Latest / Mini Scroll / The Evolution of Digital Media: Why we Can't Escape Information Online

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The Evolution of Digital Media: Why we Can't Escape Information Online · Mini Scroll

• 0:00
  We talk a lot on this podcast about the changing online
• 0:03
  landscape and what this constant flux means for gathering and
• 0:07
  disseminating information across social media.
• 0:10
  From YouTube's citizen journalists to Tik Tok's
• 0:13
  commentary creators to Facebook's conspiracy theorists,
• 0:16
  much of the news and information that we encounter day-to-day is
• 0:20
  served to us by social media algorithms that have been
• 0:24
  specifically curated to meet our interests.
• 0:27
  But seeking and spreading information online wasn't always
• 0:31
  so easy. Before social media or
• 0:33
  algorithms even existed, users relied on search engines and
• 0:37
  media mastheads to source and distribute news.
• 0:40
  And before that, if you can even imagine, early Internet users
• 0:44
  found information online the old fashioned way by remembering UR
• 0:48
  LS and typing in domain names into the World Wide Web.
• 0:52
  This is the evolution of digital media.
• 0:55
  A look back at how much has changed in the last 20 years
• 0:58
  since the.com boom and how the introduction of personality
• 1:02
  driven media supported by personalized algorithms have
• 1:06
  permanently altered the way that we find, consume and learn new
• 1:11
  information from Centennial World.
• 1:14
  I'm Lauren Meisner and this is Infinite Scroll, a podcast about
• 1:18
  intranet culture, the creator economy, and how social media is
• 1:21
  shaping Gen. Z Welcome back to Infinite
• 1:24
  Scroll everyone. I am so excited to bring you
• 1:27
  guys a tech heavy episode. This is a massive 1.
• 1:30
  It took a lot of time and research from my team.
• 1:33
  This is another episode that they worked on while I was away
• 1:36
  and I feel like it encompasses so much of what we talk about on
• 1:40
  this podcast. I'm really excited for you guys
• 1:42
  to hear it. But as always, Please remember
• 1:45
  to rate, review and subscribe. Please sign up to our
• 1:47
  newsletter, which is also called Infinite Scroll.
• 1:50
  On Fridays, we round up the five biggest thing pieces from the
• 1:53
  Internet that week and join our Geneva group, which is also
• 1:56
  called Infinite Scroll, where you can chat with other people
• 1:59
  who are obsessed with Internet culture and creator drama NT and
• 2:02
  you can chat with me. All right, I'm going to read 1
• 2:05
  review for you guys. This is from Romano's Macaroni
• 2:08
  grill. I love that on Spotify they
• 2:11
  said, Oh my God, the reviews in the beginning made me realize
• 2:14
  I've been watching slash listening to you for over a year
• 2:16
  now too. I found you all through the
• 2:18
  Colleen stuff. One of my favorite podcasts
• 2:21
  ever. Thank you so much for continuing
• 2:23
  to make this for us. That is so sweet.
• 2:25
  You are welcome. I will continue to make this
• 2:27
  podcast for you guys as long as I humanly can.
• 2:35
  These days, we log into our favorite social media platforms
• 2:38
  and are immediately met with a flood of content covering just
• 2:42
  about anything. While not all of it is positive
• 2:45
  or what we necessarily set out to find, no generation before
• 2:48
  faced this level of information overload.
• 2:51
  As we navigate this era, it can easily feel overwhelming,
• 2:54
  especially when we consider how much has changed in the digital
• 2:58
  world over the past 20 years. The online media landscape as we
• 3:02
  know it took shape in the early 2000s whenthe.com was king.
• 3:06
  We're all familiar with dot coms and domain names.
• 3:09
  Many of us use them daily, but we also tend to rely on mobile
• 3:12
  first apps to access websites like YouTube or other social
• 3:16
  media platforms. But through the 1990s, just
• 3:19
  after the World Wide Web was invented, dot coms were the way
• 3:23
  to navigate the Internet. In a piece for Gizmodo,
• 3:26
  journalist Daniel Kalitz interviewed various academics to
• 3:30
  gain insight into what exactly the web was like back then.
