In past ten years, the Internet has become an integral part of the daily lives of hundreds of millions of people. In the coming decade, the Internet will continue to evolve and expand, finding new roles and applications and moving into new sectors of society. Online social networks are growing in popularity and scope, and the fourth estate is undergoing drastic changes due to blogging and other new forms of online information sharing. The Internet has ceased to be an online reconfiguration of an offline experience, and has instead developed into a new experience in itself, with users driving both the content and applications of the new Internet.
This topic was considered during the following panels:
The Changing Internet
Social Networking - Trends and Implications for the Future
User-generated Content - What Does it Mean for Consumers and Marketers?
Benefits to Consumers of Living in an Instant Information Culture
See the Tech-ade Agenda for more information on these panels and for links to the panelists’ presentations.
Related concepts
- User-generated content: This term refers to any online content that is produced by the users of the Internet rather than the traditional producers of online content, such as broadcasters and Internet companies. User-generated content can take a wide variety of forms. Some common examples include blogs, social networking pages, sites that employ wiki technology, file sharing sites, and sites in which consumers share opinions and reviews on various products and services.
For more information, check out:
Anticipating the Tech-ade Hearings: User-generated Content and Social Networking, October 26, 2006
- Blogs are online journals in which users’ entries appear in reverse chronological order and typically permit viewers to leave comments. When blogs first appeared in the mid-1990s, they often took the form of personal diaries. Now blogs may be dedicated to, among other things, news reports, political commentary, or reviews and opinions on a particular subject. While blogs are generally produced by a single author or a small group of authors, corporations and other business entities also use blogs, both to facilitate communication internally among employees and to communicate directly with their target audiences through a public blog.
For more information, check out:
A Survey of Corporate Blogs, October 14, 2006
- Social networking sites comprise some of the most popular destinations on the Internet. They are typically made up of personal user pages, designed by individuals, that are linked to other user pages through self-created networks.
For more information, check out:
FTC Testifies on Social Networking Sites, June 28, 2006
- Wiki websites represent a democratic and collaborative approach to information sharing. Anyone who accesses a wiki site is able to edit the content on the site, enabling the creation of information sources that are compiled as a joint effort by all users.
- Phishing: Phishing is a scam where Internet fraudsters send spam or pop-up messages to lure personal and financial information from unsuspecting victims.
For more information, check out:
FTC Consumer Alert, How Not to Get Hooked by a “Phishing” Scam, June 2005
- Net neutrality: A “neutral” network is one which does not favor one application, or website, over another. A current debate in communications policy exists over whether Internet service providers should be able to charge websites a fee for prioritizing transmission of particular types of data, or to refuse to interconnect facilities with other service providers on reasonable and non-discriminatory terms. The Federal Trade Commission recently established an Internet Access Task Force that will be examining the issues raised by calls for network neutrality laws.
For more information, check out:
FTC Chairman Addresses Issue of “Net Neutrality,” August 21, 2006
- Spam: Spam is the term used for unsolicited commercial email messages sent to a large number of people. In 2003, the CAN-SPAM Act was passed, establishing the first set of national standards for email.
For more information, check out:
Legislative Recommendation to Congress (2005): The US SAFE WEB Act: Protecting Consumers from Spam, Spyware, and Fraud
- Spyware and adware: Spyware is software installed on your computer without your consent to monitor or control your computer use. Adware is software designed to display ads to the user, which is sometimes accomplished by monitoring and analyzing computer use to determine ads in which the user might be interested. An application can sometimes function as both adware and spyware.
For more information, check out:
FTC Staff Report, Monitoring Software on Your PC: Spyware, Adware, and other Software, March 2005
Other related materials
Professor Jonathan Zittrain Participates in the “Ask the Experts” Series!, November 5, 2006
Richard Gingras of Goodmail Participates in the FTC’s “Ask the Experts” Series, November 14, 2006
William T. Edwards, Ph.D., Senior Vice President and Chief Innovation Officer, Advanced Micro Devices, Written Testimony for the FTC “Tech-ade” Panel: “Changing Technologies and Applications on the Internet” (Nov. 6, 2006)
Peter P. Swire, The Internet and the Future of Consumer Protection (2006)
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