Assignment 1-4-5

A formula can be defined as a pattern that one follows to get from point A to point B. For example, one of the common formulas society uses to help individuals achieve success is as follows: graduate from high school + 4 year college degree= better paying job= ability to afford nice things and live well. A formula can be seen as a road map that helps us to achieve our goals that we have set up for ourselves.
      When it comes to Facebook, the social networking website uses a lot of formulas to achieve and maintain its success. There is a specific formula which allows posts to be visible to others when the user makes a post, a formula to limit the people that can see this post, a formula to prevent others from commenting on the post, etc. There are different formulas used to achieve different results.
      The formula for the success of Facebook could be defined in the following stages; idea, development of idea, growth of idea, retaining of idea, survival of idea followed by either life or death of the idea. The whole concept of Facebook started out as an idea that a college student had in order to help college mates connect with each other. He then developed this idea with the help of his other college companions and then word-of-mouth advertising helped the website grow in terms of users.
      Mark Zuckerberg was able to maintain the number of Facebook users by giving them a product that they had a demand for, which he did by helping old friends and families be able to find each other even though they have not seen each other in years. He did this using a formula that would create a “connection” between  Facebook users’ friends by matching one users’ friends to another on their network and this would enable the people to find each other. He also introduced free games such as fish farms to where you would have to log in everyday to feed your fish and clean the tank or else they would die, and this kept it interesting. None of the other social networking sites have this.
      Facebook is still able to survive in the mist of other competing websites such as MySpace because the company is always coming up with new formulas to add onto the site to keep it “fresh” and retain its users while growing its market share.
      The life or death phase of an idea is the final stage. At this point, Facebook looks like it is going to be around for a while however, other social networking sites have died out a bit, 2 examples are MySpace and bebo.
      After reading on formulas for this assignment, I have started to notice that everything has a “formula” to it and nothing happens randomly. From me turning on my computer and typing my password to navigating through online classes, every action has a consequence or a result because there is a formula built in somewhere behind the scenes that triggers a specific result if you perform a certain action.