Week 1 blog

Describe your vision of how the media world will be for most people five years from now. Discuss how and where people will access news, entertainment, and other media content, and examine what media companies may be important. Think back through all the readings to give examples and contexts.

I have noticed (as I am sure everyone else has as well) the extensive growth of the social network Facebook in the past few years. Now owning smart phone applications that cover just about any aspect of internet media necessary, Facebook is becoming an all inclusive access to the world wide web. According to Wikipedia, Facebook has acquired over 43 different companies such as “instagram” and “friendly” since 2007. Ultimately with the variety of these acquisitions, users hardly have to venture outside of Facebook for anything. In my experience, I can’t count the number of times I have downloaded a new application on my Iphone, and instead of having to create a new account I am given the option to register by logging in with my Facebook account. This definitely shows the control Facebook is gaining online. Other companies such as Google are attempting the same.  In fact just from personal experience, just by creating a G mail account in 2005, eight years later with the same log in and password Google’s Chrome allows me to have a you tube account, access to news and blogger.com blog and access to many other things Google amenities all laid out in one browser. Facebook and Google may own more of the internet than any online entities ever have, however they aren't the first to provide an all inclusive access to the internet. Companies such as America Online from the 1990's and early 2000's, featured anything from email, games, news, sports, and early social networking like categorized chat rooms. While Facebook and Google more than likely are in the business to monopolize the internet as much as possible for the profit margin, an alternative outlet to the internet called web 2.0 is quickly emerging.  Web 2.0 can facilitate activity that can't be necessarily monitored by appropriate authorities, usually involving illegal matters. Because of this, I believe that an all inclusive access to the internet through an entity such as Facebook or Google will be viewed as necessary to governments in the near future.  If purchased by the United States government or an international group of governments, perhaps logging onto an all inclusive access would only be possible by entering one's social security number or driver’s license number. With the internet now as the world’s larger outlet of media, it is only wise for companies to attempt to buy up as much of the market as possible just as large television networks have done by owning multiple channels.