How Blogs and Social Networking Have Altered Our Daily Usage of the Internet and the World Wide Web - Essay Example

How Blogs and Social Networking Have Altered Our Daily Usage of the Internet and the World Wide Web Introduction The term global village has become common vocabulary for most people in the world today. This is because it is very easy to interact with people from different corners of the world at the speed of sound. These changes have been brought about by advances in technology. The technology that has been instrumental in transforming the world into a global village is information technology especially advances in computer hardware and software. These advances have given rise to the Internet or the super highway. The internet began as the work of the US military in conjunction with private investors. This was in the 1960s when the US military built a system of interconnected computers to supply data over a wide geographical area. The National science Foundation funded the building of a national system of interconnected computers referred to as the back bone. This was in collaboration with private investors like companies and rich individuals. However, it was in the 1990s that the internet was popularized. The World Wide Web is a collection of documents and related materials that are sequentially interrelated by use of hyperlinks, and are referenced using uniform resource identifiers better known as URIs. Uniform resource Identifiers enables web providers to identify services, and they also enable clients to access websites. Both the internet and the World Wide Web have experienced a phenomenal change at the turn of the century. This is because there has been a shift in the usage of the two services at the wake of blogging and social networking (Freeman 2006, 118) . Conventional usages of the internet and the World Wide Web When internet began to be used from the 1990s by the public, its work was cut out for it (Castells 1996, pp.9-35).This also applies to the World Wide Web. One of the major uses of the internet has been the provision of communication services. Since the inception of the internet communication, this has been one of the services it has traditionally provided, in communication internet has provided services such as the following: Internet telephony Internet telephony is a growing gut conventional communication service afforded by the internet. This service is realized through Voice over – internet protocol or VoIP. This novel internet telephony began in the early 1990s with walkie –talkie like application for small computers or personal computers for that matter. The benefit accrued from this service is that it cost much less than traditional forms of telephony. The other reason why it is preferred is that the quality of the voice is just the same as that of the traditional telephones. E-mail is one of the most beneficial communication benefits of the internet. Most people who use the internet mostly do text messages to their friends or workmates. Internet e-mailing has been very popular because it is quite cheap and fast, also the message can be sent to several people at relatively low costs as compared to other forms of e-mailing like telephone e-mailing. Another traditional or conventional service of the internet has been in the transfer of data. This has been a central role that the internet has played especially for the corporate clientile.Data transfer takes several forms as listed below. File sharing This involves the transfer of large amounts of data across the internet. This is mostly in business and government institutions where loads of data and files have to be transferred to customers, fellow workers and subsidiaries. Thus, most people in the past, before the evolution of blogging and social networking visited the internet to share data or to pass data to their clients or customers and other relevant people. The people using the internet were thus purely there on a business capacity or working capacity; they were compelled by work and it was not a personal choice. Another way of data transfer is streaming media. This is one conventional way that has seen thousands if not millions of people turn to the internet. Streaming media Streaming media refers to the act of many media practitioners especially those in electronic media to feed their live radio and television broadcasts into the internet. This has enabled many people in the past to turn to the internet to get news from their favorite broadcaster. The other people in this category are the broadcasting people who have been using the internet because they are just doing their job. Before the advent of blogging and social networking, many people were using the internet as webcams .Webcams are extensions of media streaming where the difference between the two is that a webcam is cheaper to access than news and other stuff from a renown broadcaster. Before social networking became the norm and blogging became accepted most people use to visit the web for academic purposes, that is, students from high school to post graduate students went to the web to get materials for their course work or for their study projects. This is because the web is an online store of knowledge with books, journals and much more academic material available free of charge. The other reason why most people have been visiting the internet before the evolution of social networking and blogging is that