• 3:33
  Associate Professor Amelia Acker, based at the University
• 3:36
  of Texas in Austin, told Kalitz that before search engines like
• 3:39
  Google existed, quote, there were website directories and
• 3:42
  indexed search engines that assembled web resources by
• 3:45
  topic. She goes on to explain that
• 3:47
  those directories were initially curated by humans who would read
• 3:51
  web pages on specific topics and rank them accordingly.
• 3:54
  This approach eventually shifted with the introduction of ranked
• 3:58
  search engines, but more on that later.
• 4:00
  Kalitz also spoke with Professor Ian Milligan from the University
• 4:03
  of Waterloo, who expanded on how early dot coms generated traffic
• 4:08
  through web directories and the role hyperlinks played.
• 4:11
  Quote if you were a website creator, you would in many cases
• 4:14
  have to fill out a form to be added to the directory or would
• 4:17
  need to insert fairly cumbersome meta tags into your HTML,
• 4:21
  Milligan explains. Part of this is because early
• 4:24
  websites could rely on hyperlinks, far more so than we
• 4:27
  do today in our age of search, to bring visitors to their
• 4:30
  sites. With websites being built to
• 4:32
  help users, Amelia Acker continues by making an
• 4:35
  interesting point. The purpose for searching the
• 4:38
  Internet was also fundamentally different back then.
• 4:41
  Quote finding a fact or product wasn't always the goal of
• 4:44
  searching, she says. Instead, many users would have
• 4:47
  had to find resources that could help them access and explore
• 4:50
  information online. With this context, we can begin
• 4:53
  to understand just how important a catchy and memorable domain
• 4:57
  name actually was. This eventually LED to the rise
• 5:00
  of squatting, where people would purchase domain names just in
• 5:03
  case they might be worth something later.
• 5:06
  It's kind of like using a specific handle on platforms
• 5:08
  like Instagram or TikTok now, hoping a company or celebrity
• 5:12
  will want to buy it off you down the road.
• 5:14
  As professor and author Ian Bogus explains for The Atlantic
• 5:17
  quote, through the late 1990s, it'd become easy for anyone to
• 5:21
  register and own a domain name, typically at a cost of $70.00
• 5:25
  for a two year stretch. Desirable URL's worked and
• 5:28
  traded like real estate with actual domain name agents,
• 5:32
  escrow, rental and sales deals, and Commission.
• 5:35
  With the online world starting to prove its profitability, it
• 5:38
  made sense for investors and venture capitalists to sink
• 5:41
  money into the World Wide Web. At first, this seemed like a
• 5:44
  win. It helped legitimize the digital
• 5:47
  space, but it also put a lot of pressure on this still new and
• 5:51
  pretty fragile industry. This led to
• 5:53
  whatisnowknownasthe.com bubble in simpletermsthe.com bubble was
• 5:59
  a period in the late late 90s and early 2000s and was actually
• 6:02
  related to the stock market. Now, obviously we aren't a
• 6:05
  finance podcast, but essentially during this time tons of dot
• 6:09
  coms emerged. That is a company that conducted
• 6:12
  business primarily through a website.
• 6:14
  With interest growing in the online world.
• 6:16
  Internet companies and startups attracted a huge wave of
• 6:19
  investment. But to everyone's dismay, it
• 6:22
  soon became clear that many of these companies weren't going to
• 6:25
  be profitable. And that's when the bubble
• 6:28
  burst. Quote The mania for technology
• 6:30
  stocks in 2000 had all the ingredients for a roller coaster
• 6:34
  ride from boom to bust, glamorous sounding products that
• 6:37
  investors knew little about. Yet what it did not have was the
• 6:40
  ability to rewrite the rules of economics, Jane Martinson and
• 6:44
  Larry Elliott wrote for the Guardian at the time.
• 6:46
  As a result, many Internet based companies were forced to shut
• 6:50
  down. Delivery companies like Webvan,
• 6:52
  which focused on groceries, or Cosmo, which promised to deliver
• 6:56
  food, movies, books and more in under an hour with no delivery
• 7:00
  are just some examplesofthe.com companies that went bust.
• 7:04
  Webvan alone burns through about 800 million before shutting
• 7:08
  down, according to wiredpets.com is another famous example and
• 7:12
  was actually a.com company that Amazon had invested in.
