The last part of The Facebook Effect by David Kirkpatrick goes through how facebook is now being run much more like a legitimate business when compared to how it was originally run. This part of the book goes in detail about how facebook is taking new approaches to how they run their business in order to keep it as popular as it is. The main way they are doing this is by willing to push the envelope on what people think is possible for them, and making sure they consider consumer satisfaction over instant monetary gain.
Kirkpatrick shows how companies are not untouched from the negative effects of the fast advancements of technology. The difference with facebook is that they work to not let technology grow without being checked which is was Technopoly tells us as a society we need to do. Facebook does this by finding new ways to do advertising so the website is not destroyed by flashy ads like most other websites. The only way this was made possible was due to the fact that facebook does not take the first offers they get when it comes to advertising and makes sure customer satisfaction comes before initial monetary advancement. Customer satisfaction has proved to be very important since the next social website could take off and overtake facebook just like facebook did to myspace.
The effects on American culture shown in this section are not necessarily from what facebook is, but what as a company they claim to be doing. The things that facebook claims to do is that it is a place for freedon of speech, and is helping to create a gift economy on a large scale which is helping keep companies honest. The only things that facebook says they remove from the site is content advocating hate, violence, or breaking laws. These are very broad concepts to say they are removing, and could possibly fit almost anything said in one of the categories. Especially if advocating breaking laws is removed then nothing in a society could be change through facebook. The fact that they are claiming that they are keeping companies honest is a scary thought. The first question would be who is keeping facebook honest and what companies could do without people knowing just because facebook says they are legit. With these claims facebook could possibly change how our culture views freedom of speech and decide what companies will succeed and which ones will fail just from their backing power.
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