Social ventures are one of the hottest topics today. People want to profit by making good in the world and lots of them are turning to the power of the many to do it. As the technology unfolds, trust mechanisms evolve, we may see a tremendous shift in how and why people use the Internet.
Okay, it’s not a country, but it does connect us in community. Laws, social norms, and language will all be put to the test. What will we learn when the barriers come down? The irony is that even while the Internet is expanding, it’s also focused on helping us localize in the communities we live in.
An increase in supply of content (tweets, blog posts, photos, videos, etc.) will create a demand for marketing and publicity of that content. The implication of this will affect many things including our psyche and how we view what we produce, how we communicate with others verbally and virtually, and how we select the products and services that are available to us.
While their use is still largely limited to less-than-mission-critical purposes, online social networking services are becoming more popular each day.
Dating, hobby-related hookups, and party announcements are some of the many trivial pursuits people seek on Web sites like Friendster, MySpace, and Tribe.net. But there is growing evidence to support claims that some social networking services (SNS for short) can be a powerful professional ally to businesses — in particular, independent entrepreneurs and smaller companies, for whom each new personal connection is a significant business building block.
LinkedIn and ZeroDegrees are two of the more popular services that facilitate business-oriented connections, and some argue these and similar sites are now doing a better job at connectivity than ever before. Networking technologies nobody uses are of limited value. As the popularity of SNS sites grows, so does their value, because a larger number of users mean better odds for productive connections.
As the old song says, “Video Killed The Radio Star,” and the Internet is killing journalists, or at least news organizations like newspapers and television news shows that no longer provide the same value to their customers.
Journalists are seeing their career paths die right before their eyes. There are even websites like Newspaper Death Watch and a Google Maps project that tracks job layoffs at newspapers across the United States. November marks seven consecutive quarters of declining advertising revenue for U.S. newspapers.
How Did Journalism Get Here?
Journalism started dying when people stopped looking to newspapers and television for news. It is as simple as that. Mindy McAdams, the current Knight Chair for Journalism, recalls that in 1995 people turned to television for coverage of the Oklahoma City bombing, but by 2001 public demand crashed CNN’s online servers in the aftermath of the World Trade Center attacks.
The Internet has slowly, but surely taken over the role of “see it here first” journalism. Even 24-hour news stations like CNN, MSNBC and FOX News do not have the ability to show news as it happens anywhere in the world. The Internet does.
Professional journalists are people who can write well, edit, shoot photos or video; they will always be needed. A few national and international news organizations will continue to exist in order to cover national and international governments and business.
Local and regional news organizations will need to scale back and cover their niche, local or regional news and sports. There are many openings and opportunities at the local level. Many smaller communities are not served or underserved by the mass media. Well-organized and lean local news organizations could do a great job covering these communities online and with a weekly or monthly print product provided free to the community.
The biggest problem is that too many of today’s journalists see working at a local newspaper as an unfulfilling career path. And too many journalists today see online news as a threat to “real journalism,” and have little or no ability to create online news content on their own.
The Internet is not killing journalism; it is just killing an old model of providing news to people who want information. The new model is as different as printing on a printing press was to hand copying books. Journalism is transforming into something more interactive, where the consumer is also a producer. That is not a bad thing, but it will cause a lot of stress and disruption as the older model fails and the newer model finds ways to succeed.
The Chinese government states that companies, domestic or otherwise, have to abide by Chinese laws. "We welcome international Internet companies to do business in China in accordance with the law," said Jiang Yu, a spokesperson for China's Ministry of Foreign Affairs. She didn't deny Google's allegations of cyber attacks directly, but did state that such attacks are illegal under Chinese law.
Jiang Yu further stated that "the Chinese government administers the Internet according to law and we have explicit stipulations over what content can be spread on the Internet". Of course, this case isn't about the censoring in and of itself - Google has been active in China for years, and just like many other Western companies and governments, had no qualms about catering to China's censorship and other totalitarian practices.
Therefore, it seems like Google's intent to cease censoring search results has little do to with morals, but more with it being a response to the cyber attacks, and I'm sure the fact that Google isn't as big in China as it is here also plays a role (Google's share is estimated to be around 30%, half that of its main competitor in China, Baidu).
The cyber attacks themselves were probably routed through the Republic of China (Taiwan for those who don't know their history). Chinese hackers infect Taiwanese company's computers with malware, turning them into zombies for botnets, which are then used to perform the actual attacks. Trend Micro states that about 20 million attacks against Taiwanese computers took place in August 2009 alone.
Students and teachers from all over the world are learning from audio and video programs on desktop computers, laptops, iPods, netbooks, and other devices. Hundreds of free educational programs are available online. Here are some examples: Grammar Girls Quick and Dirty Tips for Better Writing, English Idioms and Slang, Storynory: Free Audio Stories for Kids, MathGrad: Everyday Mathematics Explained, and First Amendment Minute.
