Oh, the internet. Ever changing. The trends change as fast as the technology behind it. Here are the current trends behind the world wide web.
1) The Oh-So Obvious Blog. They’re still in high form and they’re actually becoming more discussions on the world around us than on documentations of the life of the writer. Blogs are more likely to be about technology, news briefs, and the entertainment world than anything else.
But we cannot forget the variation of blogs. I myself have seen more vlogs in the past year than any other growth of blogs. Video blogs are becoming more popular with the digital video technology getting increasingly better. Also, people get to display themselves on the internet, and everyone wants his or her fifteen minutes of fame.
I was unaware of this term and I’m sure many people aren’t either. Short blog posts displaying links, photos, a short comment, and diagrams are called tumblelogs (up until this point, I thought that displaying photos of products and people were just part of blogging). Tumblr is a tumblelog website.
2) I-Love-Kittens-And-You-Should-See-Them Photo Tags. This was started by a site called Flick when they launched. Tags, where you can say what’s in a picture, connected people from all over the world. One interested in say, kittens, can choose to see only pictures of kittens from Malaysia to Paraguay. However, people have caught on, and tags aren’t just about the photos anymore; in fact, people are trying to win over audiences with material barely related to their search. It still works, and tags, in any website, are still making a huge winfall.
3) I Want My Internet Television! Oh, darn, you missed your favorite television show! Oh well, if it’s a popular enough show, you might be able to find it online (and if it’s not, a small indie site will be able to help you!). The US version of “The Office” is one of these shows, where the station puts the show online for you to watch. I know a few people that don’t watch television much anymore; they do it on their web browsers. A growing trend indeed.
4) Web News. Hell, it’s faster than the TV, no matter how fast CNN can change their info from something redundant to something important to society. The web changes faster than televlsion, even though scripts are handed over at the same time (I worked at a leading area broadcast station for a summer). If you want the latest and the greatest, don’t wait for the ticker to change and you really shouldn’t wait for press to roll through and smell of fresh ink. And you wonder why the print version of New York Times is doing so poorly?!
Blogs also count in this web news thing. That’s how CNN finds out about their news sometimes.
5) You’re Not Cool; You Can Play Video Guitar. You thought you were safe when you threw away that Playstation and put video games out of your life. The sad thing is that even though the amount of “gamers” is going down, the amount of people playing others around the world is increasing. And I’m not kidding, the only way you can do this is over the internet.
Unless you’re magic. And your name is Harry Potter, Hermione Granger or Ron Weasley. And I doubt it.
This amount is increasing because it’s just cooler to find someone better than you in Australia than in the nearest city. It’s networking via college student style, plus you get to have fun. Mind you, the job you could get wouldn’t be that great…It seems to be that these things will be in the future as I have no reason to see them dying anytime soon.
6) Networking Through Posting About You. How can I forget my favorite internet invention? Starting with MySpace (which I do dislike for multiple reasons) and becoming extremely popular with Facebook, social networking quickly became popular with multiple age groups, but particularly college aged adults. Posting information, looking at other peoples information, talking to them through the site…it’s a very large trend.
Now, it’s getting more attention because businesses are starting to do this to keep in touch with clients and people in related firms. It’s not just business card exchanges and cross-company meetings anymore! It’s addicting, I know.
However, I will add two new trends that should start popping up more prevelantly soon. One of them is the mobile web. It’s caught on in Asia and Europe, and after the iPhone, it seems to have started the fire. The second is personalization of major websites, with Google being the forerunner in this. Google will tell you what you’ve searched for and will remember your preferences from your search results to make the “search” experience easier for the user.
