Online Communication

Forums -

Internet forums are online message boards in which users may discuss various topics of interest with other site members. Forums are usually divided into key areas (e.g. music, gaming and video) which contain various subgenres (e.g. music sections may contain various sections such as ‘Jazz Music’, ‘Dubstep’ and ‘rock & roll’). Within the subgenre sections users are often allowed to create or respond to an assortment of topics (also known as threads) created by either admins or normal site members. These threads often begin with a question (e.g. “How do I turn off my computer”) which is may then be debated and answered by a variety of site members. However, occasionally threads may become off topic or spammed thus resulting in confusion and possibly arguments. Due to this, admins and moderators are often needed to maintain the forums of websites. To do so they are granted special privileges such as the ability to remove posts, ban users and lock topics so as to keep discussions relevant, lower the level of spammers or people posting inappropriate text and/or pictures (e.g. gruesome gifs and chain messages) on the site and so on.

Personally I rarely use forums; occasionally however I will use them to find solutions to problems with software, to download mods and plugins and to join small creative projects. The most successful of these being an animation collaboration which I was able to join via the forums on a site named Newgrounds. The project received over nineteen thousand views and achieved a solid four out of five stars.

Email -

An email is a way of messaging others via electronic devices. Currently over 600 million people use email as a method of communication in the modern world due to its ease of use and accessibility. It is estimated that an average of 90 trillion emails are sent every year.

The man credited with its invention in 1972 was Ray Tomlinson. Ray Tomlinson worked as an ARPANET (the system in place before the global internet) contractor and it was he whom chose the @ symbol to denote exchanging messages between peoples computers, thus providing people with an easy way to identify who exactly the message was from and whom they were sending to. The first email ever sent between was between two computers located within a short distance of each other and read “QWERTYUIOP”. In 1975 a man whom was named John Vital created a piece of software to organize emails, this was a huge advancement for emails and has led to further developments of the sort. However, even before these advances there was an early method of computer messaging. It began with people leaving small message files on people’s computers (as one would do so with office notes), then evolved into a system which allowed messages to be sent between users of a single computer; until eventually allowing people to message people on other computers at close range and has continued to advance to what we have today.

Chat rooms -


Chat rooms are websites in which users use real-time messaging systems to anonymously ‘talk’ to complete strangers via the use of self-picked or automatically generated usernames. Chat rooms may provide a variety of graphics to use (e.g. ‘smileys’ and gifs), minigames (e.g. pong) and video/voice use to improve the overall experience of site members. Popular chat room websites include Chatroulette, Omegle and Tinychat.

SMS -

SMS stands for Short Messaging Service and is a vastly popular method of communication. It allows short messages of text (up to 160 characters per message) to be exchanged between mobile phones or fixed lines. Currently over SMS has over 3.6 billion active users (78% of total mobile phone subscribers) and in 2010 over 6.1 trillion messages were sent using the service (193000 messages per second). Reasons for its huge success include its ease of access (is a available on the majority of mobile phones) and cheap costs (the average price being $0.11, however many networks provide deals which entitle users to unlimited SMS message usage for a monthly contract).

Video Steaming -

Video Steaming allows users to communicate face to face without needing to be physically present via the use of webcams (small cameras which are capable of streaming real-time video footage across the internet). This is incredibly useful for businesses as it allows them to communicate with other companies around the world without having to travel the distances, for example a company based in New York (America) could have a professional meeting with business partners in Rome (Italy) to discuss future plans, without having to leave their offices thus saving the time and money of the company. Another popular use of the software is the communication between members of families whom are located in different countries or parts of the country. For example a soldier in Afghanistan is now able to see and talk with his family despite him being located thousands of miles away from them, this helps troops overcome homesickness and maintain a close relationship with their loved ones. One of the more popular platforms for video communication is Skype (it allows free video calls from computers to computers, but charges a small fee when communicating with mobile phones and telephone landlines via Skype).

Here are some facts about Skype (source: www.statisticbrain.com):

• Total number of Skype users as of Jan. 2012 - 31 million

• Average time spent on a Skype conversation - 27 minutes

• Number of time that active Skype users spend on Skype per month - 100 minutes

• Total percentage of small businesses that use Skype as primary communication service - 35%

• Number Skype enabled television sets - 50 million

• Number of iphone Skype downloads in 2010 - 7 million

• Number of people who have ever used Skype - 560 million

• Total percentage of Skype calls that are video to video - 40%

• Average spent yearly by a paying Skype user - $96

• Skype revenue in 2010 - $406.2 million

• Number of monthly log-ins to Skype - 124 million

• Number of monthly paying Skype users - 8.1 million

• Amount of money spent by Microsoft to acquire Skype - $8.5 billion

Social Networking -

Social networking sites allow people to create personal profiles with which to share photos, videos, personal information, interests and random other ‘posts’ with friends, family and various other acquaintances using the website. Major social networking sites include Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, Google Plus and MySpace (MySpace was extremely large a few years ago but has declined in public interest and active users). Social network sites have become increasingly more important in society and now are used for a mass of different activities such as messaging radio stations, storing photos, arranging activates with groups of people and sharing a variety of things which users consider to be worth putting online (e.g. ‘I’m having toast for breakfast, lol!’ followed by a delightful picture of a slice of toast with an amusing caption such as ‘the toast’).

Here are some interesting statistics for the social networking website Facebook:

However social networking does contain a variety of issues. Due to social networks being used essentially as a personal diary by the general horde of users there are many privacy concerns surrounding social networks. If users are not careful with the information they share online and the setup of their profiles (e.g. leaving the publicly visible setting on) they risk the leakage of their personal information on the internet (such as hobbies, desires, photos, contact details and more). It can be extremely difficult to remove things posted on the internet and therefore people run the risk of having their past mistakes come back to cause trouble for them in later life (e.g. photos of them drunk or preforming  undesirable actions as a teenager may be found by future employers and therefore reduce their chances of obtaining a job).