• 7:16
  It offered users the convenience of ordering pet supplies online
• 7:20
  and it became quite popular. While similar websites existed
• 7:23
  by then, pets.com had an edge thanks to its simple domain name
• 7:27
  and Amazon's backing to boost brand awareness.
• 7:30
  The company went on to launch a massive marketing campaign,
• 7:33
  including a Super Bowl commercial in 2000 featuring its
• 7:37
  dog sock puppet mascot, which soon became a fan favorite.
• 7:41
  Despite raising $82.5 million in an initial public offering that
• 7:46
  same year, pets.com was forced to close.
• 7:49
  By November, it had secured large amounts of venture capital
• 7:52
  funding with little experience. When the company went public, it
• 7:56
  had assumed that market growth would outpace expenses, but
• 8:00
  clearly this was not the case. In a piece for the Harvard
• 8:03
  Business Review from 2001, D Quinn Mills clarified that the
• 8:07
  dot coms were not to blame for the bubble, but rather the
• 8:11
  venture capitalists who flooded the industry without adequate
• 8:14
  plans or strategies. Quote The capital markets did a
• 8:18
  great job of channeling money into the new business sector
• 8:21
  that the dot coms represented, but they did a lousy job of
• 8:24
  selecting which startups to support, Mills explains.
• 8:28
  Because dot coms were built on new business models, not on
• 8:31
  proprietary technologies or products, traditional business
• 8:34
  plans and financial measures didn't applywhile.com companies
• 8:38
  have their problems, there was still a lot of investment and
• 8:41
  interest in the online space. During this time specifically,
• 8:45
  search engines started to become more popular.
• 8:48
  While we won't dive into the history of all of them, it's
• 8:50
  worth noting that before Google, there were search engines like
• 8:53
  Yahoo, Founded in 1994, Lycos, founded in 1995, and Alta Vista,
• 8:59
  founded in 1995. Google, which came along in
• 9:02
  1996, would later dominate, but by the late 90s and early 2000s,
• 9:07
  Yahoo was a favorite among users.
• 9:10
  A 1998 article by Jacob Nielsen of the Nielsen Norman Group, A
• 9:14
  consulting firm for computer user interfaces and user
• 9:18
  experience, praised Yahoo for its fast download times, its
• 9:22
  quote minimalist design, and its structured navigation system
• 9:26
  which made it a leader in the early days.
• 9:28
  With the rise of search engines, the influence of domain names
• 9:31
  started to fade. As Ian Boggess rightly puts for
• 9:34
  the Atlantic quote, the ability of a website to appear in search
• 9:38
  results became more important than the ability to remember a
• 9:41
  URL. Even though domain names became
• 9:44
  less important, it's not entirely accurate to say that
• 9:47
  search engines and SEO fully replaced their impact through
• 9:51
  the early 2000's. The real shift happened when the
• 9:54
  Internet and social media platforms became entirely
• 9:58
  algorithm driven. That being said, domain names
• 10:01
  continue to hold influence through the 2000s, with the blog
• 10:04
  era being a prime example. During this time, how we
• 10:07
  consumed information changed. It was no longer just from
• 10:11
  companies or established directories, but also from
• 10:14
  bloggers. According to New York Magazine,
• 10:17
  the first blog was created by Justin Hall, a student at
• 10:20
  Swarthmore College in Pennsylvania, under the URL
• 10:23
  links.net. While Hall shared personal
• 10:26
  updates over time, the blog initially served as a tour of
• 10:29
  the web. Though Hall started blogging in
• 10:31
  1994, the term for it didn't appear until 1997, when online
• 10:36
  diarist Joran Barger coined web log to mean logging the web.
• 10:41
  In 1999, programmer Peter Merholtz shortened it to blog.
• 10:45
  That same year, Blogger was launched, a platform that made
• 10:48
  it easier than ever for users to publish blogs and websites on
• 10:52
  their own hosting servers. Some of the most iconic blogs to
• 10:55
  emerge in the early 2000s were Boeing, Boeing, Gizmodo and
• 10:59
  Gawker. Boeing Boeing actually started
• 11:01
  as a Zion in 1988 and existed within the cyberpunk subculture.
• 11:06
  By 2000 it was relaunched as a blog.
