The impact of the Internet is so pervasive that it’s altering the way people all over the world do almost everything. Certainly it is changing the way we communicate with others. Americans have access to 1 trillion web pages, and there seemingly is no limit to the amount of information that can be published on the Internet.

How fast can you read and how much can you watch?

• There are 10 million unique visitors every month to ABC, NBC and CBS combined, networks that have existed for a combined 200 years.
• There are 250 million unique visitors every month to MySpace, YouTube and Facebook combined, none of which existed six years ago.
• Print newspaper circulation is down 7 million over the last 25 years.
• In the last five years, unique readers of online newspapers have increased by 30 million.

What’s happening in advertising?

• Traditional advertising revenue (2008):
  • newspapers — down 13.5%
  • magazines — down 6.9%
  • radio — down 3.5%
  • broadcast TV — down 4.6%
  • cable systems/satellite TV — up 7.4%
• Digital advertising revenue (2008) — up 3.5%:

Can you text; can you tweet?

• The first commercial text message was sent in 1992. Today the number of text messages sent and received every day exceeds the total population of the planet.
• The average American teen sends 2,272 text messages a month.
• The largest age group on Facebook is 18-24; but the fastest growing age group is 35-54.
• The fastest growing age group on Twitter is 25-54.

It’s changing the world

In the year 1440, Johannes Gutenberg started a revolution with his printing press. Back in those days (and for thousands of years afterward), the people who owned the presses controlled the information the rest of the masses saw and read. Today social media gives the average person the means to influence others more than ever before.

Sources: Did You Know 4.0, Media Convergence Forum, October 2009; AdAge; Pear Analytics Study for Twitter; and NielsenWire.