New Comm Biz

Layoffs help the Internet economy

Why are Facebook and Twitter exploding right now?

Two reasons:

1. They’re really cool and everyone, especially the media, can’t get enough of them.
2. More people have more time.

Found this article from a few months ago.

Out of Office: Job Loss in the Age of Blogs and Twitter – WSJ.com

People are escaping online in other ways too. On Monday, the popular celebrity gossip hound who goes by the name Perez Hilton said in a post on his Web site that January was his biggest month ever for traffic. “When times are tough, you turn to PerezHilton.com!” he wrote. Last week, the online movie rental service Netflix Inc. said its number of subscribers grew 26% over the holidays to 9.4 million, compared with 18% in the same period the year before.

The article talks mostly about casual Internet gaming (not the WoW crowd; the less geeky) and how this allows for escapism on the Internet. I know I’ve seen a lot of this with the recent raise in Facebook and Twitter users.

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