Location, Location, Location

So seeing as I accidently read and blogged about beloved Google last week, I though I would take this opportunity to provide my take on Location Based Services.

Here it is: I am NOT sold on Location Based Services and honestly I do not think I ever will be from a consumers perspective. Consider our discussion of Blippy, I know people get excited when they buy an expensive item, but I just do not see the allure of informing everyone that you spent $400 on a pair of boots. And thats just the big stuff who is really going to be interested in following your day to day purchases, I realize corporations could benefit from following company spending but, I honestly do not need to know that my neighbor spent $10.50 at the grocery story and $5 on their skim chi latte, in my mind reading a digital recipe is not that riveting. Obviously, digitizing and projecting ones purchases from a marketing perspective is a veritable gold mine of information that says a lot about you as a customer, but in my mind you are (as the consumer) not receiving any added value from signing up for Blippy. Marketers benefit, but what do you get? Announcing to the world you just bought a new LCD 48 inch TV? In providing marketers with our consuming information we are just giving them more information so they can try and try to sell us more stuff. With Blippy specifically I just do not see the allure because you are fostering an asymmetric relationship, you as the consumer are giving your information without receiving anything, not a discount, not a coupon just, maybe bragging rights - if anyone actually cares enough to read your Blippy page period. This seems harsh, but to me Blippy seems drive and be driven by American consumerism, everyone buys stuff, but does the world really need to know about it?

Beyond Blippy, however I am still not convinced that these services are the wave of my future. In my mind I really do not see the added value of these services beyond the dollar discount here and there. Sure its nice when you can get a discount, but for someone who does not shop religiously at the same stores or have a coffee ritual that I live and die by, I just do not see the need. Just because my phone informs me that the Gap is having a sale or that Ben and Jerry's is offering a $1 dollar scoop night deal, does not mean I am going to stop what I am doing and rush over to take advantage of the discount. While some people might have time for "a game layer on top of the world," I am more of a point A to point B type and LBS seems to play into spontaneity. I cannot foresee myself walking out the door, especially in my suburban small hometown and seeing where the winds of LBS take me.

Not to mention old fashion discounts still work just fine. For those places I do shop at regularly, like CVS and Shaws Market I have a loyalty card, which in my mind gives me a discount or free things without a cell phone and without spouting my purchasing information to the world. Not to mention, my loyalty card is giving me a pointed discount, I arrive at the cash register and items on sale will immediately factored into my total bill. I am not being sent to CVS to take advantage of the $1 off on shampoo when what I really want is a sandwich from the deli next door. To be sure, I acknowledge that by using a loyalty card I am giving a specific company my information, but my loyalty card does not keep track of how much I spent with a company's competitor. While the Holy Grail in marketing might very well lie in LBS as a consumer this just seems creepy. Our world is so digitized and so much of our purchasing history is available online, but to give firms that much more information about my spending habits at their store AND at their competitor's just seems very big brother.

I also have to wonder is there ever a flaw in having too much information? If a firm knows how you spend your money and where, does it really help them when all other firms have the same information. Knowing that you buy to bagel in one place and your coffee in another, is a company really going to be successful in winning you over when your competition is fighting just as fiercely? I also wonder if this will be the undoing of small, individually owned businesses. If a mom and pop shop is competing with the resources of a large company, who can afford to offer a discount to entice their customers away from the mom and pop shop, how can a small shop compete with that? Small individually owned businesses do not have the luxury to cut their prices or offer weekly discounts.

Call me a skeptic, but for my personal consuming habits LBS do not seem to be apart of my future. What are your thoughts on signing up, if you are not already?

Is Google Making Us Stupid?

As a follow up from our last class discussion Nick Carr's article could not have been more appropriate. I realize of course that our last class was quite some time ago so just to refresh your memory we spent a good deal of time discussing the implications of social media changing how we act and socialize in real life. This article may not be about socializing, but arguably about something more important, how we read, learn and process information due to the rise of the internet. The author Nick Carr, a professional writer, poses a thought, "My mind isn't going - so far as I can tell - but its changing." Now this change he argues is due to his decade long presence on the internet.

