The Drudge Report is a news website run by Matt Drudge that consists mainly of links to stories from the U.S. and international mainstream media about politics, entertainment, and current events as well as links to many columnists. The design of the web site is kept very simple consisting of a three column format, out sourcing links to all the major online news stories. The site gathers information from all the major online news sites, making it a one stop shop for news.

The online collaboration of all this current news information is very beneficial. Such as…

• It gives you the opportunity to check all the latest news on one site, rather than searching the  internet for all your major news stories.
• Gives you the capabilities of RSS, but is much easier to assess and understand.
• Simplicity. It offers you everything you need on one page to stay up to date.
• Updated daily, so you never miss the most important news stories.

Nielsen NetRatings reports approximately 3 million visitors per month, with visitors spending an average of 66 minutes on the site, with as many as one thousand advertisers at one time. With this amount of traffic there is no doubt that this simple yet effective website has caught on. With web sites like this it is no wonder that news papers are being read less and less. In order to find the amount of information on this site you would have to read multiple newspapers articles a day, leafing through page after page, just to find information that interests you.

People are starting to understand with websites like the Drudge Report why newspapers have begun to lose their luster….

In today’s society, Facebook has become the norm. The continual growth of Facebook has exceeded more than 150 million active users and development in a new group. More than half of Facebook users are outside of college while the fastest growing demographic is those 30 years old and older. Sophos polled 500 Facebook users to find out how often they accessed or checked the popular social networking site from work, and found

• Once or twice a day – 37.2%
• Virtually all the time! – 14.8%
• Up to ten times a day – 8%

With this growth outside of college aged students, employers are having problems with this new social media. Approximately 1 in 7 people, confessed to being logged onto Facebook almost permanently during their working day. If they are constantly on Facebook when are they getting their work done? Employment law firm Peninsula recently estimated that 233 million hours are lost every month in the UK alone as a result of employees using social networking sites.

So how do you know if you’re a facebook addict?

• You are late for meetings because you are on Facebook
• You check your accounts from your Blackberry
• You get stressed when a Facebook “friend” doesn’t add you
• You post everything that happens in your life on Facebook
• You have proxy’s that get around blocked facebook at school or work

Now in no way am I saying Facebook is a bad thing. I just believe there is a time and place to use it, and some people have taken it too far.