Kist- The Battle For Facebook

I first created my own Facebook in high school. My sister was in college at the time and told me about it so I decided to make one to stay in touch with her. At the time, I hardly ever used Facebook I actually preferred using Myspace.  Now that I am in college, I use Facebook almost everyday to stay in touch with my friends and family.

From the get go, I thought that Facebook was very similar to Myspace. I got the vibe that the idea for Facebook was not original but branched off of other social networking sites. Turns out I am not the only one that feels this way.

Since the award winning movie The Social Network came out there has been a lot of talk about whether or not Mark Zuckerberg was the original creator of Facebook. My take on the story from the Rolling Stones article is that he got the idea for Facebook from the Harvard Connection but transformed it into something that the founders of the Harvard Connection never could. However, to hear another side of the story I decided to watch a YouTube video of the Winklevoss twins (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ugI_gRR6rB8&feature=related). I also watched an interview of Mark Zuckerberg (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1qfcWSZAHvM).

When comparing Facebook to other social networking sites Jeff Jarvis, the director of the interactive journalism program at the City University of New York, states: "It was better than its predecessors," says Jarvis. "Friendster was a game; MySpace was a tacky home page. Facebook was the best to come along."

While there is still debate about who really created Facebook, one cannot deny that Facebook is a great tool for the classroom. While looking through the text The Socially Networked Classroom, I found that a teacher actually created an assignment called the Jacksonian Reformers Facebook in which students create a Facebook for one of the reformers they learned about in class (Kist 91-93). The idea of using Facebook for a project is brilliant because the information about the reformers is organized in a way that is familiar and easily accessible to students.