Random Thoughts on Internet Usage

• The "Online Communities Map," courtesy of XKCD, is no longer accurate. To be fair, it's now almost 3 years old -- practically a century of Internet time.

• Replace that big territory of "MySpace" with "Facebook," and it's nearly updated.

• This blue-and-white infographic is more boring, but more recent, and thus more accurate. However, it doesn't give us which particular websites are being used.

• But read in relation to the "Online Communities Map," we can see that xkcd.com is still more or less on the right track -- the proportions of the "landmasses" still concur with the latest data as seen here in the infographic.

• A "landmass" of users the size of Russia and China, use the web for social networking sites like Facebook, MySpace, Multiply, and the whole lot.

• But I have to agree with the infographic that a larger percentage of net users use the same for simple search tasks. Movie schedules, addresses of establishments, full texts of court cases, you name it.

• IMHO, the web is more useful and actually used more that way. And along these lines, various companies are beginning to make their forays into augmented reality.
  

• So, back to the "Online Communities Map," Google, Wolfram, and other search engines would occupy a large part of the oceans.

In conclusion, it is reassuring to see that the Internet, for more than 40 years after its inception, has remained to be an authentic purveyor of information, rather than just another platform for commercial interests as experts have predicted.

Keeping it that way for another 40 years is another issue altogether.