The Expanding Network of the Web
The growth of the web has been dramatic over the past five years. Not only has the number of web pages expanded exponentially, but the amount of people connected and who have access to the web has grown dramatically too. The growth of the internet has had a huge effect on society, added an ever interconnected and data-rich network via the web.
One of the most fascinating parts of the ever-growing internet and social media is the astounding amount of web pages being constantly added. As of 2017, there are 1.5 million social media users every day. A total of nearly 3 billion social media users are active, each with their own web page. In past times, the global network of people and information has been very sporadic and not complete. What this information tells is that there is an increasingly large percentage of people being guaranteed into the global friendship network, as well as an increasingly large connectivity of data as well. With each unique person joining social media, they do things such as share articles and links while creating “friendships.” Their activity of sharing is increasing the amount of hyperlinks and directed networks at an immeasurable rate, while their growing network of friends is now being exposed to this information.
This relates to the course material in regards to the web being an enormous network of information and friendship. Social media, with its billions of users, has created its own global friendship network because of its ability to connect even the most distant people through some path of online friendships. The increasing number of internet users, which grew by 354 million people just last year, will create their own websites and webpages that further increase the incredible network that the internet has to offer. Lastly, this growing internet usage and exposure is likely increasing the vast amount of strongly connected components and bow tie structures within these web networks. The strongly connected components are created by these smaller groups of interconnected websites, and likely occur in smaller niche groups on the internet that will increase in numbers with increased usage. The bowtie structure occurs from information entering and leaving the SCC, which will become increasingly huge as the growing number of webpages and links increase. Overall, the expansion of internet usage will create a larger network with regards to the web, and many applicable theories from the syllabus can be seen with this growing network.