Midterm+Sources

Please post all your used sources here so I can take them and make a sources page in the correct format Aimee has asked for, Thank you!

["The Evolution of the Web", evolutionofweb.appspot.com, available from [], accessed 6 November 2011.]



= = **MIDTERM EXAM** :

**WHO AND WHAT:**
How the Web Works - Randy History/evolution of the Web - Brian,Caleb Demographics of Web Usage - Josh Internet Infrastructure - Patricia Images/videos, links, Style, Chicago/Turabian Formate page - Kyle User generated content - Jimmy Social Media and Networking - Anthonia, Jordan

Internet Infrastructure |  History of the Web  |  How the Web Works  |  Demographics  |  Social Media  |  User Content

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An Internet service provider (ISP) is a company that provides access to the Internet. For the home user this typically occurs through a cable or digital subscriber line (DSL) modem (modulator-demodulator) that sends and receives digital data through a television cable connection or a phone line. A Local Area Network (LAN) is a group of computers that are in the same general area and usually are seen in a business environment. A wide area network (WAN) may connect a LAN to other branches of the business. ======

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The Point of Presence is where the ISP exists in the physical world and allows users to access their network via telephone, cable, or dedicated line. There is no controlling network in these areas but instead a series of networks connecting through Network Access Points (NAPs). ======

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Networks rely on NAPs to talk to one another. The NAP backbone is the cabling of a network. It is capable of carrying more information than single units. Routers are apart of this backbone. Routers are physical devices that receive/send data out as requested by the user. ======

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An Internet Protocol or IP address is the unique number assigned to your computer. IP is the language computers use to communicate over the Internet. The protocol is defined by the way a person wants to use that service. IP addresses are made up of octets that are actually binary numbers. It uses mathematical formulas that only equal up to a sum that contains zeros and ones. Net octets are used to identify the network a computer is connected to while Host or Node is the computer itself. ======

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A Domain Name System (DNS) converts IP addresses into simplified links such as www.youtube.com instead of a long number system that computers use. The domain name is also used in Uniform Resource Locators (URL). URL is a link to a specific area in the networks. ======

Servers are computers that provide services to other computers; while Clients are the computers requesting the data. Servers can be accessed through ports each one having their own protocol. One protocol is the Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) which is the way a computer reads the data given to it and translates it back to you.

__Personal Impacts:__
With the invention of Internet Infrastructure many people have gone into the field of computer science. Including myself by going into Web design. This structure allows me to communicate and learn from others. I have become smarter due to the fact that such a complex system was created and allows me to search topics I may have otherwise never known.

__Political and Global Impacts:__
The invention of Internet Infrastructure has created jobs in the computer field. Thus improving society on a large scale. With the internet working on such a complex system there is no shortage of data to be sifted through. Global impacts of this is the fact people in general find it easier to communicate with one another across vast distances. Thus markets have improved because marketers can keep in contact with their providers and consumers.

Politically speaking the creation of Internet Infrastructure has allowed for Politicians to spread word over greater distances. Made it easier to follow politics, and allowed for a new form of political advertisement. Most political meetings can be re-watched thanks to the structure allowing the internet to exist.



1. [Curt Franklin, "How Routers Work", HowStuffWorks.com, available from http://computer.howstuffworks.com/router.htm , accessed 6 November 2011.]  2. [Jeff Tyson, "How Internet Infrastructure Works", HowStuffWorks.com, available from http://computer.howstuffworks.com/internet/basics/internet-infrastructure1.htm , accessed 6 November 2011.]  3. [Jeff Tyson, "How LAN Switches Work", HowStuffWorks.com, available from http://computer.howstuffworks.com/lan-switch1.htm , accessed 6 November 2011.]  4. [Ed Byrne, "What is Internet Infrustructure", edbyrne.me, available from http://edbyrne.me/what-is-internet-infrastructure , accessed 6 November 2011.]  Back to Top

