Many are often shocked when the format of facebook changes. Some get angry protesting for facebook to go back to the old way while others just simply adapt. In order to better be prepared for these changes and new applications, one can follow what is new and upcoming on facebook. At the following link, facebook employees give new updates and features of facebook. Some new interesting updates deal with making deals on facebook, safety devices for families, and teachers using social media in the classroom. So in order to avoid the shock of new features on facebook, stay updated!!

http://blog.facebook.com/

GoldCorp is a gold produced company that is said to be “fastest growing, lowest cost senior gold producer in the Americas”. But why is this company so successful. While there are several reasons for GoldCorp’s success story, one of them is their use of crowdsourcing. In March 2000, GoldCorp made available a wide variety of geological data to the general public. There was a prize of $575,000 for anyone who could find or suggest potential spots where gold could be found. The result of this mass collaboration effort was over 100 targets that were approximately 80% successful bringing over 8 million ounces of gold. Because of their use of crowdsourcing, GoldCorp’s value skyrocketed from $100 million to $9 billion. Now, how is that for a gold rush???

Not only is mass collaboration being used on the internet for business, but it is also being on the internet in several other fields, including science, specifically meteorology. With today’s weather, it is hard to make accuracte predictions of the climate over a long period of time. That’s why some websites like Galaxy Zoo implement mass collaboration by allowing ordinary citizens to participate in their research. These ordinary citizen scientists will help classify and analyze meteorological data to help create better models of the Earth’s climate. Many are surprised by the amount of insight and knowledge the general public has on these scientific concerns.

Galaxy Zoo has been a huge success. It has involved over 250,000 citizen scientists. On this website, citizen scientists use the simple classification tools on the site to classify different galaxies. Over 75 million classifications have been made for 1 million galaxies. This has gone beyond the expectations of Galaxy Zoo as they had only expected about 50,000 different classifications from the general public. On Galaxy Zoo, anyone can participate in the betterment of the Earth’s climate by simply answering a series of questions when given a picture of a galaxy. A sample question may be something like this: “How round is it” or “Does the galaxy have a bulge at its centre?” Galaxy Zoo provides many explanations and pictures for unfamiliar vocabulary for the common folk.

Overall, this project can continue to be successful if other nations were willing to participate in it. Since this sort of data is usually sold, a barrier they will have to overcome is being willing to unite with other countries for the betterment of research on the Earth’s climate. Imagine the benefits this could have on Earth. Many lives could be saved from natural disasters through better prediction of the weather.

It is quite clear that mass collaboration is significant in bettering our world as it can help find results through research that were not possible to find before. If you want to read more blogs about this topic, they can be found on Antony D. Williams blogging site on Environment and Sustainability at http://anthonydwilliams.com/2010/09/06/mass-collaboration-to-improve-climate-data-a-new-frontier-in-citizen-science/.

The website for Galaxy Zoo is: http://www.galaxyzoo.org/

Groupon has started to become a very popular company over the last few months. Many people already know about Groupon because it is very easy to understand. Andrew Mason, a Music Major from Northwestern, is 29 and created Groupon. Unlike other successful internet startups, Groupon is different because it did not require a deep technological understanding to start it. With how the economy is, Mason knew that people love to save money and tapped in to that pain by giving incentive to people that promote offers by a company. It is said that Groupon has been the fastest growing company as it is valued at $1.35 billion over 17 months. Groupon was originated in the Windy City and is paving the way for more success stories of internet start ups in Chicago. Recently, Groupon refused Google’s offer to take over as they believe the company still has a lot of potential to grow.

While browsing through some blogs on Kiva, I found an interesting blog that proposed that Kiva was a criminal enterprise and a fraud. This blogger seems to think that while Kiva seems to be helping the poor, they bury their ridiculously high interest rates on the loan. The average rate on a loan is approximately 35% and Kiva has already made 17 million off of the interest on these loans. The blogger also said that Kiva is a criminal enterprise because of the potential violence it promotes through their loan sharks. To read more about what this blogger thought, you can visit the site: http://francoistremblay.wordpress.com/2009/11/21/kiva-is-a-fraud-a-criminal-enterprise-and-perhaps-more/

In response to this article, a staff member from Kiva responded saying that there is often a financial misunderstanding. The problem is that although these percentages seem high for interest rates on loans, people must understand that as a loan gets smaller, the transaction costs get larger because they cannot go below a certain minimum. The staff member said that essentially it is just as expensive to take care of a $100 loan as a $500 loan. Since most populations need the smaller loans, the average interest rate appears to be high. For more financial information you can visit the site: http://www.reddit.com/r/reddit.com/comments/a7p56/kiva_answers_anarchists_kiva_is_a_fraud_a/