Kate Hello and welcome to this week’s 6 Minute English. Well this is one of our
last episodes of the year, indeed of the decade. So in today’s programme we’re
going to be talking about how various things have changed over the last 10
years – the noughties. (This is the expression some people use to describe the
years 2000 to 2009 because the numbers include a ‘nought’ or zero). So
Rebecca , what has changed for you since the year 2000.
Rebecca answers
Kate Well one thing which has changed everybody’s lives dramatically throughout
the world in the last ten years is the Internet.Can you cast your mind back to
the year 1999 and try to remember how you used the internet back then?
Rebecca answers
Kate Yes, I remember having a strong sense of the Web’s possibilities but I never
imagined what a huge part it would play in my everyday life - working with it,
using it at home, for keeping in touch with friends email, listening to radio,
music and booking holidays etc.
Rebecca answers
Kate Well, the Web has changed all our lives in so many ways and today we’re
going to focus on one aspect of it – social networking. Are you a social
networker?
Rebecca answers
6 Minute English © bbclearningenglish.com 2009
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Kate gives some more examples. Here's my question for this week. How many users
does Facebook have?
a) 100 million users
b) 200 million users
c) 300 million users
Rebecca answers
Kate Good answer. I’ll let you know if you were right at the end of the programme.
Can you guess how Facebook might have started?
Rebecca I think it was something to do with Harvard university in Amercia – is that
right?
Kate Yes! Originally a ‘facebook’ was the name given to a document given
American students when they first arrived at university designed to put them in
touch with other students with whom they might be friends. Then a young
student call Mark Zukerman decided to put it on the web rather than using
paper.
We're going to hear from Chris Cox, the vice president of ‘Facebook’. Before
we listen can you explain what upload means?
Rebecca Well upload means to put something on the web. You can upload pictures,
music, videos. The opposite of course is to ‘download’ which means you take
materials from the web and put them on to your own computer or Ipod.
Kate Thanks – well let’s listen. Can you tell me what Facebook was like in its early
days?
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Extract 1
Mark built a service that allowed you to upload your picture and your name and where you
came from, your birthday, very basic things and the service had a feature that said you could
add somebody as a friend.
Rebecca He said that Mark built a service which allowed you to upload your
picture, name, your birthday and basic things. More or less what we see on the
site today but just more basic.
Kate And then what happened? Chris Cox again.
Extract 2
Within a matter of month or so I think pretty much everybody at Harvard was on Facebook
and we slowly launched it at one university after another and then suddenly Mark’s inbox
was full of other universities saying could you launch this here. And there was a very
common story which was within weeks of the launch of Facebook.com at a school it would
become….90 % of the student body would join.
Rebecca So it seemed become successful very quickly. He said that within a month
everybody was on Facebook and soon afterwards all the other universities were
asking for it. He used the words inbox – this is of course his email inbox where
he receives emails.
Kate Thanks so there we have just one example of how our everyday lives have
been changed by the internet and social networking in the last ten years. We
are now able to stay in touch with friends in a way which was unimaginable
ten years ago. Now the answer to the question I asked you.
Rebecca I think I said…
6 Minute English © bbclearningenglish.com 2009
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Kate And you were correct. Let's have a quick re-cap of the vocabulary we've come
across today. First of all we had noughties, upload, download, inbox and
launch.
Rebecca: Goodbye!