Last class we discussed the appearance of a "change" in our social behaviors in the real world due to our increased use of social media. However, the conclusion I came to from our discussion was that this change is not so much an actual change in our habits or social interactions, but more of a proactive consciousness about what is put on the web. Our discussion further my conviction that people are not changing their behavior, merely their social media usage so it more accurately reflects how they chose to share their personal information in real life. Consider a student with pictures of drinking or illegal activity on the web. That student would never share with an interviewer that they excessively drink on the weekends. Hence, making their pictures private on the web or not posting them all together is not actually changing their behavior (they are still drinking and taking pictures), but reflecting the way in which they engage with authority figures in real life. Adjusting privacy settings or controlling the content uploaded to the web, is not a reflection of changing someone's real world behavior, but making them more conscious of the way its displayed on the web. This need to privatize personal information, as one does in the real world, has become more popular as more figures of authority have joined online networks. The entrance of these moral compasses however, definitely benefits online these communities because it makes people reevaluate what is appropriate to post online and more reflective of real world standards.

Now that I have given my two cents on an apparent "change" I want to discuss the implications of an actual change. This change is occurring in how we think and process information, due to the rise of the internet. First off, I must say that this article, while not rooted in scientific studies or stone cold facts, explained a lot about why I am the most distracted reader when it comes to long articles or academic text. As an avid reader, I don't see the internet infringing upon my ability to read a good book, but when I am reading for the extraction of information I tend to run into some problems. I am the type of person who drives my mother nuts, I do just about everything at 100 miles an hour including using the computer. Not only is my use of a computer a flurry of high speed interactions, but the way I extricate the information seems to reflect my need for speed. The article mentions a study conducted by the University College London, that examined the computer logs of visitors on two popular research sites and found that people were practicing '"a form of skimming activity,' hopping from one source to another and rarely returning to any source." This study could not have more accurately captured my viewing habits on the internet. It is very rare for me to spend more than two minutes reading an article and even rarer if I return to the article ever again. Now, to be fair I am not doing research, but reading news articles or pop culture pieces, however I think this study explains why staying put on a particular research site or particular academic article and revisiting it several times becomes so difficult. I have been conditioned to have information instantly at my finger tips through my persistent use of the internet, so imagine my frustrations that I cannot process a long research article just as quickly as I found it. In thinking more about my online reading habits there is definitely a correlation between my dislike of reading long articles on computers. Whenever I have to read a long article pertaining to school I have to print them it, otherwise I tend to zone out, get distracted or jump around from place to place on the internet, until, invariably I make a pit stop on Facebook that turns into a 25 minute departure from what I was supposed to be reading.

Thinking more about my need for speed when ingesting information on the internet and this phenomenon that "we may be reading more today...But it's a different type of reading," I feel as though these tendencies are the roots of our identity as a multitasking generation. I see a direct correlation between our tendency to read many short articles, rather than one long article and our need to be watching TV, listening to music, talking on FB chat and doing our homework all a the same time. This scattered fragmentation of attention baffles some, but I think I better understand its appeal, rather than focus all of your attention on one big effort, fragmenting you time and attention between lots of little things makes the tasks appear less odious and allows you to complete several tasks at once. Granted, it is for this specific reason that when I really need to get ONE important done now the very first thing I do is unplug myself: no phone, no internet, no TV and if at all possible NO COMPUTER. All of these things in their own way are a black hole of unproductiveness, coupled together say goodbye to any hope of writing that 10 page paper.

So, my question for the week: Do you think the success of Twitter and people's fascination with Twitter is driven by this change in the way we read. Can you think of any other social media tools or technology that further reflects this change in how people process information as a result of the internet.

Community Relations 2.0

Forgive me tonight, there are several ideas I want to explore in my blog post tonight, so forgive me if it seems somewhat disjointed!

Firstly, this week I had the opportunity to read Professor Kane's article on "Community Relations 2.0" (don't worry Professor Kane I really enjoyed it and found it to be very insightful). The article, coauthored by several members of the information systems department here at BC, was written to explore the ways in which community outreach has changed due to the persistent rise in social media. What the article did really well, was pick a focus. Rather than use numerous industries dealing with the evolution of social media, the article stuck with the healthcare industry, making note that the findings based on the healthcare industry could be likened to a wide array of industries. The article through a focus in healthcare, breaks down the enhanced power of social media into four specific ways: Deep relationships, rapid organization, improved creation and synthesis of knowledge and better filtration of knowledge.

