Mazen El Mogharbel's Blog

A business student majoring in accounting at LAU in Beirut, Lebanon. Interested in social media (facebook especially). Amateur photographer. Will become a worldwide traveler one day :)

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Please check my new video you will definitely like it :)

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The Facebook Effect Review

The Facebook Effect is a book written by David Krikpatrick and published in the year 2010. It describes the history of Facebook and its social implications. Kirkpatrick, who worked for Fortune magazine for two decades, Kirkpatrick tells us how Facebook was created, why it has flourished and where it is going next. He is most interested in financial issues - and especially how rich Zuckerberg will become if ever he does pull the trigger and sell the company for cash.

How did a nineteen-year-old Harvard student create a company that has transformed the Internet and how did he grow it to its current enormous size? Kirkpatrick shows how Zuckerberg steadfastly refused to compromise his vision, insistently focusing on growth over profits and preaching that Facebook must dominate (his word) communication on the Internet. Kirkpatrick rarely provides any explanations of how Facebook has achieved its vaunted "effect" technologically; software complexity is sacrificed for business simplicity, but Kirkpatrick doesn't demystify the mechanics of how Facebook created "a fundamentally new form of communication." 

There is plenty of business drama in "The Facebook Effect," because although Zuckerberg may be famous for igniting firestorms over the privacy of Facebook users, he seems ambivalent about capitalism and surprisingly sophomoric about business. Rather than chasing revenues, Zuckerberg chases users; his desire to expand his social network seems insatiable - and is as close as anything to the real secret of his success. Having spawned one of the biggest social movements in the world, built around an Internet-based software system, Zuckerberg has yet to figure out how to balance the tensions between promoting human community and earning significant profit. Yet earning large profit - indeed any profit - from Facebook has proved difficult for two reasons.

First, fans of Facebook span the globe; 70 percent of the 500 million people who use it at least once a month live outside the United States. The wide and multilanguage nature of Facebook users makes marketing to them difficult and not especially attractive.

Second, Facebook is more like watching a movie than doing a Google search. Facebook seems like entertainment, a way of passing the time. Google improves productivity, helps a person get stuff done faster. Though new features on Facebook are starting to offer more productivity options, the core attraction remains social.

Zuckerberg, is clearly brilliant and wildly ambitious. Finding a way to achieve both a stable business and a distinctive social good is an achievement that will surely spawn more books about him.

I have learned some interesting things from this book like how Facebook can have this big effect on a certain country's political situation, for example because of Facebook we have witnessed the Arab Spring. Another thing which I learned was how one small idea, when sharing it and working on it, becomes a wildly known thing in the world, for example Mark Zuckerberg had this small idea that he wanted to create a social network for his college students, and after several attempts he succeeded and way over-passed his initial goal by creating the Facebook and being spread worldwide.

This book affected me in a way which made me know how to make Facebook useful to me through many things (for example: using it as a marketing tool, or communicate with friends abroad) and to other people by helping them in expressing their own opinion without any fear or law restriction which might be the spark for a change in the world in the near future.

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Yesterday's croissant at lau cafeteria #breakfast#lau#cafeteria#shtrumpf#independence#lebanon#beirut

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The DreamMatcher Experience

Last Wednesday 6/11/2013 I attended an event called "The DreamMatcher Experience" which was held at AltCity in Beirut-Hamra Street. The event's goal mainly is to connect people who have dreams with others who are able to make these dreams become true through only three steps. These steps were the following:

Step One: Write on sticky notes three dreams that we really want to make them true but these dreams must be reasonable since only the people that are at the event are able of making them become true. After finishing writing them we then must stick them to the "Wall of Dreams".

Step Two: After we stick our dreams to the "Wall of Dreams" we sit on our tables and try to get in contact with the people sitting with us in order to know more about them and to see if we are able of making their dreams come true.

Step Three: Finally, we go to the "Wall of Dreams" again to see all the dreams and if we are capable of making them come true, if we found a dream that we can make it true we simply just write our name on the sticky note, and then everyone checks his/her dreams that he wrote to see if there was a match with someone who is willing to make these dreams come true.

It was the first time I attend such an event, and it was a great experience indeed since I found a match with someone who is willing to make one of my dreams come true. There were some interesting things which attracted me for example they mentioned in the event that they were going to give two free tickets of a photography workshop that will be held soon to who ever is able to convince all the people why he/she deserves to take one these tickets. Another thing which was a very funny thing, one the dreamers wrote that he/she wants to learn Facebook hacking (which I really didn't understand why though he wrote the reason) which made me and many people laugh a lot.

There were many different types of dreams for example some people wanted to learn graphic design, photography, meet fairouz, find work in Dubai and so many other amazing (and hilarious) dreams. It is really a nice thing to share our dreams with other people and try to find a someone who can make them come true, by doing that, we are spreading happiness among these people by achieving their dreams that they have been dreaming about for so long and maybe some of them felt that these dreams can't become true one day until they found out people who were able to make their dreams achievable.

Finally, I think if the event was held at a bigger place for example Downtown or Beirut Souks so that more dreamers can attend it and have the chance to make their dreams come true (and if we are allowed to have more than one drink it would be much better :P).

Some photos of the event:

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S1m0ne

S1m0ne  is a movie which talks about a director (Viktor Taransky) who uses a computer-generated woman to be the main star in his movie. He named her Simone based on the computer program's title "Simulation One".

