How do internet based businesses make money?

So much of what we find on the internet is free. So, how do internet businesses make money?

Take the text book for this course as an example. The book can be downloaded for free from the following link  Web 2.0 and social media for business

How does the author of this book, Roger McHaney make money from writing the book? Do you think he wrote it for fun, in his spare time? I know that if I put a lot of time and effort into writing a book, I would like to get some income from it. What about you?

Do some research on business models, to find out different ways in which internet based business keep profitable. The following link is a good starting point, but you can also find other sources to help you understand Business Models.

Once you have gained an understanding of some of the business models, write a post on your own blog about your findings. Include either an image or video on your post which complements what you  have written.

Internet Easter Egg Hunt

Today's task is a hunt for 3 Internet Easter Eggs. First you need to find out what an Internet Easter Egg is, and then hunt for three. The task needs to be completed during the lesson today, following the instructions below:

Write a post on your blog about Internet Easter eggs, containing the following:

1. Explain in your own words what an  Internet Easter Egg is. Creating a link to the site you used to gather your information. One of my favourites, found by a past student will illustrate what an Internet Easter Egg is. Type "zerg rush" into a google search page. Press Enter and wait to see what happens. 
2. Hunt for/ find and then briefly explain 3 Internet Easter Eggs. Including after your explanation, a link to where you found out about it. (You can't use "zerg rush" as one of your three easter eggs".)
3. Some Internet Easter Eggs only work on certain web browsers. Say which web browser you are using and whether you could get the internet easter eggs you found above to work on this browser.
4. Publish your post and e-mail me me a link to that post of your blog. 

Once I have received your e-mail with the link, you will have completed your Internet Easter Egg hunt. This is an ICE task and I need to received your e-mail as your way of submitting the completed task.

Information Overload & the Role of RSS feeds

The internet and internet related technology has brought many changes to our lives.

When I was growing up and my maternal grandmother was visiting us, my mom would tell us to go and do our home-work reading to Granny Vi. We hated this, because she would ask us the meaning of each word we read and if we didn't know - we had to look it up in the dictionary!! Recently, I have thought often of Granny Vi, every time I say to someone 'just google it'!! There is so much information out there to help us answer so many questions we have in our day to day lives, that in many ways 'google' has become our best friend. It is not called "The Information Superhighway" for nothing! I am sure Granny Vi would have loved the internet and I know that as a kid I would have much preferred to be able to look up meanings of words on google than in a dictionary!! 

But, do you ever feel bombarded with TOO MUCH INFORMATION? We can find and read far more than we have time to read in a day. So, how do we decide what to read? How do we sift through the mountains of web pages to find what is really of interest to us, what is really important for us to know? 

One internet tool that helps us do this is RSS feeds. I am sure you will recognise this logo. 

Check out the following links and then answer the questions/ do the exercise below to help you understand what RSS feeds and RSS aggregators are and how you can use them to filter and find the information you want to on the internet.

• http://www.whatisrss.com
• http://rssblog.whatisrss.com
• http://www.xml.com/pub/a/2002/12/18/dive-into-xml.html

1. What does the acronym RSS stand for?
2. What is an RSS feed?
3. Find an RSS feed that you would be interested in following
4. Add an RSS feed gadget to your blog - linking the feed you found above to your blog
5. What is an RSS aggregator (one example is called feedly) ?