Now onto the good stuff. The first thing I wanted to discuss stems from a quote provided in the article, "40% of Americans say they have doubted a medical professionals opinion or diagnosis because it conflicted with information they'd found online". I read that and went, WOW 40% is a lot of people, especially when you consider a time when you were told, don't believe everything you read on the internet. Now obviously the reliability of information on the internet has increased immensely since its inception, especially when you consider the stunning accuracy of Wikipedia. In a recent study done by Lara Devgan from Johns Hopkins University, " a sample of Wikipedia medical articles did not contain a single egregious factual error... the vast majority were considered by researchers to be appropriate references for patients". So here in lies my thought, how do you balance the trained knowledge of a professional who has real life experience and attend at least eight years of college to enter into the provision of medical care with the increasing reliability of information online that is not only been proven to be accurate, but progress more quickly in the acquisition of new information and knowledge? While I most certainly see the value in online communities like Patientslikeme.com and the ability to aggregate and share medical information, I still question the safety of patients who take it upon themselves to generate "the first real-time, real-world open and non-blinded study", especially when the trial occurs within months and not years. I think my interest with this subject matter stems from the fact that we aren't sending doctors to medical school for nothing and while there is value in the collective information that can be found on the internet I feel like I have has skepticism about its validity drilled into my head. In my mind just because Web MD. says it doesn't make it true.

The next and completely independent thought I would like to explore is actually some what related to my blog post from last week. For those who missed it, I decided to play the devils advocate and explore the negative impacts of technology and social media on our generation's interaction with our peers. Another aspect of technology and social media that I did not cover, but came up in the lead example in Professor Kane's article, was this idea of today's "hyperconnected world". Connectivity has its pros to be sure, the world is smaller for one and information travels across the globe and back in the blink of an eye. BUT, this connectivity is demanding more and more of our time. As tools and social media become more and more mobile, there is this perception that someone is available ALL the time. No longer does the workday consist of a 9 to 5 day, rather through Twitter, texting, Facebook, email and thousand other tools people are expected to read and respond to queries and complaints any time day or night. Lets just put it this way, just because it is the weekend does not stop an angry blogger from posting a comment at 3am on Sunday morning about a grievance it has with a company. One of the "Mandates for the Social Media Team" in this article is to "continually survey the online landscape to identify potential threats", the issue of course here being the continually. This continual ability to be connected and in contact with those from work really seems to blur the lines between ones time at work and time OFF from work. Social media of course waits for no one.

Thinking about this blurred line, brings me back to last nights conversation about limited access to Gmail, Facebook, Twitter and other communication tools at work. Thinking about our conversation in conjunction with this expectation of perpetual connectivity, whether you are in the office or not, makes me question if its fair for companies to deny their employees the right to access their personal lives within the office, when a company at any given time can encroach upon their personal lives?

One final idea I wanted to touch upon, which was mentioned in "The Mandate for the Social Media Team" was Mandate number 3 "Engage Online Communities". I thought this mandate really encapsulated why Communispace gets it right. The reason they have found success is because the communities they create allow for companies to develop an online presence, so that "people can talk to [them], not just about [them]". Providing customers for a forum that allows them to feel listened to is essential to succeed in harnessing the powers of social media. At the end of the day it is all about the costumer and whether or not they feel satisfied with a company. If a customer is dissatisfied with a company or specific product, a company can use this negative and further improve their company by listening to their customers and giving them what they want. But again it is this idea of a two way conversation, rather than an angry outcry from the consumer.

I don't have a final question for the week, but I think there are several strewn throughout my post!

The Devils Advocate

This week I read the case "How Large U.S. companies can Use Twitter and Other Social Media to Gain Business Value". While informative and very systematic in its assessment of the corporate use of social media, I found this case to be rather dry and less than inspiring for my blog post. So, this week I have decided to finally take on the role of the devil's advocate.

I have decided tonight, to finally write about the pervasive and fairly addictive role that technology has assumed in the wake of my generation, which has prompted myself and many of my friends to comment, we were born in the wrong generation.

