COM 125 Week 2 : Assignment

The internet was created as a secure space or medium which could be usedefficiently even in a nuclear situation. This virtual world has come a long wayfrom that time and has revolutionized our way of life. This relatively newmedium has introduced many new concepts and modes of communication. One of thesemodes is electronic mail. Before email people would wait for weeks to getreplies to their mail. Email made it possible for us to cross borders inseconds. This immediate exchange of communication has changed the way we operatein the working world. This has brought on larger margins in small industries buthas also consolidated the larger firms as well. This increase in competition canbe seen as a direct impact of online communication. Before the advent of email,communication was a luxury. International telecommunication was expensive and sosmaller businesses would not be able to handle their communication costs if theydidn't have major clients or deals which would balance out these costs. Emailhas created an even playing field in this area.
Email has now become even easier to access with the implementation of the 'push mail' service which is now being commercially sold by brands like Blackberry. This allows people to handle and access all their email on their handheld phone. Push mail allows people to synchronize and co ordinate their mail from different sites to one destination, in this case a mobile phone. Larger firms, now give their employees blackberry’s when they start working with them so that the pace of communication remains a constant and efficiency within the corporation is maintained. Thus, email becomes further simplified which is comparable to instant messaging or SMS.
The internet is basically a means of communicating with the masses easily. Products and ideas can be exchanged through this medium. Email is the language of this virtual market, or rather it was the first language for it. Instant messaging services like MSN messenger or Yahoo messenger are also a platform for online communication but a less formal one which took shape much later.
Email companies such as Hotmail and Yahoo, have become huge players in the economic market. They have millions of customers, and have expanded their businesses into different platforms such as instant messaging services and search engines. Google is another such example. They first started out as a search engine and when people were more aware of their presence online, they established Google mail.
Email has crossed boundaries in vertical communication as well. People at different levels of a corporate hierarchy can communicate freely with upper management through this medium easily. This was the case when letters were handwritten as well but email opened up this avenue to be accessible at much greater speed and a much larger scale.
However, email is a free service and available to all. It depends on which site you use. This competition gives rise to more space in your mailbox, and the option to send large files as attachments. If we were to analyze the trend, it can be seen that service provider we are using, for example, hotmail, is a form of marketing for these huge corporations. The more people that use their site, will access their webpage, and as a result of it they can hike up their prices for online advertisements. This just comes to show the importance of email in our lives. It is very rare to see free service providers fight for market share in a particular field. The magnitude of this form of communication is an example of its importance in our lives.