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The world goes online
51% of adults report to using the internet for all banking needs. (Pew Research Center) -
Instagram Takes Over
Instagram hits 400 million users, even more than the booming Twitter site. What started out as a platform to post photos, has turned in to rampant social media, sharing stories, IGTV, advertising, the list goes on and on. Snapchat introduces filters for photos making a photo have a certain feel to it, or adding an animal face to our own, it also became a marketable option people could purchase. Friendster, the once popular social media site in the "pre facebook" era, shuts down. -
IG Growth and Data Usage
Instagram continues to soar higher and higher in popularity, reaching 500 million users in 2016. The EU adopts a new law to take over the old data handling ways, which are outdated. This new law calls for transparency of sites, letting people be in control of what data is shared and how it is used, the US will adopt laws similar to this shortly after. -
Social Media and Politics
Facebook and Twitter are accused of playing a role with the Russians in the use of their ads, having a hand in the 2016 Presidential election. These sites try to pull themselves back together in 2017 and the FTC is going to keep a good eye on them as they do so. Marketing becomes a massive part of social media, advertisement dollars nearly quadruple since 2009. The use of data is a concern for many and they are needing to be more transparent about gathering it. -
Cookies, Zuckerberg and Fear
Have you noticed a cookies usage warning on the bottom of most websites now? If they are using data to determine what we want to see next, we have to agree to it. Between Facebook gathering our data without letting us know and the Equifax breach, people are more skeptical than ever, not to say that will deter much from social media usage but fear, nonetheless. Mark Zuckerberg appears before congress, after using his users data for political use. We may put a little too much trust in some people. -
WWW Turns 30
The World Wide Web turns 30 in May 2019. Thanks to Tim Berners-Lee, we have all the content we can dream of and an easy way to access it. It's astonishing how far it has come, good or bad , there has been major growth in numbers. Google + shut down this year, due to lack of users. Who knows what the future holds, robots taking over the world, most likely.