New media companies use technologies like instant messaging, video streaming, blogging, and social networking to create accessible platforms. MSN was an early example, but Google and Facebook have since become leaders in the field, offering complementary services and integrated features. Facebook’s selective sharing sets it apart from traditional websites.
A new media company is a business that exploits one or more of the technologies that have experienced worldwide growth in recent decades. Technologies such as instant messaging, video streaming, blogging and social networking sites are made accessible through computers, cell phones and other portable devices. These integrations result in the kind of broad, all-in-one accessibility platform that new media companies strive to create.
The Microsoft® Network (MSN®) is a new media company that rapidly exploited several interactive technologies at the onset of the dot-com boom. As an Internet Service Provider (ISP), MSN® designed its home page as a web portal, from which users could access an email service, Hotmail®, which has since become the largest free email to the world. A few years later, MSN® launched an instant messaging (IM) feature called MSN® Messenger, which allows users to chat with each other, share files, and play games.
While many web tools created by MSN® became the most popular of their kind, the web’s search engine capabilities were weaker than those of another new media company. Launched in 1998, Google began to attract attention towards the beginning of the new millennium for its high degree of functionality and quality of results. As Google continued to grow in popularity, the new media company began adding complementary services to its portfolio, including Gmail, Google Earth and Google AdSense. Google also acquired the video sharing site, YouTube, and the popular blogging network, Blogger, and integrated them into its portfolio of services.
In 2006, a social networking site originally created for Harvard students, Facebook, became available to members of the public. Since then, the popularity of this new media company has skyrocketed with the addition of several integrated and interactive features, which are the hallmark of new media. Facebook has created applications that allow it to connect and import data from technologies such as iTunes®, iPhone® and Twitter, to name a few. Facebook also allows external developers who don’t work with the company to develop their own applications, which Facebook users can then add to their account and share with others. Unlike a blog or website, which allows you to communicate with anyone with an Internet connection, social networking sites like Facebook allow you to share and receive information with a select group of other users .
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