Blogging, Influencing and even the internet itself

Once upon a time, the age I was born into had no internet, and we sent letters. Birthday cards were a real thing you could prop up on your window-ledge, businesses sent ‘memos’, a written communication, which was a big step forward from a conversation, as it was tangible evidence of a piece of information, and for example, could be for confirming a date for a meeting, or something important about the design of a product.

Phone calls were on the up, but not everyone had one, and phone boxes were also a real thing you queued up to use to call someone, not necessarily just to chat, but to confirm receipt of something, or book an appointment say, for the doctor. Switchboards were complicated ‘boards’ in which operators plugged cords into to connect people and to talk to someone across the other side of the world, you had to book the call with an operator.

The Internet

I still can’t get my head around the fact that nobody owns the Internet. The birth date of the internet is widely considered to be 1^st January 1983, but the road to creating it started way before the technology for it caught up. The creation of the internet involved many scientists and engineers, and as far back as the early 1900s inventor Nikola Tesla had thought of a ‘world wireless system’ (yes, the electric car company Tesla is named for him). If you search the internet, not one name takes the credit, but various names are suggested.

And the Internet is different from ‘The World Wide Web’ (abbreviated to www). The World Wide Web is often wrongly used to refer to the Internet when it really is a common way to access information on the Internet through websites. English computer scientist Sir Timothy John Berners-Lee is best known as the inventor of the World Wide Web, the HTML markup language, the URL system, and HTTP.

Blogging? Influencers?

While the terms Blogger and Influencer are frequently used interchangeably, they really shouldn’t be. Many Bloggers are Influencers, but not all Influencers are Bloggers – are you with me so far? Or ahead of me? Some Bloggers do manage to become Influencers through their writing, but Influencers don’t have to have a blog. As a general rule, if you only know someone by the name of their website but you can’t recall their full name, they are a Blogger - not an Influencer. Blogging is a business of sharing your thoughts, knowledge, and insights through online content – from articles to videos. Influencers can reach your target audience and have specialized knowledge, authority or insight into a specific subject.

Well, that’s that sorted then.

Social Media

I kind of understand this, but can only cope with Facebook. Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, Pinterest, WhatsApp and many others are known as ‘platforms’, and are used by individuals, communities, and organizations to share, discuss, and keep in touch. Social Media does seem to have an inventor - Six Degrees founder Andrew Weinreich is sometimes referred to as the father of social networking, and created his platform to help people connect with people they didn't know (yet).

Mark Zuckerberg, is an American businessman who co-founded the social media service Facebook and its parent company Meta Platforms of which he is chairman, chief executive officer and controlling shareholder, and according to Forbes, is the 4^th richest man in the world, and he’s only 40! An interesting fact about Facebook - the latest statistics show that Facebook continues to reign as the king of social media, with 3.07 billion active users in 2024. That means that nearly three out of every five of the estimated 5.17 billion social media users across the world are active users of Facebook.

How things have moved along in a relatively short period of time. Internet specialists are still among the top earners in the world, so if you are looking for a career change, this would seem the direction to go.

But as for me - I am still struggling to find out what all the keys do on my laptop.

Marilyn writes regularly for The Portugal News, and has lived in the Algarve for some years. A dog-lover, she has lived in Ireland, UK, Bermuda and the Isle of Man. 

Marilyn Sheridan