The Internet

What a beautiful thing. I remember hearing about a chat platform when I was a teenager, and the thought of talking to another person that is unknown and far away really excited me. It was exciting to be able to connect with others, and not know who they are – totally defeating the “don’t talk to strangers” rule. This was possible because of the internet. The internet has evolved drastically – from basic static information to real time “EVERYTHING!” Some of our entire lives are on the internet, and we never know who is looking. I believe we are looking at major privacy issues that have already risen but are being neglected or ignored because of the social norms of conformity. I truly think that having the internet at your fingertips will not be enough in the next 5-10 years. People will demand change, people will demand more and the Internet may have to respond to increased capacities.

Devices that I think will become obsolete are going to be cameras and video recording devices. Let’s face it, our “smartphones” are becoming better and better at more than just talking. Someone once said  “the best camera you can have is the one in your pocket”, which makes total sense – Unless you are a professional photographer or offer recording services, items such as cameras and video cameras have already been substituted by Smartphones and in most cases perform better than regular cameras out there.

Other devices that I think will become obsolete are pocket calculators and financial calculators. Again, our smartphone can support applications which will very shortly completely replace such items as calculators – as soon as classrooms get over the “no phones while class is in session” rule.

Lastly, another series of devices I believe will become obsolete are personal desktop computers. The laptops have already taken over and unless you’re in a business setting, personal desktop computers are almost non-existent! Soon enough, they will become extinct! J

As far as where I see the Internet going 10 years from now, I wish I knew!

On the one hand, my thinking hat tells me to look further into the future where microchips can be implanted into our brains – chips that are connected to the internet and that can help you access any and all information. In a way we’re slowly going to turn into robots – after all, we can replace most body parts with artificial ones…what’s stopping us from “frying” our brain. If you really think about it, having a microchip with unlimited information will make our brains lazy..are we heading towards an era of increased idiocy? On the other hand, my realistic self-snaps me back into reality where the Internet will probably not change that much. What might change are the devices we use, but the internet, it can only get better without having to drastically change!

Twitter

I have used Twitter in the past only for business purposes. I have never really liked it and I think in a way, my negative perception of Twitter hinged me from actually giving it a serious try. I am not a social media expert, but Twitter seems to have piggy-backed on the success of Facebook – a platform for people to share personal information and receive some sort of “recognition” or “approval” for it. It can be downright dangerous, especially if you have a stalker!

In my own words, I’d like to explain to you my basic understanding of Twitter:

·       * You can write only 140 character sentences…most likely to represent your current activity/thought if it’s a personal account OR a catch phrase if you’re a business.

·        * The use of hashtags – If you use hashtags such as #(hashtag)name, you are able to see other posts that refer to the same #(hashtag)name as yours. This is particularly popular for events, celebrities and other topics that are looking to receive some sort of recognition and raise awareness. This hashtag has also been introduced with Facebook – which makes it easier to keep track of the volume of people that are talking about or are involved with a certain topic/event. According to Hashtagifyme.com, the most popular hashtag for the month of September is #gameinsight.

·       *  People/Businesses you subscribe to show up on your newsfeed like stories, some containing writing only and pictures, but most often than not, there is a link that will expand on the particular story being reported.

·       *  It is impossible to not have ads between your feeds and even on the right side of your screen; after all, how will Twitter make money off of you otherwise?

·        * The stories/updates presented appear to have a somewhat chronological order, although many times, I don’t particularly pay attention to that.

·        * On the upper right hand side corner, Twitter will make suggestions for you to follow certain celebrities or businesses, based on your current following preferences….yes, YOU are being monitored!

Advantages/Disadvantaged of Twitter compared to blogging:

* Advantages of Twitter:

·                           - Appeals to people with a very short attention span

·                          -  Can catch your attention through “catch phrases”.

·                          - Easy to skim through as all posts are short!

* Disadvantages:

·                         - Most often, people use blogs to report on an event, or story or share information and a link on             Twitter will get you right there; so in a way a disadvantage of Twitter is that you cannot share             your full story without having your audience click on a link.

·                        -  People can easily forget Tweets because of the abundance of information received at any one               time.

