Communication Online
The world revolves around the Internet now more than it ever has, and its importance is amplified by the introduction of communication and social media, and is now absolutely fundamental and essential to the way the world works.
Social Networking
There are many social networking sites available on the internet in this day and age but the ‘big three’ if you like are; Facebook, Twitter and MySpace, but there are some up and coming sites.
Facebook
Facebook has been the fastest growing social media sites on the internet since it was founded by Mark Zuckerberg in February, 2004. Facebook currently (as of June 2012) has 955 million users. There are, as with many things, both advantages and disadvantages of using Facebook. One of the biggest advantages, in my opinion is being able to contact your friends whenever you want; it also gives you the opportunity to meet and socialise with new people, with 1 out of 8 new couples in the U.S meeting on social networking sites such as Facebook. Along with the copious advantages that social networking offers; there are some disadvantages. One of the main disadvantages I have is that I find Facebook and other social networking sites so distracting and time consuming! 
Twitter Twitter is another widely used social networking site, I myself have an account. Twitter lets you ‘follow’ other people with Twitter accounts, whether it’s just your friends from school or the President of the United State, yes, Barack Obama does have a Twitter account! Twitter lets you tag people in your ‘tweets’ with the use of the ‘@’ symbol, this then allows people to see the tweet and reply, favourite or even ‘re-tweet.
MySpace
Email
Email was first founded by Ray Tomlinson in 1972; and was seen as an instant success, with the amount of people using email growing to this day. In 2010 records suggested that there were 107 trillion emails sent throughout the year which on average comes to 294 billion emails sent per day!! Although this stat doesn’t take into account how many of the 107 trillion emails were spam messages. Some people prefer putting pen to paper and writing a heartfelt letter an acquaintance, I personally on the other hand am a huge fan of email I find it easier, quick and much more efficient that sending a hand written letter. Emails are associated mostly with businesses; however emails have a huge target audience. For example, schools have started using programmes such as Microsoft Exchange and more recently Microsoft Web App. I think that Email is a great advantage for school because it let students contact teachers on any work that they may be stuck on or any work they want to hand in. Email also saves a huge amount of paper, with documents sent in messages, instead of on paper. There are disadvantages of Email, with people sending spam messages with some containing viruses.
Blogging
Blogging has seen a sudden rise over the years with over 200 million known blogs online. The rise in popularity is down to the simplicity of them, being able to make a blog about whatever you want and about whatever you want. Most blogs allow the ‘blogger’ to insert pictures, videos and hyperlinks. Most companies now have blogs, with brands such as Topman (http://blog.topman.com/) and Topshop (http://insideout.topshop.com/) with their own blogs, were the latest items and new can be found.
Instant Messaging
MSN
Instant messaging is a real time text based conversation system, mains providers such as MSN and Skype allow you to contact friends and family and get replies in seconds. MSN is part of Microsoft; it was released in 1995 and is now used by millions of people. You sign up to MSN by using your Email address; you can then add other people by using their Email. After they have accepted you invitation, supposing that they do, you can then chat to them for as long as you want; you can also send sound files, pictures and videos. An advantage of this is that it enables you to talk to relatives for example who live on the other side of the world; this experience is made even better with the introduction of a webcam and microphone. Again along with other sites where you Email is required there are dangers of messages carrying viruses, and MSN is no exception.
Skype
Skype also is also an instant messaging service which was launched in 2003. Skype is used by people for casual reasons but can also be used by businesses for video conferencing; Skype offers multi-chat options that MSN does not. Overall from my personal experience is that Skype is better, it offers HD video as well as all of the features of MSN.
Mobile Phones
Mobile phone companies have now started to put instant messaging systems into their mobile phones. Blackberry are a leading figure head in this with the introduction of Blackberry Messenger which is a free texting service which can be used from one Blackberry device to another, which allows you to send pictures as well as text. Apple are Blackberry’s closest rivals with their iMessage system which works with IPhones, IPod’s and Mac computers.
Forums
A forum is an online discussion board where people can topic about a give topic; topics can include; sport, fashion, technology etc.
Overall I think that social media is very important to our lifestyles, it has really changed the world that we live in today. Hopefully it will be good to see the way it develops over the upcoming years.
Education
There are a huge amount of sites online that offer Education in a huge range of subjects from the academic to the creative. These sites range from the small relatively unknown sites such as History Learning Site (www.historylearningsite.com) to the huge websites used nationally and internationally such as BBC Bitesize and the ever growing MyMaths. BBC Bitesize is by far and away the largest educational website on the internet today with education courses ranging from low level primary school to the top end of secondary school helping students completing there A-Levels.