__ ** History/evolution of the Web** __
The first man to envision a device that could handle and transfer massive amounts of information was  Vannevar Bush, an important member of our Defense Research Committee during World War II. 1 He realised that the amount of data we generate as a whole everyday was enormous and that the amount and accuracy of information would become a critical aspect in all future conflicts. In 1945 he wrote an article about a theoretical engine he called "Memex," that would be photographic, electrical, and mechanical in nature. Its purpose was for memory expansion, or basically a mechanised library, that could create and navigate through links between files on microfiche. Although his work was more about the concept of data storage and management rather than networking, it allowed future scientists to piggyback on that and start building the real thing. A man named J.C.R. Licklider became his successor soon after and he also saw the potential of a mechanical library and envisioned a large network of devices that shared information that would drastically decrease the amount of time it normally took to sort through information manually. He called this the "Intergalactic Network." 2 1.

[Jonathan Strickland, "Who Invented The Internet", HowStuffWorks.com, available from [| http://www.howstuffworks.com/innovation/inventions/who-invented-the-internet.htm], accessed 6 November 2011.]

2. [Dan Connolly, "A Little History of the World Wide Web", Wc3.com, available from  [| http://www.w3.org/History.html], accessed 6 November 2011.]

 However, all of this remained conceptual until 1957 when the man-made satellite "Sputnik" was launched from the Soviet Union. This was during the Cold War, so the United States and the Soviet Union were enemies. It was assumed that if the Soviet Union could get a satellite into space, they could launch a missile into the United States. Thus, officially began the planning of the first communication-information network. The following year president Eisenhower began project ARPANET, which stands for "Advanced Research Projects Agency." The network itself was designed to be impervious from direct attacks by creating a "web" of connections across the country that would simply re-route around any damaged parts thus maintaining the flow of information and allow our Military to respond quickly to whoever was attacking. 3 3.

[Jessika Toothman, "What's the difference between the Internet and the World Wide Web", HowStuffWorks.com, available from  [| http://www.howstuffworks.com/internet/basics/internet-versus-world-wide-web.htm], accessed 6 November 2011.]

 Peer-to-peer networks soon emerged in the 1960s that used "packet-switching" technology in which data is broken up into small chunks (packets), compressed and often encrypted, then sent to its destination according to the packet's header and then re-assembled again. Any losses in this transfer process were simply re-sent without any drop in connectivity since the receiving computer would send back a confirmation that each piece was received properly. Originally, ARPANET used its own Network Control Protocol (NCP) but this was soon replaced with another known as "TCP/IP" that was more efficient in transferring packets throughout the network. It was around this time that a man named Doug Engelbart created the first text based browser program called "oNLine System, or NLS which utilised hypertext editing and email that operated via the TCP/IP protocol. Soon this network spread in popularity from the government onto college and university campuses. 4 Professors and students could collaborate and share information much faster. The first intercontinental connection was finally established at the University College of London in 1973.  5

4. [Ross Shannon, "The History of the Net", yourhtmlsource.com, available from  [| http://www.yourhtmlsource.com/starthere/historyofthenet.html], accessed 6 November 2011.]

5. [Dan Connolly, "A Little History of the World Wide Web", Wc3.com, available from  [| http://www.w3.org/History.html], accessed 6 November 2011.]

 After this text based online bulletin boards (BBS) became the standard way to access information via "line mode" browsers. This led to a system called USENET that operated independently from the main ARPANET servers. USENET acted as large discussion forums that lifted normal restrictions on things like taboo subjects under the right of freedom of speech. 6 Many others services followed such as Bitnet and Fidonet, all of which eventually merged. Soon after came new protocols such as NNTP which stands for Net News Transfer Protocol, this was followed by the file transfer protocol (FTP) which enabled the download and transfer of actual computer files, and then Internet Relay Chat (IRC). 7

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6. [Jessika Toothman, "What's the difference between the Internet and the World Wide Web", HowStuffWorks.com, available from  [| http://www.howstuffworks.com/internet/basics/internet-versus-world-wide-web.htm], accessed 6 November 2011.]