they were there on business ventures .Most business people used to visit their company websites to post the latest news as for their products and services. The other business group was there to buy goods online and to scout for the best services online. Since the World Wide Web has traditionally engaged in online advertising, most people who visited the web were there to scout for either the best products on sale or to post adverts for their employers or companies. The others have been government officials out to fill in the work assigned to them (Scott 1991, pp.82). However, the internet has seen a revolution in its usage after the introduction of social networking and blogging. All and sundry have began using the internet in increasing numbers from teenagers to old men, the internet has revolutionized social networks.Simillar minded people from all over the world are interacting irrespective of social or racial backgrounds. Social Networking and Blogs Social Networking Social networking has immensely changed the way we use the internet. Social networking means how groups of people are using the internet to socialize .Social networking is the bringing together of like minded people who have similar tastes and has increased the way most people interact. This has seen the introduction of social networking websites such as Face book, Twitter and MySpace. These websites have created new and novel ways for people to socialize and interact. Users, from all over the world of these sites manage to add a wide variety of information to the sites pages, greatly enriching the said social networks (Scott 1991, pp.82). Social networking has greatly changed the way we use the internet. One of the ways has been the introduction of leisure activities to people in different geographical locations and of different ages. A good example of leisure activity on the net is multiplayer gaming. People are also increasingly turning to the internet to find companions and companionship. This is especially so on Face book where people post their marital status. The internet through the social network websites like Face book has become like some kind of a pen pal platform. Friendships have been made on the internet, and many couples have met on the internet. Infact many unmarried people are using the net as a forum for dating (Castells 2001, pp.45-46). Even the shy need not fear because the internet has many websites that give dating tips .Thus, one can date through the internet and learn how to date through the same internet. The social networking website also provides a good forum for the establishment of plain platonic friendship. As has been stated earlier, many people are turning to the internet to seek companionship. This is especially so for the thousands of internet users who want friends from traditionally hostile nations (Wasserman & Faust 1994, pp.105). Blogs A blog is a website or part of a website. It’s unique in that it is maintained by an individual. Regular entries are made into the blog by the blogger, the person who maintains the blog. The materials entered include video entries, commentaries and descriptions of current events. Because of their unique nature, most blogs are interactive and allow visitors to make their comments on them. Blogs have an interesting history; it is said that the contemporary blog is an improvement of the online dairy (Freeman 2006, pp.57). Online dairies were online accounts where people used to keep continuous accounts of their personal lives. These predecessors to the modern bloggers were known by a variety of names including journalers, diarists and journalist among other names. Even before this pioneer group came into existence, there used to exist digital communities. These digital communities took varied forms such as Usenet, interforum and Bulletin board Systems among others (Freeman 2006, pp.57). Early blogs, those of the 1990s were primitive because they manually updated works of common websites and pages. However, the evolution of software and hardware to ease the production and continuance of Web articles placed in reverse sequential order made the publishing procedure possible to a much bigger, less technical and populace. Ultimately, this resulted in the separate category of online editing and publishing that produces the modern blog (Rehmeyer 2007, pp.82). There are many types of blogs in the internet today. Blogs are classified according to the content in the blog and the means through which the content is uploaded into the blog. Some of the popular ones are mentioned below. One of the most popular blog is the corporate blog. The corporate blog is mostly a business platform forum for the sponsoring company or organization. It can also be private, but this is the exception and not the rule. The business blog is used either externally or internally. The external usage is mainly for the purposes of public relations, marketing or the branding of the company (Hansen & Reese 2009, pp.196). Another type of a blog is the personal blog; it is also referred to as an ongoing diary. It’s the first kind of a blog to emerge, and this means that it is the most common. It’s mostly created and maintained as a labour of love and most people are attached to their blogs sentimentally. A vlog is a blog that contains videos, and it’s mostly maintained by the media. There are many other blogs in the internet like linklog, tumblelog and sketch blog among others (Wasserman & Faust 1994, pp.105). Effect on the internet Many people are turning to the internet to blog. This means that the blogging culture has affected internet usage in a unique manner. In fact, blogging has had an effect on the world and the internet such that even governments have opened official blogs. Such governments include the Israel and US governments among others (Castells 1996, pp.9-35). One of the reasons that have made blogs to have and alter the usage of the internet is the fact that, they provide employment to thousands of people. News papers buy stories from blogs, and this means that most people will be at their blogs trying to do some quality work that can be published in a reputable paper. Blogs have altered the way we use the internet because, as they are not censured they can publish juicy gossips that the populace wants and hungers for. Such gossip includes political mud racking and sling especially at prominent political leaders. Thus, most people will go to the net just to learn from their favorite gossip blogger which politician is sleeping with who. Consequently, most people will be visiting the blog or the net for just the reason of satiating their thirst for gossip. Blogs can be written anonimously as you can always give false identification in opening one. This has made them effective tools for exposing the infringement of human rights in totalitarian countries that censor the mainstream media. Many people are currently turning to the blog to get news, especially sensitive news that cannot be availed through the mainstream media as already stated. That is how news from closed countries like Singapore and Iran filter into the world. Thus, many people will flock relevant blog to get the latest news from some countries in the world. It’s not to be forgotten that the core details from the war in Iraq have come from bloggers (Rehmeyer 2007, pp.82). . Blogs have also been used as advertising forums. The blogs that are mostly used for advertising are the corporate blogs although the personal blogs are increasingly being used to advertise. This is a major break from the past when the internet was used just for E-mailing and other communicative purposes and not for advertising purposes. Conclusion The essay began by tracing the history of the internet. It showed that the internet began as a work of the US military in conjunction with private investors. This was in the 1960s when the US military built a system of interconnected computers to supply data over a wide geographical area. The national science foundation funded the building of a national system of interconnected computers referred to as the back bone. This was in collaboration with private investors, companies and rich individuals. However it was in the 1990s that the internet was popularized (Nadel 1957, pp.57). The essay has also shown that the internet began to be used from the 1990s by the public, and it had its work cut out for it. This also has been shown to apply to the World Wide Web. One of the major uses of the internet is the provision of communication services. The essay has also given definitions of the key terms that have been used in the essay. They include terms like the blog, networking, among others. The paper has then plunged into the discussion of the question at hand. The essay has proved and shown the way in which the blogs and social networking have altered the way use the internet and the World Wide Web today. The blog and social networking have greatly impacted the society we live on, and changed forever the way we are going to interact with the internet (Radcliffe-Brown 1940, pp.1-12). It’s the prayer of all bloggers and all those who are into social networking, that the governments of the world will gang together to pressurize countries like Iran and Singapore to stop prohibiting social network websites like Face book and twitter from their countries. This is because the said prohibitions are anti social, and they hurt the advances made in globalization. On the same note, those bloggers in the said countries should not despair; but should seek alternative means of accessing the internet so as to continue their mission of informing the world of the evils that happen in the said countries with the government’s full knowledge. References Castells, M 2001, “Lessons from the History of Internet”, in “The Internet Galaxy”. Oxford, Oxford University Press, Ch. 1, pp 9–35. Castells, M 1996, Rise of the Network Society, Cambridge, MA: Blackwell Publishers, vol 3 (1), pp.45-46. Freeman, L 2006, The Development of Social Network Analysis. Vancouver: Empirical Press, 118. Freeman, L 1988, Social Structures: A Network Approach. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 57. Hansen, W & Reese E 2009, Network Genie User Manual. Greensboro, NC: Tanglewood Research, 196. Nadel, S 1957. The Theory of Social Structure, London: Cohen and West, pp. 57. Radcliffe-Brown, 1940 "On Social Structure," Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, London, 70, pp. 1-12. Rehmeyer, J 2007, Mapping a medusa: The Internet spreads its tentacles, Science News 171(June 23):387-388. Available at Sciencenews.org Scott, John. 1991. Social Network Analysis, London: Sage, 82. Wasserman, Stanley, and Faust, Katherine, 1994, Social Network Analysis: Methods and Applications, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 105. (Rehmeyer, 82) (Wasserman and Faust 105) Read More