Multiple themes were discussed in the movie S1m0ne. One of them is the addiction to celebrities and even sometimes worshiping them by considering them as Gods and imitating them in everything that they do even if it was clearly wrong because of the over-love of their fans.

Another theme is how someone can use technology to fool the world and let them believe what he/she wants. Taransky shows us in this movie how advanced technology helped him a lot in fooling the media and the public in believing many things (such as the presence of Simone in different locations in several interviews and pictures, Simone's speeches in which he was the one who actually made them and via technology he made the world think that these are her own words, and of course existence of Simone herself).

Another theme is the beauty. In the movie, Simone was revealed as a very beautiful actress which was one of the main reasons why it was so loved from her fans.

This movie relates to media in a direct way, because media was the reason behind Simone becoming a celebrity, it was also the reason behind people believing her existence in which digital/social media had a major role in this via the online interviews and magazines which revealed her as a perfect person even if she appeared as a bad person (the zoophilia movie and the interview in which she appeared drunk, smoking, and mentioning some things which appeared to be bad but because the media didn't disagree with her she remained the perfect person in her fans' perspective). Also media revealed her as the perfect image of Taransky by always thanking him in her interviews and without him she wouldn't have existed. In addition to that, media only shares the good things about anything they discuss and this was strongly shown in the movie when the media was always praising her and never vilified her although she never made a face to face interviews or came to the Oscars ceremony or even when she appeared in her last interview drunk and smoking and saying things which appears to be bad but the media explained it as defiant and honest.

Media always revealed many incidents which the general population tricked to believe that it was the truth while actually it was missing several facts which the media didn't bother to mention for example the last and famous incident which happened at LAU two weeks ago where four students were banned from entering the campus and their IDs were confiscated during a protest against the increase of the tuition fees , all the media and especially the social media when covering the story they all agreed on this: LAU in a cruel way decided to do this action to only these four students just because they were protesting in a peaceful way to deliver their message and LAU didn't like that so they decided to take this action on these four students. If we believed this reason, there is a question which we must ask ourselves which is: Why LAU chose among all the students whom were protesting these four in particular? Isn't it weird? Aren't they supposed to punish all the students whom were protesting if the administration were bothered from them that much? Clearly there's something which made them to pick these students in particular to punish them or else they would have punished the whole group or they wouldn't even allow them to have a stand on the upper gate and make this protest from the beginning! The fact which was hidden by all media is that these four students broke the student code of conduct during their protest when they entered several classes interrupting the lectures by asking the instructors to allow the students to participate in the protest and claiming that the Dean of Students gave them the authority for such action (which was a fraud one), and when one of the instructors asked the Dean about that, he denied that he gave any student such authority and at the moment he knew what they did, he found himself as a Dean of Students obliged to punish them as they broke the LAU student code of conduct (by their actions) which states the following:

"The University Students are expected to respect, abide by, and comply with the letter and the spirit of the University Student Code of Conduct on and off campus.

Any student found to have committed misconduct is subject to the disciplinary sanctions outlined in Article V-B. A non-exhaustive list of misconducts includes:

  Disruptive behavior by any student or group of students, in or out of class, which for any reason materially disrupts the class work of others, involves substantial disorder, invades the rights of others, or otherwise disrupts the regular and essential operation of the University. This includes the following:

Disruption, or interference, which impedes, impairs or obstructs teaching, research, administration, disciplinary proceedings, or other functions including public-service functions or other authorized activities"

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#adha#mubarak#citycentre

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WHERE WOULD YOU MOST LIKE TO VISIT ON YOUR PLANET?

Turkey <3

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At lau byblos campus :) #lau#byblos#jbeil#summer

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Facebook Deactivation Experience

My social media's course instructor gave us an assignment on the very first day and it wasn't any normal assignment! It was deactivating our facebook for 72 hours!!! At the beginning I thought it was a joke but it turned serious :( So I started thinking of ways to escape this damn nightmare that I was living that moment (for ex: block the instructor, not joining the course facebook group), but then I said to myself how much bad is it? So I removed all the bad ideas that I had in my head and I considered this assignment as a challenge for me and I like challenges. So when the so waited moment arrived I started the deactivation process until I reached the last step, but before I did it I hesitated a bit, then I gathered my powers and deactivated my facebook.

On the first day, I was okay with it and didn't feel anything, but on the second day I started feeling bored and that there's something missing. A couple of my friends whatsapped me asking me the reason behind my activation and as agreed with the instructor I answered them as follow:

First one: The semester has started and am under pressure so I deactivated my facebook so that I can have enough time to study and his reaction was: "Oh ok. Gd luck!".

Second one: I got bored from facebook so I decided to take a short break from it by deactivating it and her reaction was: "Ah ok. May god give you strength".

Third and last one: Well it's a class assignment our instructor gave us, her reaction was: "HAHAHAHAHA! And I thought that there was a problem with my laptop lol!!".

Finally, it was a nice experience since I learned from it how much free time I will have if I deactivated my facebook and also how much important it is to have direct contact (face to face) with the people rather than just talking to them virtually while sitting behind our laptops or mobiles. In addition to that it showed me how much we waste from our precious time on facebook even if we are just checking the notifications it will take from us minimum an hour since people will start talking to us and we would want to see what our friends shared and something like that. We should spend this lost time on something else which is more useful like reading books (or studying for example :P). Minimize your usage of your facebook and see how much free time you will have to benefit from.