Facebook has more than 600 million users and was founded by a Harvard graduate, Mark Zuckerberg, with the help of his fellow computer science students. I'm even older than him as he was born in 1984 but he is richer than even the self confessed rich president of Uganda, Yoweri Museveni, with an estimated wealth of 13.5 billion dollars. I found one of the facebook co-founders, Sean Parker; to have an interesting history in social networking that stretches way back when he was 19 years old at a time he founded the music-sharing site Napster. Sean later became the first facebook president in 2004 but he has since left the company, though he remains a shareholder there.
Both facebook and Twitter started when I had already moved to Britain. Jack Dorsey who started Twitter is also a fine young man who is just 35 years old.My funny analysis of Twitter is that it obviates the need for discussion, analysis and debate. In short it requires little mental activity for people with short attention spans. It makes one think they're part of something, without ever having to think about what it is they're part of.
Unlike African leaders who have started fighting social networks, the guys in the west have found facebook and Twitter to be good political tools. Barack Obama got more than 1.5 million users during the US presidential elections and this played a crucial role to his election as president of US. Sarah Pallin and other Republicans have got accounts on both Twitter and facebook.
Here in the UK, the government is driving an IT dominated policy from the NHS, police to community led projects. More than 100 MPs are facebooking; Parliament and 10 Downing Street have channels on YouTube.com, and the Conservative party host 'webcameron'.
Businesses have found social networks to be a real revelation which has increased things such as direct marketing, consumer profiling and the targeting of services. The data collected on facebook, for instance, is better than that collected through market research surveys or telephone polls.
Social networks are basically dangerous to the very people using them as there is a lot of disclosure of personal information that can be misused by bad people out there. I wish there is a way social networks would minimise personal information disclosure. This is where I have got a problem with facebook because they can easily pass on personal information to a third party without your authority. Their Privacy policy explicitly states that the company is willing to pass on the data posted by users on to third parties. Through selling information and advertisements, facebook was valued at US$15 billion when Microsoft invested $240 million for a 2 per cent share in October 2007.
Yes,I am for freedom of information but do believe in some control of the internet by the administrators[ not the government] to safeguard children. Parents should also take it upon themselves to safeguard their kids against looking at big hairy pink twats on the web (God forbid!). Because i value freedom and information sharing, we started a Google forum called Ugandans At Heart (UAH) but we do not ask members to disclose their true identities to us if they don't want to - as we don't want to be responsible for anybody's security online. What we clearly do is to encourage better debates and interaction, and ask a lot of Ugandans to join us. We believe in 'Metcalf's Law' that states that the utility of a network is equal to the square of the number of users. What it means is that the more users that a network has, the more useful it is. We are not driven by profit motives as we draw no money from anybody. We only ask for online financial support from our members when we need to buy more space on our blog though this has also been a big mile stone to climb as only about 2-3 people contribute whenever there is any financial necessity.
UAH is still mainly Google based and it is for only a few Ugandans that can access the internet. We have not been as lucky as Mark Zuckerberg to get big funders to enable us expand this network into something bigger. We hoped that since few people can access the internet in Uganda, we could start up a radio station, TV or print newspaper to reach out to the biggest part of the population, but our dreams have remained just dreams because nobody is willing to invest in it. Mark and his buddies formed facebook for the benefit of other Harvard students but it later expanded into a bigger network because some rich Americans were willing to put money into it. Among the first facebook investors was a guy named Peter Thiel who also happens to be the founder of PayPal. He was an early investor in Facebook and LinkedIn, another popular social-networking site, and is a board of directors in both companies. Surprisingly, he majored only in philosophy rather than IT at Stanford University unlike Mark Zuckerberg who studied both psychology and computer science. May be this is something to give psychology students something to smile about.
Nonetheless, i dream of a pro-democracy media outlet for Ugandans or Africans in general- something that can replicate more of what Aljazeera is doing in the Middle East and North Africa. Individuals have come to learn that they can be sources of information and this kind of information is more believed by the population than something reported on some state TV or newspaper.
In Uganda, investors neither support young people with brilliant ideas nor do anything they think may not be in line with government interests. Our government has started looking at social networks as a threat to their politics of oppressing the masses. Freedom is something most Ugandans have never experienced since independence such that having an independent media will open their eyes to what real freedom is, not the phony freedom the politicians talk about. FaceBook and other social networks are proving to be a more effective weapon than guns against repressive regimes. Some people have acted a film out of appreciation for facebook called ''The Social Network''. It went on market in 2010. May be one day, we can get someone to act a film or drama and call it 'Ugandans At Heart', who knows?
All I know is that we should continue to fight for freedom of information laws in Uganda because they are the key to assuring it that government business is transparent; and they offer citizens a chance to find out what their government is doing. But what the Uganda Communications Commission boss, Godfrey Mutabazi, is doing in regards to ordering the shutdown of facebook and twitter during demonstrations, is so wrong at so many levels. Unfortunately, the same Mutabazi is the boss of Uganda Broadcasting Council (UBC), and he has again shown his muscles this month by warning the media on '' walk-to-work coverage''. He is the same man who was officially responsible for the closure of four radio stations in 2009 during the Buganda riots.
Abbey Kibirige Semuwemba
UK
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