Sitting in on the meeting between her and my internship supervisor Tim Lovitt was a great experience. I will confess the majority of what they spoke about was a bit foreign to me so I had to write down everything then look it up afterwards;
- VC: Short for venture capital. Venture capitalists follow angel capitalists, and reflects the financial stage that Facebook is currently facing.
- Indexing: Data structuring in order to improve the speed of operations.
- Rogue AI's: The bad apples of artificial intelligence. Science fiction related.
- Incubators: More specifically technology incubators are facilities which offer a nurturing environment for individuals and businesses to develop commercially.
- The '.com' boom: A period marked by the emergence of new internet based companies referred to as 'dot-coms'. The novelty of the dotcom concept saw shares in 'dot-coms' boom.
Apart from the meeting, I spent the majority of my research time learning about Twitter and how people are using it in different ways. One small village in the US uses Twitter to 'Tweet' messages to residents of the community including roadworks and weather warnings etc. It keeps everyone connected and well informed. Although there are many stories of businesses using it successfully, its challenging to think of an innnovative way to use this application, as everyone that uses it tends to be more concerned with what they are 'Tweeting' than other peoples 'Tweets'.
If that is the case, then how do you get people to listen?? I think an important thing to remember with social media and specifically social networks is that you must add value to the network before it starts adding value to you. If you offer an honest and engaging connection, the connection will grow.
