Week 6 - Why Advertising is Failing on the Internet

This article brings full circle the online business model readings we had in the previous week. Maybe this author is right and advertising will eventually fail. I don't think that was his main point, but I do agree that advertising is less effective on the internet than in other media. We discussed the online ad games (Orbitz's "Sink the Putt", etc.). Those are catchy ways to have someone interact with an advertisement, but I think it gets old after awhile and people ignore it.

With so much content out there on the internet, people are going to keep surfing the net to find the information they need, and they will avoid the ads as much as possible. The author makes a valid argument of when you go grab a snack while watching TV. It is always during the commercials unless you really don't care too much about what is on the TV at that moment. I think the most annoying ads out there are the ones that consume most of the webpage and start playing sound on your computer. No one wants that. If I wanted to watch an ad, I would have visited YouTube and found something clever, not annoying. Those ads will drive people away because it frustrates them and they most likely can find the same information or product on a different site.

Advertising might be failing on the Internet, but at some point I think we will have to pay more for enjoying the stuff we do on the web. Nothing (or not much) in life is free and it will probably catch up to us. Maybe companies will realize they don't have a great Internet business model and leave the net, until people start paying. That seems unlikely to me, but that would be an extreme case. I really see advertising sticking around on the Internet in the future, but I think we all will, if we haven't already, block the majority of it out of our consciousness.

Week 5 - A Brief History of the Internet

There were many things I had heard about the Internet, but after watching this video I realized I did not have all the facts. It is hard to imagine that the concept of the Internet is over 40 years old and the World Wide Web is over 20 years old. It seems vastly different than what the internet was even 5 years ago. 10 years ago seems archaic to me now. The comments some experts had about the Internet in 2020 don't surprise me that much. You would think that this type of growth would have to slow down at some point, but maybe it won't. To offer a counter argument on the other hand, look at when we landed on the moon; everyone thought we would be driving flying cars and living in space in the not so distant future. We aren't there yet, but the Internet has evolved and continues to evolve at rapid rates.

I guess I never realized there was a difference between the Internet and the World Wide Web. Thanks for the clarification. Being more connected in the future has its positives and negatives, but maybe being more transparent will help all of us understand each other better in the future. It might be harsh at first, but it could be very enlightening. It is fun to let your mind wander about what the Internet will hold for us in 10 more years ... what about 20? Is that even imaginable? I guess we will have to live it to find out.