·                        - Hard to find a tweet depending on how many people and businesses you follow and how often             they tweet.

I cannot think of an example of misinformation that spread via twitter in the last 6 months, but I’d like to give you the context of how that is possible. In this day and age, where information is demanded in abundance and served in abundance, platforms like twitter present a perfect opportunity for false information to be born and spread like wildfire. First of all, judging by the number of tweets per day, even reaching tweets as high as #143,199 per SECOND, it is virtually impossible for content not to contain false or misleading information. Secondly, those that are tweeting all this information are not journalists working for renowned media companies, but rather regular Joes like you and I. Since when do we believe everything we hear? Truthfully, people believe what they want and even sometimes lie on purpose just to receive attention or create havoc. Now, it is true that we are able to “edit” our content just as fast, but how many people actually go back and do that especially when something is done on purpose?

Evaluating Bloggers.

The three Blogs I have decided to follow are: Business Insider (www.businessinsider.com ), Wall Street Journal ( www.online.wsj.com ) and The Economist ( www.economist.com).

Let’s take a closer look at each one of them and discuss their usability and usefulness.

Business Insider:

I have personally signed up for alerts from this blogging website as I feel it contains/reports very relevant information about business and finance in language I can understand. Call me a bit superficial, but Business Insider doesn't deal with hard economic facts and ideas, but rather gives financial and economic news a social spin…a little bit like gossip! It does however create an online environment that allows for shared opinions, from which we can all learn – sort of like a moderator of business/financial opinions. It does also allow for someone to follow things other than business or finance; you may also find a Tech Blog, Politics, Strategy, Life and Entertainment. I receive several daily updates from this source and I like it.

Wall Street Journal:

This is a blog I visit about 2-3 times per week. This is a little bit more advanced than business insider, as it allows for news from all over the world via its “editions”. I find there is a lot more information readily available here which is categorized via: Business, Tech, Markets, Market Data, Your Money, Opinion, Life and Culture, Real Estate and Management. This site is a bit more interactive but it is harder to navigate because of the abundance of information. You need a long chunk of time to sort through blogs and announcements unless you know exactly what you are looking for.

 The Economist:

I visited this blog about 1 or twice per week, and I have to say out of all of them, I was least interested in this one. Although some of the information contained was very insightful, most blogs that were business and Finance related did not interest me. It is possible for that to be the case because I don’t normally keep up with such blogs and I don’t have as much knowledge about current businesses and financial markets as I want. Therefore, for most of the articles I have had to do some background information legwork to understand the full context of the content. This blog also contains different categories, similar to the ones described above and you can choose the topic of your read accordingly.

Advantages/Disadvantages of blogging

Some of the advantages I can think of from both a customer and a business perspective and  are the following:

·         Quick Real time information – read about it as it happens

·         Space – not held back by “number of pages.”

·         Easy to read – zoom-in available as it is read via electronic device.

·         Large market reach – younger generations especially

·         Allows for interaction of readers – able to quickly respond to feedback.

·         Categories easily identifiable

·         Ability to search for a story without having to look through all categories.

Disadvantages of blogging are:

·         Not being able to reach the older generation

·         Restricted to reading off an electronic device.

·         Too much information, too quickly, hard to follow.

·         Relies on electricity, the digital world can come to a full shut down when one does not have electricity.

The future of blogging

To be quite honest, I haven’t really gotten used to blogging to begin with. When I first learned about blogging, I thought of it as a tool for self-made celebrities – a little like you-tube. It does seem that most have taken a liking to blogging and actually enjoy reading such news over blogs rather than a good old newspaper; but I can only speak from my own perspective and maybe even generalize a bit when it comes to my own age-group. I truly think that we will experience different platforms for sharing information and because of the abundance of information, I see there will be a large disconnect between people. If you think back, most would rely on the radio or the newspaper that would get dropped to their house every morning. Because this was the only few sources of information, most people would end up discussing similar topics. In this day and age, availability of information is so abundant that it is hard to relate to someone else unless you talk about the weather! J…Yes, this topic will always be widely discussed. In the next 5-10 years I expect blogging to continue to be widely used, but I do think that we are continuously waiting for “the next best thing”, which may change the way we blog.