lost in the network

so, this week, adrian decided to kick off the lecture by showing us all the site “the faces of facebook” which is a pretty incredible site. however, i do kinda wish that adrian had of shown us this at the end of the lecture because, as should be no surprise to anyone who knows how easily distracted i get, i ended up completely missing the next 15 or so minutes because i was trying to find myself on the site. as i’m sure you can imagine, with over 1 billion people on facebook, i was unable to find myself, or even anyone i know. this is just a testament  to show how incredible this network really is, over 1 billion people are on facebook!!! i can’t think of anything similar that has come anywhere near to those numbers. its insane. and right now, it seems impossible to think that facebook will ever stop being huge.

but, can facebook last indefinitely? probably not. as was discussed in the lectures, old hubs deteriorate over time, and new ones flourish. think of myspace or yahoo, very popular back when they came out but now are nowhere to be seen. will this happen to facebook, or even the seemingly untouchable google? its hard to tell now because they just seem so huge but i’m sure they will. think of all the new stuff we have now as well as facebook, there’s twitter, flickr, Instagram, vine, tumbler and so many more, how long lasting are any of these sites in the forever expanding network of the internet. they are so strong as hubs because they have so many loose ties but because these ties are so loose, the hubs can’t last. its the strong ties that last but also lead to a more disconnected network. facebook or google are all weak ties, as many ties as they possibly have to get as many links as possible to great the biggest network as possible. so it makes sense for me to get lost in the vast network of the internet and facebook because so does everything else, there is just so much of it.

what was amazing that one person made that whole faces of facebook site. i wouldn’t even know where to start with something like that and she did it just for fun! that’s dedication.