New MediaEveryone’s doing it.

• Through most of this course, we’ve learned about old media: books, newspapers, radio, TV, which have taken decades to develop.

• In comparison, new media have sprung up and become commonplace in years or sometimes months.

• The knock on new media is that it was considered ... well, a little shallow.

• Instead of thought-provoking ideas, most messages seem to be about simple things like what to wear or have for lunch.

• (By the way, do NOT text and drive!)

• Events like the Arab Spring revolutions of 2011 changed that.

• In Egypt, Libya and Syria, protesters used cell phones and the Internet to organize and to share images of violent crackdowns by those governments.

• Suddenly, anyone could be a news reporter.

• During 2009 protests stemming from contested election in Iran, a woman named Neda Agha Sultan was shot to death.

• Her death was captured on a cellphone video, posted on YouTube and seen worldwide, which galvanized the protesters’ cause.

• E-mail, or electronic mail, is a system of sending messages through computer networks.

• It was developed as part of ARPAnet, which we learned in a previous lesson was the precursor to the Internet created by the Pentagon.

• Ray Tomlinson, who worked on ARPAnet, actually invented e-mail in 1971.

• He was the one who figured on the @ symbol that is so commonplace now.

• Listen to a 2009 interview he did with NPR (Click “Listen to the Story.”)

• Now, nearly 2 billion people use e-mail worldwide.

• An estimated 107 trillion e-mails were sent in 2010 – that’s 294 billion per day!

• About 2.9 billion e-mail accounts exist worldwide.

• In 2010, an estimated 89.1 percent of all e-mails were spam, or messages sent indiscriminately to large numbers of recipients.

• The term “spam” likely did not come from the sort-of-meat product as much as from a sketch about it by comedy team Monty Python.

• Text messaging simply uses cell phones to send brief messages to any mobile device, not just a computer.

• Smart phones have only increased the trend, particularly since Apple unveiled the iPhone in 2007.

• In 2009, an estimated 1.5 trillion text messages were sent around the world.

• In 2010, that number quadrupled to 6.1 trillion.

• Teens now text far more than e-mail. In 2010, teens e-mailed 59 percent less than in ‘09.

• In fact, it’s become so popular that a shorthand type of text language has developed to fit messages into the small space provided.

• AAMOF, U cn sA jst abt NEfin. OMG!

• Social networking has also become a mainstay in a short time.

• A 2010 study showed that 22 percent of all time spent online is through social media sites.

• In the U.S., time spent on social media increases 83 percent each year.

• The undisputed king of social media is Facebook.

• It claims more than 1.1 billion active users worldwide.

• In any given day, more than half of them will log on.

• 300 million photos uploaded each day.

• Mark Zuckerberg invented Facebook as a Harvard student in 2004 as a way college students could connect.

• He is now America’s 25th richest man with an estimated value of $13.3 billion.

• He just turned 30.

• Twitter has also become popular in recent years through a format of messages that are limited to 140 characters.

• The messages, known as tweets, are listed chronologically. Users can “follow” each other as well as send messages and photos.

• Jack Dorsey is credited as the creator of Twitter when he and others worked for a podcasting company in 2006.

• A year later, it was unveiled at Austin’s South by Southwest festival. Before the festival ended, Twitter usage had tripled.

• Twitter has 554 million users worldwide.

• Though Facebook is more popular, Twitter draws more celebrities.

• As of 2014, singer Katy Perry is the most followed on Twitter with 55.8 million.

• President Barack Obama has 45 million.