From personal experience I can say that online education has helped me a lot. Through my education I have frequently used and re-visited BBC Bitesize for useful revise notes and practice exam questions.
E-Commerce E-Commerce is a title that covers mostly transactional websites on the internet with online shopping and music downloading falling into this category; e-commerce also gives people the opportunity to pay bills online and manage their banking. Online shopping has revolutionised the way that people go about buying things in today’s society. Shops like Amazon (www.amazon.com) and Ebay (www.ebay.com) being two huge players in the online shopping world. Online transactional websites offer a huge range of items and deals that you wouldn’t find on the high street; they also allow big companies to order goods in bulk. Online banking is another section under e-commerce. Online banking allows customers to 24/7 banking, paying in cheques and paying off bills and checking their bank balance on the go, this is seen as a great convenience for many people. From personal experience e-commerce is a great addition to the online services, its allows you to order things 24/7 (when the shops would be shut); you can also order items with ‘next day delivery’ which is extremely useful when you are in urgent need of the item you are ordering. Amazon offer excellent prices and offers on most of their products giving you the option between new and used copies.
Entertainment
Music
Online Services offer a huge range of entertainment from music to films, gaming to television programmes. One of the most widely used entertainment facilities online is iTunes. iTunes allows customers to buy music, video, films, audio books, podcasts and ‘sync’ them onto their MP3/MP4 device. With the introduction of MP4’s iTunes was able to branch out into the world of apps (applications) with different categories being introduced such as: gaming, education, news etc. iTunes is by far and away the most commonly used music download site. Behind iTunes (all be it a long way behind) is Spotify. Spotify offers its users 3 different options: a free trial run, Spotify Premium and Spotify Unlimited. The free trial run offers customers a 20 hour listening limit to which the get a taste for the site, Premium offers users full access to all music for £4.99 a month and finally Unlimited, this gives customers free access to music weather they are offline or connected to the internet for £9.99 a month. iTunes is my choice of music download site, I find it very user friendly and with song prices ranging from 0.69p to 0.99p it is fairly priced.
YouTube Facts:
60 hours of video are uploaded every minute, or one hour of video is uploaded to YouTube every second.
Over 4 billion videos are viewed a day.
Over 800 million unique users visit YouTube each month.
Over 3 billion hours of video are watched each month on YouTube.
These shows how widely used YouTube is all over the globe. From personal experience uploading videos to YouTube is simple; require very little effort, if at sometimes a little patience’s
As well as YouTube there are other video streaming sites set up by TV Channels. BBC IPlayer allows people to view program’s they have missed online as well as past series of those programs. Channel 4 has their own sites ‘4oD’ as do ITV with ‘ITV Player’. All of these sites offer the same services.
Online Gaming
There has been huge advancements in computer gaming in the past 3 – 4 years. Both Microsoft (Xbox) and Sony (PlayStation) have introduced online gaming into their consoles. Online gaming offers customers to play against friends and people all over the world through the providers servers; this has led to bigger things for both companies with online competitions being set up, some even with cash prizes.
Real – Time Information
Real-Time Information is another hugely helpful aspect of the internet. Real-Time Information includes topics like: Weather Forecasts, Traffic Updates, News Feeds, Ticket Booking, Airline Information, G.P.S and Parcel Tracking. Real-Time Information allows people to obtain information as it is happening such as the latest news headlines. With the introduction of 3G to mobile phones people can now access real-time information on the go. Parcel tracking is another part of real-time information; parcel tracking allows the customer to track the delivery every step of its journey whether it be new TV or the online food shopping
E-Government
E-Government is a reasonably new concept; but has been on the rise for the last 10 years. E-Gov is basically the use of the internet by the government, public sectors and local authorities such as the police. One of the advantages of e-government is it allows the majority of people to have a say in what is done in their local area.
E-Petitions or Online Petitions allow people to vote on current situations that the governments have. The E-Petitions on Kent’s council allow people who live in Kent to vote on how Kent is run and possible ideas. Once a petition reaches enough signatures/ votes the act will be passed.
In my personal experience E-Petitions have little effect unless a substantial amount of people sign for the petition. I once signed for a petition to get Kent Freedom Passes available for Year 12's and 13's but even with the thousands of signatures it still went un-noticed.
There are advantages and disadvantages of E-Government:
Advantages
Everyone can have an equal say
Saves going down to your town hall and voting
Can watch them online after
Saves paper as it all done online
People who do not live in that county can still go on the website and vote
Not all people have access to the Internet
Usually have to sign up and make an account
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