Information and Networks

The one network law that I most agree with has to be Sarnoff's Law. This law states, in a nutshell, that the value of a network increases linearly with the number of people on it. Now I agree with this for a variety of reasons. One, is that when you look at networks from an advertising point of view. Facebook's value has taken off in the past five years and that is due to the number of users. These users attract advertisers thus increasing the value of Facebook's network tenfold. On the other side of the coin, look at Myspace. This website had all of the value when it hit it's peak in popularity in the mid 2000's. After the drastic decline in users, Myspace became obsolete and essentially abandoned. This is due to the fact that Myspace failed to capitalize on the value that they had. Network values are always changing and it can disappear as easily as it appears. If Myspace had sold more advertising and kept evolving they would of held on to this ever changing value a bit longer.

When looking at where people will get their information five years from now, I see two major sources. One being the traditional media with a slight twist. The twist being the online sources provided by today's traditional media outlets will become the main source of news information. I could see today's traditional news casts being moved to completely online where you have to go to that affiliate, or broadcast company's website to view it. The second source, which to me is unfortunate, will continue to be social media. People do consider most things they see on social media as truth or fact regardless of sources. Yes, I have been guilty of it too, but unless we teach people to look past the outer layer then this second source will persist and grow.

Why we blog

With a question as general as this it is hard to establish an exact answer. According to the article "Why we blog" there seems to be a very wide range of answers, reasoning's and motivators behind blogging. Blogging is considered by a majority of people as an entry level form of online expression yet to some bloggers it was a bit more impact-full and that readers had a good bit to do with how bloggers blog. On top of that, most bloggers seem to keep a set of rules or code of ethics so to speak. One thing from the article that surprised me was that bloggers censor their content when the reader demographic changes. The example given by some of the bloggers is that their families are a part of their readership. One blogger mentioned how he censored his own blog because his mom and grandmother are both active readers. One blogger stated how they keep it a purely family oriented forum. However, one blogger that I found the most refreshing was a female blogger with differentiating political views to her uncle and how she took that into consideration by not making inflammatory political statements because he is an active reader.

Overall, I felt the article addressed the extremely general question in a very informative manner. I feel that blogging is generally a very individual form of self expression but this article has opened up my thinking about what bloggers take into consideration. They play to their own readership much like newspapers and other written media outlets do in a professional setting.

My Favorite ad of the Big Game