckerberg turned down Yahoo offers when they offered Zuckerberg on buying over Facebook with the amount of 1 billion dollars. Instead, Zuckerberg fully focused on expending the site, opening up his project to outside developers and adding more features. Since then Facebook seemed to be going nowhere but up.

The BIG obstacle

In 2006, the creator of "Harvard Connection" - Divya Narendra, and twins Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss accused that Mark Zuckerberg has stolen their ideas and insisted Zuckerberg's company to pay a settlement of 65 millions dollars for their business losses. The "Harvard Connection" creator claimed that in 2003 Zuckerberg agreed to help them to complete the establishment of the social network HarvardConnection.com. According to their testimonies, Zuckerberg did not provide them the results of his work, but used the original source code to create TheFacebook or now to be known as Facebook.

Later that year, the "Harvard Connection" creator launched their own network renamed to "ConnectU.com"

. They continued on attacking Mark Zuckerberg, this time complaining on Harvard administration and the Harvard Crimson newspaper. Zuckerberg did urged the journalist not to publish any of the investigation by showing them what supposedly he did for the HarvardConnection.com, and explained that there all of the development has no relation to what he did for Facebook. The newspaper are about to close this case until one of the student from Harvar - John Thompson started saying that Zuckerberg stole one of his ideas for Facebook. So the newspaper had no choice but publish the articles for it. This action has offended Mark Zuckerberg very much. 

Newspaper clip from the Harvard Crimson article published on May  28, 2004

After that incident, the ConnectU.com creator filed a lawsuit against Mark Zuckerberg but was rejected by the court. They were persistent filed another lawsuit again the Facebook creator - Mark Zuckerberg. In 2009, Zuckerberg agreed to pay the ConnectU a total of $45 millions ( $20 millions dollar in cash, and the remaining amount in Facebook shares) as part of the court settlement. By that time Facebook already has 150 millions subscribers, whereas ConnectU is 1500 times lesser subscribers compared to Facebook.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

1. Astrumpeople.com, (2015). Mark Zuckerberg Biography: Success Story of Facebook Founder and CEO. [online] Available at: http://astrumpeople.com/mark-zuckerberg-biography-success-story-of-facebook-founder-and-ceo/ [Accessed 19 Jun. 2015].

2.Biography.com, (2015). About Mark Zuckerberg. [online] Available at: http://www.biography.com/people/mark-zuckerberg-507402#time-at-harvard [Accessed 19 Jun. 2015].

3.McGinn, T. (2004). Online Facebooks Duel Over Tangled Web of Authorship | News | The Harvard Crimson. [online] Thecrimson.com. Available at: http://www.thecrimson.com/article/2004/5/28/online-facebooks-duel-over-tangled-web/ [Accessed 20 Jun. 2015].

ENTRY #8

The emergence of Facebook

www.facebook.com

After the "FaceMash" project by Zuckerberg, three of his fellow school mates - Divya Narendra, and twins Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss - had already spoken with the idea of creating a social networking site for all of the Harvard students called "Harvard Connection".

This site is designed to use the Harvard's students information in order to create a dating site for the Harvard's elite. After a meeting with Divya and his team mates, Zuckerberg agreed to team up and help them with this project, but the potential of his new partners he estimated it skeptically.While working on this project, Zuckerberg got a fantastic idea of doing his own social site and soon dropped out to work on his own social network site which is almost the same with the project "Harvard Connection"  but it is with his new partners and also his friends - Eduardo Saverin., Dustin Moskovitz and Chris Hughes. 

TheFacebook.com

On February 2004, Zuckerberg and his partners has created a social networking site that allows the users to create their own profiles, upload photos, and communicate with other users called "TheFacebook.com", now known throughout the world as Facebook.com. However, it functioned only within Harvard until June 4, Zuckerberg and his team realized that there were already a big amount of users has registered and soon they decided to expand their Facebook service throughout to the students at Columbia University, Stanford, and Yale. After his sophomore year, Zuckerberg dropped out of Harvard and devote himself to Facebook full time and move the company to Palo Alto, California. By the end of 2004, Facebook had 1 million subscribers. 

BIBLIOGRAPHY

1. Astrumpeople.com, (2015). Mark Zuckerberg Biography: Success Story of Facebook Founder and CEO. [online] Available at: http://astrumpeople.com/mark-zuckerberg-biography-success-story-of-facebook-founder-and-ceo/

[Accessed 19 Jun. 2015].

2.Biography.com, (2015). About Mark Zuckerberg. [online] Available at: http://www.biography.com/people/mark-zuckerberg-507402#time-at-harvard [Accessed 19 Jun. 2015].

3. Men behind facebook. (2015). [image] Available at: http://s3.india.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/mark-zuckerberg000.jpg [Accessed 20 Jun. 2015].

4. Wikipedia, (2015). Thefacebook.png. [online] Available at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Thefacebook.png [Accessed 20 Jun. 2015].