Communicating on the Internet

The Internet is largely a communication tool. Below, we break down some common and important options.

Social Networking

Social networking is an incredibly popular way of communicating on the internet. Between social media powerhouses like Facebook and Twitter, Statista.com reports that there were 2.46 billion users of social media in 2017, with projections of 3.02 billion for 2021.

That’s a staggering amount of people, who can use social networking for keeping in touch with family and friends, and interacting with their online community.

Email

Email is a powerhouse in the business world. In fact, having an email address is often a prerequisite to create a profile on the social networking sites discussed above! While not a super common tool for inter-personal communication nowadays (with the proliferation of text and instant messaging), email is a widely used tool for business to interact with customers. Email is widely available, and users can create free email mailboxes from websites like Yahoo, Google, and Mail.com.

Blogs / Wikis

Readers will likely be at least somewhat familiar with blogs, because this is one! Blogs are personal “journals” that can be broadcast out to an audience. Blogs can be found for all kinds of communities, groups, hobbies, activities, you name it! If you have an interest, you can probably find a blog about it.

Wiki’s are also a little similar, in that you can find them on a huge variety of subjects. Wiki’s are intended to be informational in nature (as apposed to strictly entertainment-based) and are drafted and published by multiple authors, typically on the web. A powerhouse example is the ubiquitous Wikipedia, a giant conglomerate of many wikis.

Podcasts / Webcasts

Podcasts and webcasts are another way to reach an audience or community. These have a lot in common with blogs! While blogs are typically text-based, a podcast is based on audio (like a radio show), and webcasts are video-based. A common form of webcasts are “vlogs” you may see on YouTube.

Streaming Media

Quality internet streaming has changed the way many of us interact with media, from music, to television and movies. I’m personally a big consumer of steaming media. I use a subscription to Apple Music to steam music to my phone, giving me instant access to all of iTune’s library, so long as I have an internet connection. All the TV I watch is also streamed, as opposed to more traditional cable options. I use Netflix and Amazon Prime (among others) to stream the shows I want to watch.

Further Reading

Click to access Newbie_Tut1.pdf

https://mashable.com/2015/03/28/internet-communication-brandspeak/