The internet for many is much like the television when it was first invented. It is the preferred method of entertainment being that it requires virtually no physical excursion in order to engage.
With the television, it was originally quite simple.
Switch the "on" button and then flip the channels until you found something entertaining enough to stick with. The internet has slowly become a platform of virtually an infinite amount of channels all at the edge of one's fingertips.
Want to read about soccer? There are hundreds of websites covering the sport.
Want to watch a video clip of an obscure horse race? Just check on Youtube.
Want to listen to an old favorite song of yours? There are hundreds of legal and illegal places where one can download them from.
There is indeed alot of commerce that takes place on the internet but there is also a massive amount of time spent online without a single penny being spent. The web has become a game of numbers and websites experiencing only the highest amount of traffic are able to generate any significant revenue due to the numbers game.
In years prior to the boom of the net, one would consider a couch-potato who simply flipped through the television channels all day as nothing more than a waste of life. These people would be chastised for being too lazy to get up off their rear ends to do anything productive.
Today's internet has allowed millions upon millions of people to carry themselves in a similar fashion but instead of entertaining themselves via a stagnant tube, they now engage with other similar creatures through the various outlets available 24/7. There is a massive amount of time being spent online which translates to a whole lot of nothingness.
If one were to engage with their friends via social networking site, "Facebook" for twelve hours per day, there would be no real contribution towards the elevation of the current economic status. Sure, it would raise the profile of "Facebook" and increase it's popularity which would then assist the company in their ability to target potential advertisers but in reality, there'd be no "real" commerce taking place.
Let me give you a perfect example of the profound effect a website can have:
Craigslist.com is a website in which virtually anything can be bought, sold, commented on, or just ranted about for no particular rhyme or reason. The site itself employs less than 30 individuals and has single-handedly brought the newspaper advertising business to a complete halt. You see... several decades ago, if I had an item I wanted to list for sale, I'd probably take an ad out in the San Francisco Chronicle in order to move the product. Whether it be a couch, a dog, a fish tank, or a bed... putting a classified advertisement in the local newspaper was the best way to go.
Most people gathered the local news from their resident paper and most of them browsed the classifieds for anything they might find appealing.
Craigslist, with their miniscule staff of less than thirty people have literally killed that business model as a whole being that outside of job postings, and apartment listings in certain cities, all other classified advertisements can be posted for free on the website. This allows anybody with an internet connection to post their items free of charge to anyone that browses over the site. In essence, transactions are occurring without any influx of capital into the economy.
The newspaper industry employed thousands of people ranging from writers, editors, printers, and the various administrative staff that's needed to keep the publication up and running on a constant basis. With their advertising dollars experiencing such a drastic swing for the worse, many of these people are now unemployed looking to utilize their skillsets in other business sectors that aren't dying.
Craigslist is undoubtedly a great tool for the general consumer being that it allows them to sell and buy items in a much cheaper and more effective fashion than the traditional method of utilizing newspaper classified ads. However, like everything good in this world... there is a cost to this benefit.
The cost was a nation-wide sweep of job loss for those employed in the newspaper industry.
This is a trend that we will continue to see in various traditional brick-and-mortar industries throughout the country. The internet has allowed for the masses to engage in so many things that it once had to pay for. Entertainment has been cheapened so much by the net being that there are so many "free" outlets at one's disposal.
The world is engaged in a huge transition period in which a handful of companies are generating billions of dollars in revenue via the internet while many industries have lost a significant amount of revenue from those same entities.
The internet has had and will continue to have a profound effect on today's current economic climate. It truly does boggle the mind how one website such as Craigslist, employing only a handful of people can affect thousands upon thousands of professionals across the country. A word of advice is that if your current industry has not yet embraced the internet and are still trying to fight against it, your job might be next on the chopping block.
The net is the future and if the upper management vision doesn't include it, they might be the ones stuck in the past relegated to the unemployment line... with their golden parachutes intact.
Comments