New MediaEveryone’s doing it.
• Through most of this course, we’ve learned about old media: books, newspapers, radio, TV, which have taken decades to develop.
• In comparison, new media have sprung up and become commonplace in years or sometimes months.
• The knock on new media is that it was considered ... well, a little shallow.
• Instead of thought-provoking ideas, most messages seem to be about simple things like what to wear or have for lunch.
• (By the way, do NOT text and drive!)
• Events like the Arab Spring revolutions of 2011 changed that.
• In Egypt, Libya and Syria, protesters used cell phones and the Internet to organize and to share images of violent crackdowns by those governments.
• Suddenly, anyone could be a news reporter.
• During 2009 protests stemming from contested election in Iran, a woman named Neda Agha Sultan was shot to death.
• Her death was captured on a cellphone video, posted on YouTube and seen worldwide, which galvanized the protesters’ cause.
• E-mail, or electronic mail, is a system of sending messages through computer networks.
• It was developed as part of ARPAnet, which we learned in a previous lesson was the precursor to the Internet created by the Pentagon.
• Ray Tomlinson, who worked on ARPAnet, actually invented e-mail in 1971.
• He was the one who figured on the @ symbol that is so commonplace now.
• Listen to a 2009 interview he did with NPR (Click “Listen to the Story.”)
• Now, nearly 2 billion people use e-mail worldwide.
• An estimated 107 trillion e-mails were sent in 2010 – that’s 294 billion per day!
• About 2.9 billion e-mail accounts exist worldwide.
• In 2010, an estimated 89.1 percent of all e-mails were spam, or messages sent indiscriminately to large numbers of recipients.
• The term “spam” likely did not come from the sort-of-meat product as much as from a sketch about it by comedy team Monty Python.
• Text messaging simply uses cell phones to send brief messages to any mobile device, not just a computer.
• Smart phones have only increased the trend, particularly since Apple unveiled the iPhone in 2007.
• In 2009, an estimated 1.5 trillion text messages were sent around the world.
• In 2010, that number quadrupled to 6.1 trillion.
• Teens now text far more than e-mail. In 2010, teens e-mailed 59 percent less than in ‘09.
• In fact, it’s become so popular that a shorthand type of text language has developed to fit messages into the small space provided.
• AAMOF, U cn sA jst abt NEfin. OMG!
• Social networking has also become a mainstay in a short time.
• A 2010 study showed that 22 percent of all time spent online is through social media sites.
• In the U.S., time spent on social media increases 83 percent each year.
• The undisputed king of social media is Facebook.
• It claims more than 1.1 billion active users worldwide.
• In any given day, more than half of them will log on.
• 300 million photos uploaded each day.
• Mark Zuckerberg invented Facebook as a Harvard student in 2004 as a way college students could connect.
• He is now America’s 25th richest man with an estimated value of $13.3 billion.
• He just turned 30.
• Twitter has also become popular in recent years through a format of messages that are limited to 140 characters.
• The messages, known as tweets, are listed chronologically. Users can “follow” each other as well as send messages and photos.
• Jack Dorsey is credited as the creator of Twitter when he and others worked for a podcasting company in 2006.
• A year later, it was unveiled at Austin’s South by Southwest festival. Before the festival ended, Twitter usage had tripled.
• Twitter has 554 million users worldwide.
• Though Facebook is more popular, Twitter draws more celebrities.
• As of 2014, singer Katy Perry is the most followed on Twitter with 55.8 million.
• President Barack Obama has 45 million.