It cannot be denied of course that our society has benefited from the technological innovation and improvements that have occured, including improved medical care, access to information and an overall raised standard of living. However, while the world has become increasingly smaller as connectivity has exponentially increased, I tend to question this connectivity and the quality of the social ties that are formed through various forms of social media and texting. While their is something to be said about becoming friends with the click of a button, can you really call that person is a friend? The world of social media while instant, is really just an overwhelming collection of loose ties, but can you really say that all these ties are worth as much as 20 strong ties? Obviously it depends on your end goal, but considering these ties in a non job hunting capacity I would have to say no. For me I truly could not call the majority of these flash boiled, instant "friendships" actual friendships. When I consider my best friends, there is no doubt in my mind that they would do anything for me, but can I really say the same for the 1,135 other facebook " friends" of mine. While mediums like Facebook and Twitter serve as good means of bolstering and allowing for maintenance of close friendships, I think it is impossible to truly create something as personal as a friendship when your interactions are NOT in person.

And yet I cannot turn on the TV without seeing at least one commercial for Match.com or various other digital dating services. I think one of the reasons I am most envious of my parents' generation is that communication and friendships were about the people and not about the tools of connectivity. Sitting here in the library, I cannot walk two feet in any direction without seeing at least one kid on facebook, everybody is doing... myself included. And there in lies the problem, if you aren't doing it, what are you doing and how are you connecting with your generation because Facebook has taken on a life of its own. Just in the past six years since Facebook's inception, the Facebook culture has led to the creation of virtual goods, farms... you name it, but sadly it is also creating these weakened, impersonal and digitally based relationships. I feel like people get so caught up in the tool that they forget why it is there in the first place. If we spend half as much time actually WITH the people we are "stalking" on Facebook I feel people get a deeper, more substance based bond rather than a mere superficial "wall to wall" connection. As people's tendencies become predominately Facebook focused and introverted, I feel that they are missing out on the real world social interactions that are so important in life, not to mention stunting the potential growth of strong long term friendships that go beyond the superficial surface.

So, there is Thing One and obviously there is Thing Two in the realm of social media and communication. Thing One being Facebook and Thing Two being TEXTING. If there is one thing that drives me crazy it is the obsessive texting culture that has slowly consumed our generation. Cell phones are great and all and I really don't know how I would contact anyone or make plans without one, but the idol chitchat that occurs via texting is infuriating. Any given time or place, it is completely standard to see a smattering of students, at the very least, heads down staring intently, as they type feverishly away while staring at the tiny display of their mobile device, while simultaneously ignoring the real world unfolding around them. The worst being when two people are sitting at the same table and one of them is so completely consumed by their digital conversation that they forget to listen and contribute to the real life conversation unfolding in front of them.

Apart from being consumed by our cell phones, in our ever pressing need for speed and instant access, texting also means we must forgo quality conversation and interaction that you gain from personal interaction. More and more I hear people stressing out about the subliminal messages within a text message because so much is lost in translation that texting become somewhat of a complicated art form of decoding. When you speak to someone in person there are never such issues because feelings and emotions shine through and make it very clear as tot the meaning of a message. I can't bear the thought of everyone walking around heads down so all consumed by messages that in effect are more trouble than they are worth.

So sure there is the practicality component, but in the grand scheme I ask, are the tradeoffs worth it? In our attempt to stay connected, are we not hoping on a runaway train and getting dragged along, riding full speed ahead towards past the point of no return?

Communispace is the Case

Knowing nothing about Communispace previously, I thought this Case Study was a very intriguing look at a company who has successfully maneuvered into the market of providing "actionable" recommendations for managing a firms brand. After reading this article I am left with no doubt as to why Communispace has become a leader in their market place.

A large reason as to why Communispace has seen success in my opinion is their facilitation of information between the customer and the company. I know they were the topic of much controversy in our last class, BUT while reading the Harvard Business School Communispace Case Study, I could not help but draw a parallel between the active participants in communities created by Communispace and consumers creating ads from our reading last week. Obviously there are very distinct differences that set the two categories of consumers apart, however I would be remised if I didn't touch upon the core unifier between the two groups. The two groups likeness comes from their need to be heard. As I mentioned in my blog post last week, brands today are used (generally too much!) to define who we are and used convey a message about our beliefs and opinions, thus being such a big part of their lives consumers have started to say something personal about the brand in return. It is this need to be heard that made me draw a distinct parallel between the Communispace community members and consumer creators.

