New+Media+Takes+Over

From 2005 to 2010, the power and influence of computers increased immeasurably. Google Incorporated, the search engine giant, became one of the largest companies in the country, getting added to the Standard and Poor 500 in 2006 and forming a partnership with NASA, and releasing the Droid smart phone. Websites formed that allowed communication and management of all aspects of life from the Internet. In 2004, Facebook, the world's largest social network, was founded by a Harvard dropout named Mark Zuckerberg. Twitter, another social network that enables people to broadcast brief messages, was launched in 2006 (Twitter). These two sites created a revolution in communication in the years leading up to 2010. The constant, public communication created by these sites was an opportunity to easily release information to the public, and as the popularity of a site grew, so did its influence. The term "viral" was coined to describe information that spread from one site to another, gaining influence and popularity as it became part of the culture. One such viral campaign would be that of the supporters of Mir Hossein Mousavi in the 2009 Iran presidential election. Harboring suspicions of foul play, Mousavi's supporters took to the streets in protest of incumbent Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's victory (Grossman). To evade censorship, the protesters relied on Twitter to get the word out. Twitter pages for the protests, like the one below, were seen by Twitter users worldwide, and the movement gained national recognition. The Internet has changed the way we access our media. Print newspapers, video stores, and record stores are all threatened by the power of the internet to provide their services for free. The major source of revenue on the Internet is not the sale of a product. Website owners make money by selling advertisement space on their pages. This encourages people to strive to increase their pages' viewership in order to make them more attractive to advertisers. As such, most services are offered for free on the internet. News agencies can purchase a domain name and publish their news on a website for enormously less than the cost of printing, and make up for the loss of subscription fees with ad revenue. Additionally, //internet piracy// challenges traditional media distribution by allowing computer owners to easily (if illegally) download music and movies through peer-to-peer file sharing. In particular, this has caused distress within the music industry, with some artists even offering their music for free as a concession to widespread music piracy, seeking distribution rather than revenue. The global, viral nature of the Internet heralds a new day in how America distributes and disseminates information.
 * New Media Takes Over**