The numbers are huge but I'm not surprised. I was surprised that AOL Instant Messenger wasn't mentioned. When I was an undergrad, I was constantly logged into this program and so were most of my peers. I think I've been on twice in the past 3 years, and the number of people I know who are on this program is lower than it was a few years ago. To me, AIM was the biggest thing on the Internet, and I assumed that everyone knew about it and used it. When an Asian student mentioned she had never heard of it, and that she and her friends often used the Microsoft Network for the same purpose, it dawned on me that America Online might not be popular worldwide. Nowadays I hardly hear it mentioned.
Tangential:
One fun thing to do is to use the Google Trends site to see what words pop up in internet traffic at certain times. Within this site, you can compare to different internet traffic keywords and see if there is any correlation. If you compare "christmas" and "ipod," you'll see that both topics spike around the end of January every year ("christmas" and "ipod"). Interestingly, "ipod" traffic spikes just after "christmas."
As you pointed out AIM is not longer very used. I think that texting has taken the place of IMing, but I'm not sure.
ReplyDeleteI can't say I understand your cartoon. Could you explain that a little please.
Dr. Burgos