• 11:09
  Mark Frohnfelder, one of the Co founders, was eventually joined
• 11:13
  by a variety of guest bloggers covering topics like technology,
• 11:16
  futurism, science fiction and intellectual property.
• 11:20
  Interestingly, the early posts on Boeing Boeing were different
• 11:23
  from the longer form blog posts that we might think of today.
• 11:26
  Many were aggregated links to other sites.
• 11:30
  Still, it had a huge readership. According to a 2010 Fast Company
• 11:34
  article, Boeing, Boeing was getting quote about 2.5 million
• 11:38
  unique visitors a month, racking up 9.8 million page views, a
• 11:42
  traffic increase of around 20% / 2009.
• 11:47
  Meanwhile, Gawker was founded in 2002 by Nick Denton and quickly
• 11:52
  became one of the most popular gossip blogs on the Internet.
• 11:55
  Gawker was known for celebrity and media industry gossip
• 11:58
  alongside critique of mainstream news outlets.
• 12:01
  Much of its content came from anonymous tips, reader
• 12:04
  submissions, and original reporting, kind of like how
• 12:07
  Dumois operates today. Gawker was the flagship blog of
• 12:10
  Gawker Media, which also owned Gizmodo, A blog launched in 2002
• 12:15
  by Peter Rojas. Gizmodo covered topics ranging
• 12:18
  from technology to science. Despite Gawker Media success,
• 12:22
  its influence came with significant controversy, which
• 12:25
  ultimately led to its downfall. The turning point came when
• 12:28
  former wrestler and now Trump supporter Hulk Hogan sued Gawker
• 12:33
  Media for $100 million for a handful of claims, including
• 12:37
  invasion of privacy. In an October 2012 blog post
• 12:40
  titled Even for a Minute, Watching Hulk Hogan have sex in
• 12:44
  a Canape Bed is not safe for work, but watch it anyway,
• 12:47
  Gawker posted portions of Hulk Hogan getting intimate with his
• 12:51
  friend's wife. The lawsuit was later revealed
• 12:53
  to have been funded by billionaire venture capitalist
• 12:56
  Peter Thiel, who had been outed as gay by the publication.
• 13:00
  In 2007, Hogan won the lawsuit, which resulted in a multimillion
• 13:05
  dollar settlement and an eventual bankruptcy for Gawker.
• 13:08
  While mainstream blogs helped shape the digital media
• 13:11
  landscape through the 2000s, blogging itself became more
• 13:14
  accessible as platforms like Live Journal, founded in 1999,
• 13:18
  and WordPress, launched four years later, opened the door for
• 13:21
  a wider audience. What started as personal online
• 13:24
  journals quickly expanded to cover a broad range of niches,
• 13:28
  from technology and travel to especially as the line between
• 13:32
  social networking and blogging began to blur.
• 13:35
  In simple terms, blogging democratized expression, much
• 13:38
  like TikTok has democratized virality today.
• 13:41
  In a 2022 interview, Gizmodo founder Peter Roas reflected on
• 13:46
  how blogging transformed the online landscape, saying Quote
• 13:49
  the reason blogging was such a big deal in the 1st place was
• 13:52
  that it made it easy for anyone to start publishing their
• 13:55
  writing online. It's easy to forget that before
• 13:58
  blogging, it was a pain for the average person to do simple
• 14:01
  things like update a site with fresh content.
• 14:04
  With it becoming easier than ever to share thoughts and
• 14:06
  opinions online, it's no surprise that blogging paved the
• 14:10
  way for influencer culture in many respects.
• 14:13
  Just recently we talked about the rise of the Brit crew and
• 14:16
  how figures like Zoe Sugg and Louise Pentland transitioned to
• 14:20
  YouTube after building their followings on their blogs Zoella
• 14:23
  and Sprinkle of Glitter respectively.
• 14:25
  While blogging pushed the Internet toward personality
• 14:28
  driven content, social media platforms accelerated it.
• 14:31
  Myspace was created in 2003, Facebook debuted a year later,
• 14:36
  YouTube followed in 2005, and Instagram launched in 2010.
• 14:40
  Influencers weren't an obvious part of the digital landscape
• 14:44
  when those social media platforms first emerged, but it
• 14:46
  wasn't long before they became a staple of the online world.
