Blog post #8: Diffusion of Inovations

The timeline I decided to write about is Netflix because I find it so interesting how quickly it picked up from DVDs being mailed to your house, to the first widely known streaming service that we use every day. 

1997-1998 - PIONEERS: Netflix was originally founded in 1997 but the website did not officially launch until 1998 and at this time there were 925 titles available for rent, but you paid by the movie that you rented, and late fees applied. 

2000 - EARLY ADAPTERS: Netflix pitches their "monthly subscription" concept and they offer themselves to BlockBuster for $50 million, but blockbuster turns it down. At this time also, RedBox was founded which gave Netflix more competition. At this time, they were still growing though, and were gaining more subscribers and attention. 

2003 - EARLY MAJORITY: In 2003, Netflix reached 1 million subscribers to their website and had reached 4.2 million subscribers by 2005. 

2007 - LATE ADAPTERS: In 2007, Netflix changed its website into a streaming platform, which not only began the start of streaming platforms but also changed the game and started the phenomenon of "binge-watching".

2020 - LAGGARDS: There are currently 78.03 million subscribers to Netflix nationally and over 160 million international subscribers and Netflix and other streaming services have become so popular that many people across the globe have begun to cancel cable and satellite tv. 

Over the past 20 years Netflix has completely swept the globe off their feet and changed the world of streaming and watching tv and movies forever. 

All information was found here

Blog post #7: Technology #2

 Twitter

    One of the technologies that someone did was Twitter, and I was very interested in this one because I am such an avid twitter fan. Danny Shay talked about the invention of twitter and how it was originally "twittr". Twitter was invented in 2006 and was originally used for podcast makers to speak with other podcast makers to discuss their podcasts. However, by 2012 over 100 million users were actively tweeting and checking twitter daily.

Throughout the last few years, Twitter has blown up and has become so important in today's culture. Twitter has become a news source and a resource for so many young adults, including myself, to stay informed and updated on what is going on in the world. Personally, I don't watch the news regularly so I use Twitter as a way to stay up to date on what is happening worldwide. However, with twitter, you have to beware of fake news, as with every news source, but be extra careful with twitter because anyone can post anything on twitter, which is one of the negatives of this platform. But like I said, the positive side is that it keeps people in the loop and continues to help people stay informed. 

Twitter is my personal favorite social media platform and I enjoyed learning a lot more about it and how it was made by Danny Shay!. 

Blog Post #6: Technology

 History of Google

In 1995, Sergey Brin who was a Ph.D. student at Stanford at the time, gave Larry Page, a prospective student at the time, a tour of the school. At first, they did not get along at all, and butt heads on most subject matters and it wasn't until a year later when they first struck up a partnership. When they first developed the idea to launch a search engine, their original name for it was "backrub" until they launched in 1998 and changed the name to Google Beta. Google Beta was a very small version of the Google we know now and did not have any applications associated with it at the time. As we know now, Google has many different applications and even their own browser now since launching 20 years ago.

After the original launch in 1998, they removed "beta" from the title in 1999 and became known as what we know today, Google. After they changed the name, Page and Brin made the move to Silicon Valley to move operations out there with their single employee at the time. Moving into the 2000s, Google was picking up and expanding like wildfire. In 2000 they had added new languages to google so it was no longer just accessible for people who spoke English. 

However, it wasn't until 2004 that google really picked up when they started adding applications to the Google database, which started with Gmail. In the next four years, google continued to expand and add more apps and in 2008 they launched Google Chrome. Things continued to change over the next few years as they got a new CEO in 2014, Sundar Pinchai and they released the first Google smartphone in 2016. 

In the past 22 years, Google has truly started from the bottom and blossomed into something that has become so prominent in our daily lives. That's not to say it is all positives because it is still the internet which means there are a lot of fake news sites, as well as a lack of privacy but for the most part Google has made finding information so much easier and accessible to everyone. 

Sources: https://www.mirrorreview.com/history-of-google-from-1996-to-2019/ 

https://www.theverge.com/2018/9/5/17823490/google-20th-birthday-anniversary-history-milestones