7. [Dan Connolly, "A Little History of the World Wide Web", Wc3.com, available from  [| http://www.w3.org/History.html], accessed 6 November 2011.]

 In 1990, a man named Tim Berners-Lee invented the "hyper text transfer protocol"(HTTP). This quickly became the basic foundation for what would become the world wide web. A few short years later the National Center for Supercomputer Applications (NCSA) developed the first graphical web browser called "Mosaic" and ported it to both PC and Macintosh. 8 This dramatically increased web page usage. The first large ISP companies sprang up with the most prominent being America Online and Compuserve. These services began providing Internet access to everyone. At this point the Internet began growing exponentially. Even at this early stage of growth viruses and worms had already appeared and were increasing by over 600% every year.

8. [Ross Shannon, "The History of the Net", yourhtmlsource.com, available from  [| http://www.yourhtmlsource.com/starthere/historyofthenet.html], accessed 6 November 2011.]

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 Early In the 1990's __Gopher__ ( an information retrieval system) was a method used to deliver menus of links to files, computer resources, and other menus. 9 These menus could cross the boundaries of the current computer and use the Internet to retrieve menus from other systems. Gopher was created at the University of Minnesota. They said they were going to charge a licensing fee to use gopher. Because they did this many organisations  organizations tried to look at alternatives to gopher. 10 There was someone who had an alternative. In Switzerland,the European Council For Nuclear Research (CERN) provided the alternative. Tim Berners-Lee had been working on an information management system, in which text could contain links and references to other works, allowing the reader to quickly jump from document to document. He had created a server for publishing this style of document (called hypertext) as well as a program for reading them, which he had called World Wide Web. ======

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This is not the first time this software had been released. It was first released in 1991. However, it took two events to cause an explosion in popularity and eventually replace Gopher. The number of available web browsers increased, many created by research projects at universities and corporations, such as Telenor (a Norwegian communications company,) which created the first version of the Opera browser in 1994. ======

9. ["Gopher (protocol)", wikipedia.com, available from [| http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gopher_%28protocol%29] , accessed 5 November 2011.]

10. ["History of the Gopher Protocol", codeghost.com, available from [| http://www.codeghost.com/gopher_history.html] , accessed 5 November 2011.]

**The "browser wars"**

There was commercial interest because of the popularity of the web. Marc Andreessen and Jim Clark founded Mosaic Communications, which later they renamed to Netscape Communications Corporation. Here they worked on what would be later named Netscape Navigator. In December 1994 version 1.0 was released. Spyglass Inc. licensed their Mosaic technology to Microsoft to form Internet Explorer. Version 1.0 was released in August 1995. Three months later Internet explorer 2.0 was released for free, Netscape was not. 11 Internet Explorer was free to all Windows users,even commercial companies. Other companies soon followed and gave away their browsers for free. New versions of Internet Explorer and Netscape were released rapidly over the next few years. Rapid growth was on the the rise, with Netscape and Microsoft trying to get a competitive edge with the features they supported to attract developers. This would be known as the "browser wars". Opera maintained a small but steady presence throughout this period, and tried to innovate and support web standards as well as possible in these times. 12

11. ["Netscape Navigator", wikipedia.com, available from [| http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Netscape_Navigator] , accessed 5 November 2011.]

12. ["Browser wars", wikipedia.com, available from [| http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Browser_wars] , accessed 6 November 2011.]

**Video on the browser wars** [ http://videos.howstuffworks.com/harvard-extension-school-s-computer-science-e-1-understand/1294-browser-wars-video.htm  ]

Over time web technologies have evolved to give web developers the ability to create new generations of useful and immersive web experiences. Today's web is a result of the ongoing efforts of an open web community that helps define the web technologies, like HTML5, CSS3 and WebGL and ensure that they're supported in all web browsers.

The black time-lines show major browser releases. Color bands represent browser technologies such as JavaScript, HTML, and Flash, and the bands grow as new browsers integrate the technologies. The intertwining of bands is supposed to show the interaction between different technologies. 13

13. ["The Evolution of the Web", evolutionofweb.appspot.com, available from [| http://evolutionofweb.appspot.com/] , accessed 6 November 2011.]