• 14:50
  Platforms like Myspace and YouTube with their audio visual
• 14:53
  capabilities also shifted digital media away from purely
• 14:57
  written content, expanding into new format.
• 15:00
  As some of the earliest influencers popped up, like
• 15:03
  Jeffree Star and Tila Tequila, it became clear that
• 15:06
  personalities were more important than ever, setting the
• 15:09
  stage for media companies to blend influencer culture with
• 15:12
  more traditional approaches. One company that did this
• 15:15
  successfully was BuzzFeed. BuzzFeed was launched in 2006 by
• 15:20
  Jonah Peretti, who also Co founded the Huffington Post a
• 15:23
  year earlier. The HuffPost itself started as a
• 15:26
  blog and a news aggregator, soon becoming one of the most
• 15:29
  successful commentary websites. Meanwhile, Peretti founded
• 15:33
  BuzzFeed along John S Johnson the 3rd as what they called a
• 15:36
  quote viral lab focusing on memes and entertainment,
• 15:40
  essentially trying to crack the code of what makes users click
• 15:44
  on a post. Initially, BuzzFeed employed no
• 15:47
  writers or editors, relying solely on an algorithm to track
• 15:51
  stories on the brink of virality.
• 15:53
  Quote In return for functioning as a sort of early warning
• 15:56
  system, BuzzFeed persuaded partner sites to install all
• 16:00
  programming code that allowed the company to monitor their
• 16:03
  traffic, Andrew Rice wrote for the New York Magazine in 2014.
• 16:07
  This analytical capacity, which the company doesn't talk about
• 16:10
  much, has given BuzzFeed an enormous trove of data about
• 16:14
  what information people are reading and how they are sharing
• 16:17
  it. Later, BuzzFeed began featuring
• 16:19
  the most popular links found by its algorithm, with writers
• 16:23
  providing brief descriptions. In 2012, Peretti hired
• 16:27
  Politico's Ben Smith, known for his political blogging, to build
• 16:30
  a news division alongside Buzzfeed's viral listicles,
• 16:34
  shaping it into the platform we know it today.
• 16:37
  Ultimately, Peretti and BuzzFeed understood the power of
• 16:40
  personality driven media in the viral space, A trend the company
• 16:44
  capitalized on well into the 2000 tens.
• 16:47
  Throughout this decade, BuzzFeed became recognized not just for
• 16:50
  its news division or iconic quizzes, but also for its video
• 16:54
  content. The way we consumed information
• 16:56
  online changed significantly during this period, with much of
• 17:00
  it being delivered via algorithm driven social media platforms, A
• 17:03
  stark contrast to the.com era and its web directories.
• 17:07
  Quote being found online has long ceased to involve acquiring
• 17:11
  a plot of digital real estate for ourselves.
• 17:13
  Instead, we submerge in big tech service platforms, hoping to
• 17:17
  find engagement by gaming the YouTube algorithm.
• 17:20
  Bogus continues for The Atlantic.
• 17:23
  Soon, BuzzFeed launched several video series and channels, each
• 17:27
  catering to different niches. But one consistent factor after
• 17:30
  was that audience tuned in for the personalities featured in
• 17:33
  these videos, many of whom had backgrounds in journalism or
• 17:36
  various production roles. While each series catered to a
• 17:39
  different audience, one thing was clear, BuzzFeed was
• 17:43
  embracing the influencer, social media, and personality driven
• 17:47
  model well before many other companies caught on.
• 17:50
  If you've ever engaged with BuzzFeed content, chances are
• 17:53
  you're familiar with the likes of Tasty, BuzzFeed, Unsolved,
• 17:57
  Ladylike, or of course, the Try Guys.
• 18:00
  Rising to viral fame in 2014, the Try Guys under BuzzFeed were
• 18:04
  made-up of employees Zach, Eugene, Keith, and Net.
• 18:08
  As the name suggests, the quartet went viral for trying
• 18:11
  just about anything ranging from ballet, drag, and even swimming
• 18:15
  with sharks. After building a dedicated fan
• 18:18
  base online, the guys left BuzzFeed in 2018 to form an
• 18:22
  independent production company. Over the last few years, the
• 18:25
  group has continued to post vlog style content on the Try Guys
• 18:29
  YouTube channel, passing over 8 million subscribers.
