Is the Web Eating Itself From Within
The way the internet has changed journalism is nothing short of drastic. In the last 20 years digital media empires like Facebook, Google, and YouTube have risen to unbelievable heights and in the process have taken the other leaders from media along for the ride. However, what started as a series of improbable garage projects and college students/dropouts working to revolutionize the world of technology as we know it falling apart. The web is still the dominate form for getting information, but like most media has hit a stumbling block, leading to questions of how prolific it will be in the coming years as it continues to grow.
The reason for this is the shift of mass marketing from TV and print over to the web. What where once simple web pages for news or even hobbies are plastered with at least one ad or sponsor to ensure the site remains afloat. Now while this makes sense, it is not hard understand just how overblown a once simple process has become. What was initially ads in the corner of your screen that could be ignored are now ads that require users to close them before they can proceed on a site. This can also be seen in how we perceive social media, for even though it keeps us connected it in combination with our search histories really just end creating targeted mass advertising.
When the internet launched it was a great leap of progress for media, but it has several pitfalls, most notably just how dependent we are on it. When a multitude of start-ups websites went out of business in the early 2000s, the first flaw of the web was shown that being over-saturation. Today the internet thrives despite something holding it back, which is the very same thing that makes it and its parents TV, print, and radio profitable, advertising. However, unlike those other forms of media there are two ways to avoid advertising online: either get an ad-blocking software or don’t log on; otherwise we all will have to suck it up and move on. The question is how long can we bare advertising being put ahead of the content and connection to the web we all hold so dear to our very fibers of social interaction. Is the web starting notify us of its slow, but implied demise like with Twitter, or like Google will it continue strong, with this time period being nothing than a long and annoying buffering session?
Link to another blog for more insight: Transparent Terry
Image is owned by: Kathmandu Post
I think it’s crazy that many Americans receive the bulk of their news intake through social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter. This is not necessarily a good thing, because anyone can post whatever they want on Facebook and call it news. There’s also a high potential for bias on social media reports.
The use of advertisements on news websites is becoming more and more frequent in order to keep the business booming. All those ads are frustrating, and this may be part of the reason why most people choose to get their news from unreliable but not ad-heavy places like Facebook.
Newspapers are also struggling with advertisement overload, as many papers are cluttered with ads that take up half the page and limit the amount of actual news coverage.
I’m not convinced that advertising, as we know it, is the answer to the woes media is facing, for all the reasons you cite. I think we’re one or two innovations from finding a way to make this work.