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In 1998, the browser market was dominated by Internet Explorer 4 and Netscape Navigator 4. A beta version of Internet Explorer 5 was released, and it implemented a new and proprietary dynamic HTML. Because of this, professional web developers had to know 5 ways of writing JavaScript. As a result of this a group of web design and developers had to group up. Their group was called the "Web Standards Project" (WaSP). They wanted Microsoft and Netscape to support them so they had the idea by calling W3C documents standards instead of recommendations.

Microsoft released Internet Explorer 5 Macintosh Edition in 2000. This was very important, it was the default browser for the Mac OS at this time, it also had pretty good support for M3W recommendations too. This came along for Opera's level of support for CSS  Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) and HTML. It helped with a movement that made Web Developers and Designers feel comfortable designing sites using web standards for the first time. WaSP did not want Netscape to release version 5.0 of Netscape Navigator until all the kinks were fixed. This work would form the basis of what is now Firefox. WaSP also created "Dreamweaver Task Force".

In 2003, Dave Shea launched a site called "CSS Zen Garden". This would effect the web professionals more than anything else. It showed that the entire design can change by just changing the style of the page, all the content could remain Identical.

2004 marked the birth of Web 2.0, where the internet began to shift towards more interactivity and was seen as a platform for connectivity rather than a static desktop feel. This was also when the term "social media" was first coined by Chris Sharpley and pretty soon interactive websites like Digg and "The" Facebook appeared that allowed its users to find and talk to their friends and create their own content and put it on display.

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The first online video streaming site known as "Youtube"  "YouTube" was launched in 2005, thus bringing user created content to the next level. Anyone with a web cam or digital camera could upload videos for the world to see and comment on. Then in 2006 social media changed with the launch of Twitter, which gave it a more minimal feel by only allowing text and images to be posted, or "tweeted," and limiting the poster to 140 characters. The world of online video was again changed remarkably with the launch of Hulu, which let you watch movies and tv  TV shows without a subscription to a cable or satellite provider. 14

2007 marked the arrival of mobile internet, or rather, mobile web that had a real purpose. Most credit going to the creation of the first iPhone for re-igniting the interest in mobile web design. At this point the internet began to dramatically shift from the home to on the go, with a nearly endless plethora of mobile websites and apps available that let us to do virtually anything at our fingertips wherever we are. Now we are beginning to transcend into the Web 3.0 era. 14.

[Cameron Chapman, "The History of the Internet in a Nutshell", sixrevisions.com, available from [| http://sixrevisions.com/resources/the-history-of-the-internet-in-a-nutshell/], accessed 7 November 2011.]

Future of internet here

[Jonathan Strickland, "How did the Internet Start", howstuffworks.com, available from It's hard to say what new directions the internet will take in our future with all of our technologies constantly coming and going and merging. However, with a little insight it is easy to at least see that more and more things are being integrated into the internet. Things such as washing machines and refrigerators http://computer.howstuffworks.com/internet/basics/internet-start.htm  , accessed 6 November 2011.]

[Jonathan Strickland, "What do you think the Internet will be more interactive serve a more useful purpose in our daily lives. So far the internet is mostly based on our sense of sight and sound. There is now a new technology in the works to bring synthesized smells to us  like in 2050", howstuffworks.com, available from  cyberspace. 15 Slowly but surely, as we progress farther and farther into the future we will see the digital world and reality slowly begin to merge together. 16 15. http://computer.howstuffworks.com/internet-in-2050.htm , accessed 6 November 2011.]

["How Internet Oders Will Work", howstuffworks.com, available from [| http://computer.howstuffworks.com/internet-odor.htm], accessed 6 November 2011.]

