A Day On The Internet

Facebook forced The New Yorker to remove a cartoon depicting Adam and Eve in the Garden because the cartoonist drew in two dots representing Eve’s nipples.

Facebook’s total energy usage last year measured 532 million Kilowatt hours; minus the 36% of its energy the company gets from renewable and nuclear sources, that led to 285,000 metric tons of CO2 emissions.

What does that translate to for an average user?

“To put this into context,” says the report, “one person’s Facebook use for all of 2011 had roughly the same carbon footprint as one medium latte. Or three large bananas. Or a couple of glasses of wine.”

269 grams doesn’t sound like a big deal, until you consider thatFacebook has 955 million active users.That’s a whole lot of lattes.

Still, environmental leaders were pleased. “Today’s detailed disclosure and announcement of a clean energy target shows that the company means business and wants the world to follow its progress,” said Greenpeace International Senior IT Analyst Gary Cook in a statement.

Read the full article here.

Image courtesy: Original article

While Facebook is the leading social network elsewhere, it doesn’t enjoy that privilege in Japan yet. But that is slowly changing.

TOMOYUKI TANAKA is happy to share why he and his friends love their new favourite social network. “If one of us meets a cute girl, it goes up on Facebook,” says the 16-year-old. “If there’s a photo as well, then the ‘ii ne’ [‘like’] button gains added significance.”

Tanaka is one of a growing number in Japan who are ditching homegrown social networks such as Mixi, on which most users are anonymous, in favour of their foreign counterparts, where personal information is shared freely. Kenji Shinozaki, a 19-year-old hair stylist from Shizuoka, is another who has swapped Mixi for Facebook.

Facebook started gaining more popularity only last year.

Surprisingly, Facebook gained a boost following the release in Japan of the film The Social Network in January 2011. “Until then, few Japanese had heard of Facebook,” says Kametsu.

Another trigger was last year’s earthquake and tsunami. While cellphone masts and telephone lines were affected by the disasters, data channels remained open and became the most effective way to stay in touch. Facebook’s policy of using real names also came into its own. “People were looking for accurate information they could trust. Real-name systems like Facebook are much more suited to this,” says Kametsu.

Read the full article here.

Image courtesy: Original article