How the Internet Should and Will Continue to Be Successful?

Christian Cretella

How the internet should and will continue to be successful

             These days, one of the most important forms of media out there is the internet. First used back in 1969, it has significantly evolved from what it was originally created for. It went from just being used for email and communication, to a form of entertainment and media. There are things like social media now, music and video sites, games, and millions of more resources on the internet in today's day and age.

               By 1996 about 45 million people were using the internet and close to 30 million of them were located in North America (http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0193167.html). Around this time the internet wasn’t as intricate as it is today. There was nothing like Youtube or Facebook, but only things like email and the first forms of online news. The first music/entertainment application that was created was Napster, by a college student in 1999. His program allowed people to listen to and share music over the internet. By this time there were close to 150 million people on the internet. In just 3 years the internet population went from 45 to 150 million more people. This shows how extremely fast everybody started to conform and start to get computers and use the internet.

                In 2005, Youtube, a video and entertainment site was created. Today this is one of the most popular websites on the internet and will continue to be, as media only continues to play a huge part in everyone on this planet's lives, entertainment especially. Gordon Moore, a co-founder of Intel, stated that technology will continue to get faster, smaller, and cheaper as the years keep going by. This theory is called Moore's Law, and it was stated in 1965 when technology wasn’t even starting to be popular, so it has really come a long way and has been correct in regards to the path of technology and the internet. According to Daniel Saks, one of the biggest barriers that the internet has are the closed systems. People now have so many options like internet providers, different devices, and different brands to choose from. Most brands have their own kinds of softwares and products that specify to their brand name to increase competition with other brands and providers. So the barrier here is that data sharing is limited when these companies are keeping customers in their own "brand-specific" area.

             By now the biggest part of the internet is by far social media. Facebook was created in 2004 and since then it has only increased in popularity. Similar to Facebook, other applications like Twitter, Snapchat and Instagram are also widely popular forms of social media today. A huge part of having a business in todays day is advertising your business or product and it has been extremely popular recently to advertise using social media. Businesses will create an account for their brand, and build up a following on social media and this allows for so much more recognition because people are constantly sharing things on the internet. So the internet is one of the most important tools when it comes down to advertising a business. On sites like Youtube, ads can be placed before videos or on the side of the webpage for users to see while browsing the site. Even if you choose to skip these ads the business still gets money for you having viewed even a little of the ad, and this just exemplifies how much money can be brought in just from ads like these. People who make popular videos on Youtube monetize their videos so for each view they get on their videos, they get a certain amount of money. So there are some people that use Youtube for a living, and people that pursue it as a career, which also goes to show how much influence the internet gives to some people.

               Given all of this, and all of the different kinds of content on the internet, there should be certain groupings added to the popular web pages such as Safari, Firefox, Internet Explorer and etc. If the internet was more intricately divided into certain "categories" it could make the internet so much more accessible to people that have trouble with it. It would also make it a lot cleaner in the sense that people would know exactly where they're going. The concept is kind of like an encyclopedia. If your looking for recipes for example, one might be able to choose the cooking category and have everything they need right in front of them. This could create so many new ways of filtering and grouping the content on the web.