16. ["What do you think the [Jeff Tyson, "How Internet  will be like in 2050?",  Infrastructure Works", howstuffworks.com, available from  http://computer.howstuffworks.com/internet-in-2050.htm http://computer.howstuffworks.com/internet/basics/internet-infrastructure.htm, accessed  7  6 November 2011.]  Back to Top

[dforcemarketing, "Demandforce: Evolution of the Internet", YouTube.com, available from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rKm8uogJJi8 , accessed 6 November 2011.]

[Webidiotz, "Evolution of the Internet", YouTube.com, available from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q2ldRfeXYkI , accessed 6 November 2011.]

__ ** How The Web Works ** __
On a simple level the web physically is made up of your personal computing device, web browser software such as Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox, Safari, or Opera, a connection to an Internet service provider (ISP), and computers called servers that host digital data and routers and switches that direct the flow of digital traffic1. This arrangement typically is referred to as a client-server system1. Your computing device is the client and the remote computers that store the digital data are the servers. The web works on three standards that generally are recognised by all companies that make products that work with the World Wide Web. Those standards are Universal Resource Locater (URL), Hyper Text Transfer Protocol (HTTP), and Hyper Text Markup Language (HTML)2. The URL is what you see when you look in the address bar of your browser. It is formatted like this: “ :// / ”3. The protocol is the how, telling your computer which conventions to use when talk communicating with the server that holds the requested page. The protocol for web browsing is “http”. The server is the where, telling your computing device the name of the computer serving the request page. Finally, the path is the what, indicating which page you are interested in on the requested website3. The web works much like how a package is delivered using physical addresses, transportation vehicles, and our highway system. Just as our highway system is considered infrastructure, the web sits on an electronic infrastructure  of copper and fiber optic wires, switches and routers, and computers. Let's look in more detail as to how the electronic “packages” used to communicate over the web get delivered. In order for the web to work, every computing device connected to the Internet must have a unique Internet Protocol (IP) address just like every building must have a street address. When you connect to the Internet through your Internet Service Provider (ISP), you are immediately assigned a temporary IP address that identifies you uniquely. Now that you are connected to the Internet with a unique address the alphabetic characters that you type into your browser translated into electronic signals through the use of a protocol stack. The protocol stack used on the Internet is called Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol (TCP/IP)4. If your computing device had an IP address of 1.2.3.4 and was trying to communicate with server 5.6.7.8, here is the path it would take through the protocol stack. Again, you can see how this might be much like what you would do to prepare a package for delivery. The message would start at the top of the protocol stack on your computing device and work downward. The message will be broken into chunks called packets. Each packet will receive a port number that allows the receiving computer to know what application to use with the packet. The packets will get a destination IP address. The hardware now turns the packets containing our alphabetic information into electronic data for transmission through your ISP. The ISP's router looks at the IP address packet to know where to send it. The packet eventually gets to the receiving server and makes its way up through the protocol stack where all of the delivery information is stripped away leaving on the content4. You can see how this is similar to sending a package to someone. You have an item you want to send, you find a box, you wrap it. You put an address on the box. You take the box to a delivery service. The delivery service looks at the address and puts it on the proper truck going to that area. Your box rides on the truck over the highway system to a distribution center. The distribution center again looks at the address and puts it on the proper truck for final delivery to the street address. The person you sent the package to receives it and removes the packaging material to finally reveal the item shipped. Since there are no “people” on the web to look at an IP address to determine where a packet needs to go, how does that packet find the correct receiving computer? This is where routers and Domain Name Servers (DNS) come into play. When your packet gets to your ISP, it is sent to a router. The router examines the IP address. It checks its routing table to see if the network containing that IP address is found. If it is in the routing table, the router sends it on to that router and the packet is delivered. If the IP address is not in the routing table, the router sends the packet on to another router that might have the correct address. This process continues until a router recognises the IP address4. At this point you probably are saying, wait a minute, I don't type IP address into my computing device, I use words like www.anothercomputer.com to tell my computing device's web browser where I want to go. How does your web browser know what IP address belongs to www.anothercomputer.com? The answer is the Domain Name Server (DNS). There are many DNS servers on the web that keep a distributed database of what IP address goes with what URL. So when you type www.anothercomputer.com into your browser's address bar, a DNS server will be asked to match that name with the proper IP address. Much like the routers mentioned previously, if the first DNS does not recognise the name, it will be sent on to one that does have the IP address in its database4. References ["How the Web Works", learnthenet.com, available from  http://www.learnthenet.in/learn-about/how-the-web-works/index.php , accessed 5 November 2011.]  [Lawrence Abrams, "How the Web Works", bleedingcomputer.com, available from  http://www.bleepingcomputer.com/tutorials/how-the-web-works/  , accessed 5 November 2011.]  [Marc, "How the Web Works - In one Easy Lesson", mkcohen.com, available from  http://mkcohen.com/how-the-web-works-in-one-easy-lesson  , accessed 5 November 2011.]  [Rus Shuler , "How Does the Internet Work", theshulers.com, available from  http://www.theshulers.com/whitepapers/internet_whitepaper/index.html  , accessed 5 November 2011.]  [leelefever, "World Wide Web in Plain English", YouTube.com, available from  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wZoMbBzqxyc&noredirect=1  , accessed 5 November 2011.]  [Aarontitus, "How the Internet Works in 5 Minutes", YouTube.com, available from  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7_LPdttKXPc  ,  accessed 5 November 2011.]  Back to Top

