What began as a user generated video sharing website grew to enormous proportions and now is one of the most visited websites on the world wide web. Whether you missed a program on TV, or you want to watch some archive material for a certain research development, Youtube can give it all.

But what makes it so special besides the fact that your friends can watch your homemade footage, or your favorite programs. You can become world famous by simply uploading a video of yourself. Like Esmee Denters for example, she uploaded a movie of herself in which she is singing. And now she performed with Justin Timberlake and she got a record deal. But probably the most important thing about Youtube is, that it is fun. And it is a great way of wasting your time.

But what is the point? I ask myself. Most people who ‘tweet’  also have some other social media account on the internet, whether it is on Facebook or on Youtube. Besides that we all own a technological device, called al cell phone.  And basically, all the short messages we post on twitter are like short SMS text messages which we send thru our mobile phones. Only difference is that twitter is for free, and it reaches all of your contacts at once.

I just think it is a shame that we need social networking to make friend, or to keep them. Humans are mend to contact each other in a direct way. Our mouth was mend to communicate, and our  hands were supposed to physically contribute to our thoughts and ideas. now that seems to have changed and we use our hands to speak. Although I think this transformation makes our world less human, I have to admit that twitter is one great way to get informed about all your interests. It is like reading the paper, watching the news, and talking to your friends in 5 minutes. Which in turn again contributes to the growing technological world. doesn’t it wonders you, how long it will take for us to live as avatars, while controlling these kinds of clones, from behind our desks.

When we talk about social media, we’re talking about Blogs like WordPress, livejournal or microblogs such as twitter. Or the multimedia networks like Youtube.  And while thinking of those social media we cannot exclude the social networking sites like: Facebook, Myspace or Hyves. But what happens if we would make a mind map about gaining access to those different websites? All those mindmaps would probably include the word ‘Google.’ Because after all Google has become a conception over the last years.

Although there are millions of websites, they are all related to Google. But what is the effect of this monopoly? Because that is what Google certainly has. I feel free to state that: Google can affect many people and it can control the world wide web. The world most popular search engine owns 53 percent of the market share. Which means that they, more or less, reach half of the world internet using population. And this also contributes to the ever growing monopoly of Google, because advertising on Google leads to a successful advertising campaign.

Besides this advertising, there is another point of emphasis which helped Google. And that simply is: Google does what it has to do, the best. Finding sites, blogs or documents on the web. Simply enter a word in the engine and most of the times Google comes up with thousands, sometimes even millions of results. And due to their partnerships they are nowadays able to offer other products and software. And so they are a competition within other business sectors besides the one of search engines. Let us hope that the managing directors of ‘Google.inc’, do not have any world dominating ideas, because it would be a very easy task for them.

Hello people! my name is Marcel Peters, living in Werkendam, 19 years of age and I am a poor student who is forced to create a wegblog. It is not so dramatic as it sounds, in fact it is catagorized as ‘easy assingments’ within the ICM course, which I am following very devoted. My posts will be related to the ICM programme. enjoy reading them and ofcourse comments are for free.