However, after expressing a need to vocalize their wants, opinions and general questions these two groups of consumers deviate. For members of the Communispace community participation is, again hardly about monetizing their time, but rather "about having a direct voice to a company, category, or brand they care about". For community members it isn't just about getting their ideas out their, but seeing that their opinions matter and will be put into ACTION. While consumer created ads might be airing their complaints or reflections on a particular brand through their personally created content, members of a Communispace community are able to give a truthful, open and emotional response that will actually be taken seriously. I think this is a primary example of a forum in which consumer grievances can be heard and responded to without an agenda. Companies are also able to maintain the element of control that is vital to their brand management. This platform works so well because consumers feel like not only are they being heard, but responded to. Not to mention corporations are gaining from this as well, as they are able to aggregate information, opinions and solutions to better build their brand.

Creating a community alone however is not a recipe for success. Communispace harnesses several other elements to strengthen their platform. One of those elements is the time component allowing for the generation and growth of a community. In a day and age where need for speed is so overreaching that if it isn't instant, it isn't, Communispace has the right idea of taking it back a notch and letting the data do its thing. As Diane Hessen said, "communities provide a continuous flow of information, not a snapshot in time". Rather than try and force the data out of their community members Communispace looks long term because it is the broad insights that develop slowly. However, Communispace provides several methods allowing companies to take the pulse of a community intermittently. Hardly the big picture, but tools such as Front Page Reports or Email Snapshots allow for an immediate assessment verses the analysis of long term trends. The other area allowing for the success of Communispace is their development of interactive, fun and engaging activities that members of the community perform to provide feedback for companies. If participants are bored and not passionate about their participation, they are not going to be valuable participants who will offer useful feedback. One of the more unique activities Created by Communispace to hold interest while gaining information, was to have a community create a virtual slang dictionary, which allowed Communispace to generate content for an ad campaign designed to truly resinate with their targeted demographic.

Clearly Communispace is doing some great things. Now I must ask, the case study ended on a cliffhanger, and it is not clear whether Communispace took on the WOM client Simmons, what would you do and why if you were Communispace. Knowing what you know about the company and the formative opinions of two Communispace employees, if you were Diane would you lead Communispace past the point of no return?

Ad Lib: When Customers Create the AD

So its official, "WE'VE GOT THE POWER" - as consumers it has been a long standing tradition that when it comes to marketing and advertisements we fulfill the role of the passive recipients, merely taking what is thrown at us and, majority speaking , simply ignore the advertisers message. However, this is hardly the case anymore, as the article "Ad Lib: When Customers Create the Ad", demonstrates, today, "it's the consumer who runs the show for the most part... in fact forget the consumer label altogether"

I found this article to be very representative of the viral video culture that has taken hold of our generation, largely as a result of YouTube and simplicity of uploading video content to the web. However, this article is hardly assessing how one uploads a consumer created ad, but rather why they would want to create such content in the first place. It then proceeds to assess the implications of these consumer created ads from the vantage point of business firms and the different reactive stances they must uphold, as a result of this new interactive, 2 way dynamic between corporations and consumers.

One of the most striking things that this article brought to my attention, in its assessment of why consumers are creating these ads, is that consumers do it purely for the enjoyment and passion they have for a brand. In a world where brands have come to make a statement about who people are, consumers have taken it upon themselves to say something personal about the brand. Now what is most striking however about these creations is the fact that "their creation is not so much related to sales directly, as it some inner spur or impulse". Now, this really says something to me. In this day and age, where marketing behemoths spend billions of dollars annually in the hopes of gaining just one extra percent of market share, we have consumers creating ads just because they can and for FREE, no less! People have become so passionate and opinionated about specific brands and corporations that they, with no monetary incentive, have taken it upon themselves to make an opinionated statement for the rest of the world to see. And for good or bad, companies have been forced to react and embrace the ever-occurring trend of consumer creations.

While the article touches upon a variety of responses to such consumer based ads, one method I wanted to mention, as it relates to our class discussion is the strategy of facilitation. One of the very successful add campaigns that became a topic of discussion both on our twitter feed and in class is "The Old Spice Guy". Unbeknownst to me, the entertainment and humor I found in watching the "The Old Spice Guy" perform customer driven skits, such as the infamous proposal, was a combination of both consumer created ads and the art of facilitation on behalf of Old Spice. These types of ads have become so common and often go viral on the web that I wouldn't even think of it as a marketing move on behalf of a company. And while the article makes it very clear that this approach is hardly for everyone and that validation of a consumer created ad by a company can result in grievous consequences, the companies who get it just right could be onto something. I am sure most people are of course familiar with the Mentos in Coke YouTube videos (if not I am linking it below) that hit the web a couple of years ago - well apparently while I was in the process of being highly entertained by the sky-high geysers of coke I was also being marketed to?