__ ** Demographics of Web Usage** __
People of all ages use the Internet everyday, although over half of which Demographic of Web Usage is visual presented data showing what people use, and who they are from ages 18 to 44. Surprisingly, the older generations are beginning to use the Internet much more as well. It seems that the Generation X'ers are most likely to use the web for online banking, shopping and health related information, while Generation Y (age, sex, etc.) when they access the web. This visually presented data is more likely to book flight  Click to open source in new window  Back to Top  usually presented through a graph (line, bar, or pie).



[ http://www.pewinternet.org/Trend-Data/Whos-Online.aspx  ]

__ ** Social Media and Networking** __
__History of Social Media and Networking__

Social Media Networking has been in existence for about 30 years. It has recently been popularised  popularized and has become part of the business world as well as allowing networking among average people. It started on the phone. In 1950, telephone networking started gaining ground. In the early days, the social media explorers built boxes which were converted into homemade electronic devices that they used in making free calls. Some people also considered the dating sites too as the first early social networks. These sites allow the users to post their profiles online to contact other users.

Today, social media has become an important part of modern society. There are a variety of social media available today that people use and enjoy. A few of the most popular ones are Facebook, MySpace, Twitter and Linkedln.

**Linkedln** - Founded in 2003, it was the first social network devoted to the business world. It allows the users to post profiles, resumes, and to make contact with people through private messaging.

**My Space** - Also founded in 2003, this has grown to be very popular in today's world. It allows the user  users to write their profiles in the way they like, to suit their purpose. Users can also add videos from other sites to their profile.

**FaceBook -** Began in 2004. It started at Harvard University. Today it has grown large and spread among other colleges, even high schools and businesses. By 2008, Facebook had become the most popular social networking site in the world.

**Twitter** - Created in 2006. Twitter allows the user to send and read text-based posts up to 140 characters.Twitter too gained worldwide recognition since its inception.

Social media networking has gained a lot of ground in today's world.

**__ Future of Social Media and Networking  __**

What’s the future of social networking? Is it just a fad or has it become so integrated into our lives that it is a part of us? In a world that becomes increasingly digital every day I think it’s safe to say that social networking is here to stay regardless of which site has our current attention.

Analysts have many predictions as to where sites like Facebook and Twitter are going to take us in the future. Some believe that our real life actions will integrate with our social networks even further. We can already tag where we currently are with services like foursquare or Facebook’s check-ins feature. There are several apps that allow you to track and post your workout progress in real time. With the growing number of iPhone and Android users, applications like these allow instantaneous updates on whatever it is we could possibly be doing at any one moment. The integration of social networking with our phones has grown on Facebook alone by 50% over the last year and will, without a doubt, continue to grow and play an even larger role in how we use a site like Facebook. By all means, the future of social networking lies in mobile use.

