The Impact of Social Media in Web-Based Information Management and Digital Media

Introduction

During the last decade, the quantity and quality of information has changed drastically. We now talk about Information Society instead of Industrial Society. Today, the Web offers the biggest and fastest growing information space, which is accessible to almost everyone on demand, anytime and anywhere (24/7 paradigm). Figure 1 shows world Internet penetration rates by geographic region in 2009 (Internet World Stats, 2010). According to statistics, today more than 50% of Europeans use the Internet. In comparison, only North America and Australia showed a higher penetration rate than Europe in 2009. In Europe, Germany ranks third after Great Britain and France regarding current Internet penetration. Germans aged 60 and older accounted for 30% of total internet penetration in 2009. The development of online usage in Germany from 1997 until 2009 is shown in percent in Table 1 (ARD/ZDF-Online study). The number of internet users increased enormously in the past and will very likely continue to do so in the future. Especially remarkable is the online usage of younger people between the ages of 14 and 29, which will probably reach 100% very soon in Germany.

Figure 1.

World Internet penetration rates by geographic regions in 2009 (Internet World Stats, 2010)