So I suppose my question for the week is this: Is the marketing of the future moving away from the artfully constructed corporate ads, in favor of videos and multimedia, facilitated by the internet and social media, that market a brand so effectively that we are completely unaware we are being pitched a product?

So I just couldn't resist here are two of my favorite videos, which are also (I guess?) selling us something?

Here is one of the many Mentos in Coke videos:

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and my personal favorite, created by Southwest Airlines:

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Collaborative Minds: Facing the Realities of Social Media and Technologies Far-Reaching Implications

I must begin by saying, wow. As we shift our focus this week, away from the Fairy-tales of Facebook and the communities of Twitter, I am already astounded with the very interesting perspective presented in Chapter 10: The Power of Thinking Differently of Don Tapscott and Anothony D. Williams' Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything. Let me start by saying they certainly have spurred me to think differently this week.

To this point our class has been very much focused on social media tools and their implications for us as consumers and for business firms, but in a very much narrow scope. Now, however, after assessing these tools and their various implications, we go one step further with Wikinomics. The Power of Thinking Differently, breaks down the wall between consumers and firms and encourages the development of collaborative relationships between the global community and corporations, which enhances both the consumer experience while increasing the profitability and marketability of a firm.

One of things I found most striking in the exploration of what it means to think with a "collaborative mind" was the fear and stigmatism surrounding companies' willingness to open source areas of their company. The whole first portion of this article indicates the primary issue preventing corporations, consumers and contributers from breaking down the doors between innovation, external input and innovation is age old conventional wisdom. Wikinomics makes it very clear that open content is not going to be explored or employed by traditional media establishments because for these aged firms open-sourcing is a perpetual threat to old businesses and their intellectual property. Companies steeped in legacy seem to be stuck, choosing to view innovation and prosumer communities as an attack. My thoughts on this resistance to embrace new methodologies are of course confusion and annoyance. In the business world today, the need for speed is ever-pressing especially with regard to agile response to consumer demands. So, WHY would these companies, who have tested time, refuse to engage in collaborative infrastructure to allow them to keep testing time? Today is not 10 years ago and most certainly not 50 years ago, these firms must come to acknowledge "a well mannered economy is not today's reality" because "stability is dead". As much as they want to fear and fight change, these companies will pay the inevitable price in remaining static.

In conjunction with this fear of change, Wikinomics also touched upon the decreasing value of telecommunications and given the availability of free internet the impending demise of telephony's ability to generate revenue altogether. It is only a matter of time before Telephony will be free. What I find to be most interesting about the impending demise of Telephony is the manner in which these telecommunication's firms are attempting to salvage the situation. What is this salvation you might ask, well for all intensive purposes, they are interested in cordoning- off the internet into different levels of service, as customers on a plane are divided into first class, business class and coach. Essentially it is the aim of failing companies to AUCTION OFF THE INTERNET to the highest bitter. This to me is the most backwards and futile thinking this industry could possibly adopt; my advise to these firms, get with the times or get lost. In these companies looking to save themselves they are in turn extinguishing innovation and collaboration.

It was this idea of a free internet that got me thinking. What if a company controlled your internet connectivity speed, search engine capabilities and overall experience. At what point would consumers effectively pay the price from not paying a price? As it stands right now the internet is in a class all its own from previous communications mediums, architecturally it is constructed on the basis that "nobody owns it, everybody uses it and anybody can add services to it". By construction alone it is built to foster collaboration, which really makes me question, why is an industry so unwilling to change that they would gladly scarifie the intrinsic collaborative value of the internet, just so they can bolster their dwindling revenues?

So I pose the question, Facebook on their login page made the statement, "sign up its free, and always will be", but what if the internet is no longer free? Can you foresee a future where you must decide to pay for a premium internet connection or just settle for regular internet?

I would give this article a (10/10) I think its approach and perspective were refreshing and insightful while still holding relevance to our class. It really made me think of how much I take traditional media, not to mention the internet for granted.