• 18:32
  However, a lot has changed for the group since their early days
• 18:35
  at BuzzFeed. Ned was ousted after a cheating
• 18:38
  scandal involving an employee in 2022, and Eugene chose to leave
• 18:42
  the collective earlier this year.
• 18:44
  There was also Ladylike, a group many saw as the female
• 18:47
  counterpart to the Try Guys. While their content wasn't quite
• 18:51
  as rogue, they took on challenges in beauty and
• 18:53
  fashion. Some of their popular videos
• 18:55
  included Worst First Date foods, facing their fashion fears, and
• 19:00
  even trying on old prom dresses, all of which can now be found on
• 19:04
  the AS/IS YouTube channel. While the ladylike cast varied
• 19:08
  over time, the core members included Freddie, Devin,
• 19:11
  Chantel, Kristen, Jen and Sophia, who has since become a
• 19:15
  well known creator in her own right.
• 19:17
  Beyond the AS Slash IS channel, BuzzFeed also launched popular
• 19:21
  series like Tasty. Tasty emerged around the same
• 19:24
  time as Facebook Video, creating a format perfectly suited for
• 19:27
  the platform's algorithm. It soon became known for quick
• 19:30
  eye-catching recipes and challenges.
• 19:32
  One standout series was Making it Big, led by producer Alvin
• 19:36
  Zhu, who made giant sized versions of popular food.
• 19:39
  Another popular producer, Alex Traeger, hosted behind Tasty,
• 19:43
  offering a behind the scenes look at the recipes and
• 19:46
  production process. As of today, Tasty boasts over
• 19:49
  21 million YouTube subscribers. Lastly, BuzzFeed Unsolved was
• 19:55
  another major success for the company, created by Ryan Bergara
• 19:59
  and hosted by Shane. Mage initially posted on the
• 20:02
  BuzzFeed Blue YouTube channel. The series gained such
• 20:04
  popularity that it eventually spun off into its own channel,
• 20:08
  now called the BuzzFeed Unsolved Network.
• 20:10
  Ryan and Shane tapped into the growing true crime genre,
• 20:14
  focusing on unsolved cases and paranormal investigations at
• 20:17
  alleged haunted locations. All that said, BuzzFeed, which
• 20:21
  started with blog style content, successfully adapted to the rise
• 20:25
  of social media and influencer culture, one driven by
• 20:28
  personality and algorithm. While the BuzzFeed website was
• 20:31
  famous for its quizzes, its shift towards social media
• 20:34
  platforms and video content signaled the true decline of the
• 20:38
  traditional URL slash domain era.
• 20:41
  Speaking to this change, bogus writes for The Atlantic Quote
• 20:45
  search has spread from Google to everything.
• 20:47
  You find stuff by fishing with keywords, not by navigating to a
• 20:51
  location. Today, value lies in the ability
• 20:54
  to link, not the name of the place linked.
• 20:57
  Of course, BuzzFeed no longer holds the same chokehold on
• 21:01
  viral culture as it once did. BuzzFeed News, once a key part
• 21:06
  of its brand, ceased adding new content on May 5th, 2023.
• 21:10
  Many former producers also posted Why I Left BuzzFeed
• 21:14
  videos, exposing the company's internal culture, which
• 21:17
  contributed to the brand's decline in influence since its
• 21:20
  mid 2010's peak. Since then, social media users
• 21:24
  have become increasingly disengaged with traditional
• 21:27
  media outlets favoring news aggregators and citizen
• 21:30
  journalists. One such example is Phil Lewis,
• 21:34
  who became Twitter famous in 2015, a time when social media
• 21:38
  felt simpler and of course, less polarizing.