Frequency of Use and Method of Access for Mobile Social Networking/Blog Audience  3 Month Avg. Ending Aug. 2011 vs. 3 Month Avg. Ending Aug. 2010  Total U.S. Mobile Subscribers Ages 13+ (Smartphone and Non-Smartphone)  Source: comScore MobiLens || Total Audience (000) || Aug-2010 || Aug-2011 || % Change || Accessed Social Networking Site or Blog Ever in Month || 52,733 || 72,252 || 37% || Accessed Social Networking Site or Blog Almost Every Day || 25,272 || 39,854 || 58% || Social networking Access Method: ||  ||   ||   || Via Mobile Browser || 34,192 || 42,251 || 24% || Via Application || 17,002 || 38,453 || 126% ||
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Audience* for Selected Social Networking Brands  3 Month Avg. Ending Aug. 2011  Total U.S. Mobile Subscribers Ages 13+ (Smartphone and Non-Smartphone)  Source: comScore MobiLens || Total Audience (000) || Aug-2010 || Aug-2011 || % Change || Facebook || 38,240 || 57,332 || 50% || Twitter || 7,639 || 13,375 || 75% || LinkedIn || 3,234 || 5,482 || 69% ||
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Mobile Social Networking Activities  3 Month Avg. Ending Aug. 2011  Total U.S. Mobile Subscribers Ages 13+ (Smartphone and Non-Smartphone)  Source: comScore MobiLens || Total Social Networking/Blog Audience  (000) || % of Social Networking/Blog Audience || Total Audience Accessing Social Networking Sites or Blogs: 13+ yrs old || 72,252 || 100.0% || Read posts from people known personally || 58,021 || 80.3% || Posted status update || 50,216 || 69.5% || Followed posted link to website || 38,431 || 53.2% || Read posts from organizations/brands/events || 38,209 || 52.9% || Read posts from public figures/celebrities || 32,350 || 44.8% || Posted link to website || 25,172 || 34.8% || Received coupon/offer/deal || 24,071 || 33.3% || Clicked on advertisement || 19,997 || 27.7% ||
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["Twitter", wikipedia.com, available from [| http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twitter], accessed 6 November 2011.]

[Brett Borders, "A Brief History of Social Media", copybrighter.com, available from [| http://copybrighter.com/history-of-social-media], accessed 6 November 2011.]

[Cameron Chapman, "The History and Evolution of Social Media", webdesignerdepot.com, available from [| http://www.webdesignerdepot.com/2009/10/the-history-and-evolution-of-social-media/], accessed 6 November 2011.] Back to Top

__ ** User Generated Content** __
User-generated content is exactly as  what it  sounds,  sounds like. It’s content that’s created by you and me. We could consider it as content like blog posts and forums creating an organisation of people. Blogs number in the millions and each one is for that user to create something for other people. Something that really set off the explosion of user generated content was YouTube. YouTube was created in 2005 and that was the same year user generated content took off. In May 2006 YouTube was responsible for 43% of all videos viewed on the web.

Social net working is also a huge part of user-generated content. Ever since MySpace in 2005 people have been living online and creating things for people to see. This is another example of a user-generated organisation. Just like YouTube, it was a group of people all interested in making and posting things for other people to see. Facebook makes up the largest chunk of user generated content approaching 1 billion members.



With the content people put out also comes the message they send. Users don’t just send out content, but a message for there followers. Movements have been started with just pure online user commentary. Take for example the occupy movement going on right now. Without blogs, YouTube, Facebook, and other online resources it would never get to the level it is now and it wouldn’t have spread like it did. The power of users is incredible and what people can do in numbers is remarkable.

The purpose of all this is, and why it is so important, is that it gives people a voice in the world without having to be someone or become something. Anyone can express themselves in anyway they want, through a blog, a YouTube video, or just a status update.

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http://www.pewinternet.org/Trend-Data/Whos-Online.aspx