Trendsetting 05/28/17

     I do everything online, I shop, I work, I communicate with my peers. Years ago this was not the case, but it was predicted by Frances Cairncross that this would eventually be our reality. Today I want to take two very popular forms of communication technology and apply three of Cairncross’s theory to them, to see how well his predictions stand up today. We will be examining a web portal and a blog. For those of you who don’t know a web portal is a site such as Yahoo.com, it is a website that usually hosts a search engine along, email option, and news stories etc. A blog (like the one you’re reading now) is a website usually written with a sort of personal voice in my opinion. It usually caters to a very specific audience, that’s why there is such a vast community of blogs on the internet, there is one that caters to everyone’s likes and dislikes. In Cairncross’s A Trendsetter’s Guide to New Communications he brings up three specific points #4 Improved Connections, #8 Increased Value of Niches, and #9 Communities of Practice.

       When addressing #4 it is said that people will have connections to more than just the internet through the internet they will be connected at the same time to thing like the television and telephone. This is applicable to portals because they are not just website they connect people to entertainment, emails, worldwide news etc. They are basically one-stop shops of the Internet, you can communicate, inform yourself, and fight bored dome all on the same web page. Cairncross was pretty spot on with this trend. Web portals are extremely popular and used daily all across the globe. According to nbcnews.com Google is the largest web portal used in America and across most of Europe with an estimated monthly audience of 185,167,472.This also applies to blogs when one sees how interactive some blogs are now. “Blogs” such as the popular page Buzz feed incorporate the aspects of the portal that include funny videos, news stories, and tutorials. Buzz Feed is more of a blog simply because it uses a very causal voice and is targeted at a niche market. Which brings us to trend #8 which was in my eyes the most spot on trend spotted by Cairncross. This trend predicted that the Internet will create sustainable niche markets through identifying and classifying people. He was so right with this one its scary, haven’t you ever noticed when using a portal such as Facebook the adds that pop up on the side of the screen advertising just what you were looking for? Creepy I know. And when it comes to blogs advertising to niche markets its undeniable that is one of their main purposes. My older cousin with a baby does nothing but review products such as baby safe laundry detergent and cloth diapers and blog about it. She is advertising to her niche reader community of other mommies interested in the same products. Last point of Cairncross we will look at today is #9, this one addresses the bonds among people performing the same job and who speak the same language connecting from across the world will come together. This was another accurate prediction. With web portals this can be seen with portals specifically like Facebook that create comminutes based on having similar interests. You can literally find your best friend or your worst enemy through leaving comments in a thread under a viral video on Facebook. With blogs this is even more applicable. A great example that came to mind for me was the vast travel community that has began to develop with millennials, so I decided to find a blog about it. My search engine pulled up countless blogs that were simply blogs talking about the best travel blogs, not even travel blogs…. Just blogs talking about them. This created a community for young travels to find the travel blog that they related to the most. They now have the ability to connect and talk to all these other young millennials from all across the world all dying to get out there and travel and see the world, but for now they will have to settle for seeing It through the words and images on these travel blogs.

   Sorry guys I have a tendency to get wordy with my thoughts, but as you can see Cairncross had a lot of predictions that were very applicable to the way technology has played out in our day and age. Of course there are a few that he missed the mark on but we will save those for another day…. until next my friends.

Sources:

http://www.nbcnews.com/business/americas-10-largest-websites-547780