INTERNET

Internet

Internet

Impact of the Internet

The Internet has taken the business community by storm since the early 1990s. When the community realised the potentiality of the Internet they hailed it as the most transforming invention in history. It has the ability to completely change the way business is being done. And, it is doing so at a feverish pace, turning business upside down and inside out (The Economist 1999).

The Internet, Intranet and Extranet collectively have dramatically affected business. A growing number of corporations believe in the technology's potential to lower cost, add value, improve productivity and create new business opportunities.

It's like any big change. You can look at it in one of two ways: as an opportunity or as something to fear. You have to have a certain amount of fear to see the opportunities. The Internet is all about getting information from its source to the user without intermediaries. The new measurement is how fast information gets from its origin to users and how much unproductive data gathering, expediting, tracking orders and the like can be eliminated. Seeing reality today means accepting the fact that e-business is here.

Social Networking

There are many websites on the Internet that now allow people of all ages to create their own profiles in order to meet other people who may or may not live near them (Wagner). MySpace, one of the most popular social networking websites, currently has 76 million users and that number continues to grow everyday by the thousands (Goff). Facebook, a popular social networking site among college students, averages 250 million hits every day (Bugeja). The media has been discussing the dangers of social networking sites more frequently in the recent months; this has led to many people wanting to ban social networking sites (Goff). Others would like the teens that use these ...