• 21:40
  Quote Vine was still a thing. Influencing was a relatively new
• 21:44
  concept. I was a teacher with a decent
• 21:46
  following. A friend of mine was like, you
• 21:49
  should get into social media, Phil tells Jason Param in an
• 21:52
  interview for Wired. Phil quickly made a name for
• 21:55
  himself by sharing different articles and stories, a majority
• 21:58
  being pop culture and politics. With a following of almost half
• 22:02
  a million people, Phil has easily become one of the most
• 22:05
  famous news accounts on X. While he continues to post on
• 22:08
  the platform, he has also pursued a more traditional
• 22:11
  journalistic path, becoming a front page editor for the
• 22:14
  HuffPost. As Internet users gravitate
• 22:16
  towards citizen journalism, it reflects a growing distrust with
• 22:20
  traditional media outlets. In an era of misinformation and
• 22:24
  AI generated content, it seems that human, curated and first
• 22:28
  hand experiences are more important than ever.
• 22:31
  Of course, this is something that is especially important
• 22:34
  among minority communities who feel that traditional mastheads
• 22:37
  and digital media outlets push specific and often exclusive
• 22:41
  agendas. Ultimately, from.com companies
• 22:44
  to blogs to social media influencers, how we consume
• 22:48
  digital media and gather information has changed
• 22:51
  drastically, and the pace of that change is accelerating.
• 22:54
  We've shifted from actively seeking out information about
• 22:57
  how the Internet works to relying on search engines, and
• 23:00
  now content is being served through algorithms on social
• 23:03
  media platforms. But as much as we've seen the
• 23:06
  digital landscape evolve, we're now entering a new era poised to
• 23:10
  bring even more change with AI. Some commentators have
• 23:13
  questioned whether we're witnessinganew.com bubble, this
• 23:17
  time driven by AI. Much like the boom of the late
• 23:20
  1990s and early 2000s, enthusiasm over AI is seemingly
• 23:25
  inflating stock prices and driving massive investment.
• 23:29
  As Lewis Croscock reported for routers earlier this year.
• 23:32
  Quote AUS stock rally supercharged by excitement over
• 23:35
  artificial intelligence is drawing comparisons with a.com
• 23:39
  bubble 2 decades ago, raising the question of whether prices
• 23:42
  have once again been inflated by optimism over a revolutionary
• 23:47
  technology. Companies like Open AI and
• 23:50
  NVIDIA are at the center of this discussion, with Business
• 23:53
  Insider highlighting Nvidia's 126% revenue surge in One
• 23:59
  Financial year and a nearly 600% rise in net income to $30
• 24:04
  billion. The rapid rise of these AI
• 24:07
  driven companies draws both interest and concern as some
• 24:11
  question whether this explosive growth is sustainable or another
• 24:15
  bubble. At the same time, AI is already
• 24:18
  shaping how we consume and gather information online.
• 24:21
  Through bloggers, citizen journalists, and the likes of
• 24:24
  BuzzFeed, the rise of personality driven media came to
• 24:27
  define the social media landscape.
• 24:30
  However, the increase in AI generated content introduces a
• 24:33
  new paradigm that might disrupt the long standing influencer
• 24:37
  model. Though personality driven media
• 24:39
  will probably always have a place online, AI raises
• 24:42
  questions about how widespread this content will continue to
• 24:45
  be, especially since we've already seen examples of AI
• 24:49
  infiltrating the influencer space with virtual influencers
• 24:52
  and the like. 20 years after we first had to type URL domain
• 24:56
  names into the World Wide Web to find anything to consume on the
• 25:00
  Internet, we no longer have to actively seek out information
• 25:04
  online. Over the last couple of decades,
• 25:07
  the evolution of digital media, propelled by big tech's
• 25:10
  obsession with finding the next revolutionary thing, has
• 25:14
  completely transformed our relationship with online content
• 25:18
  and news. The introduction of citizen
• 25:21
  journalism, next Gen. media companies, social media
• 25:24
  platforms, and of course algorithms have all contributed
• 25:28
  to where we are today. At a place this where we are
• 25:30
  exposed to an unfathomable amount of online information
• 25:34
  every single day. Information that is not sought
• 25:37
  out by us but rather served to us whether we subscribe to it or
• 25:43
  not. Infinite Scroll is a podcast
• 25:45
  produced, presented and Co written by me, Lauren Meisner
• 25:48
  for Centennial World. This episode was researched and
• 25:51
  written by Annabelle, Ben, David and Co researched and edited by
• 25:55
  Danny Fennick. Thank you so much for listening.
• 25:57
  I love you guys and I will talk to you next week.