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Net Gains (Sep 25, 98) |
Earlier this month, a Swissair flight was lost in the Atlantic, and while most people heard about it from satellite television and from the press, there were a sizeable number who learnt about it online. From the Internet.
While the print media has a deadline for printing beyond which news has to wait for another day to break out in the press, television networks are relatively quicker. They can easily cut into their programming with newsflashes, and updates as the story develops. But the Internet, specially the World Wide Web is a totally different medium. The Swissair disaster is a case in point.
While the Swissair jet plunged into the Atlantic on Wednesday night, it wasn't until Friday morning that it made headlines here and we got to read about it in the press. Satellite television did cover it relatively sooner in their news broadcasts, but here too, the coverage was to the extent they saw fit, and we could get news only during their news slots.
Websites on the Internet are different in that news can be put up as and when it happens. Not only that, the news reaches the surfer directly, without any intermediaries deciding what to air / print, and in what depth to do so. Surfers can get as little or as much details as they are interested in - that's the beauty of the World Wide Web.
Directories like Yahoo! (www.yahoo.com) and search engines like Excite (www.excite.com), went one step ahead. Knowing that people would use their sites to search for information on the Net about the tragedy, they put links to more detailed information up front to cut short the search.
And since people would want to get information straight from the
horse's mouth, people logged onto the Swissair website. The homepage
of the Swissair website (www.swissair.com) was changed within
hours of the crash to provide official information and phone numbers
in English, German, and French. The site also provided a contact
form for passengers' friends and relatives to fill out and fax.
The Swissair catastrophe showcased clearly how the Internet is
a resource that can be used to instantly disseminate information,
enable people to share news with one another, and interact with
the right people.
A more recent example is the much hyped and much talked about
Starr Report (containing 11 possible grounds for impeaching US
President Bill Clinton). Before it was made available on the Internet,
thousands of people were clicking away furiously at official and
news websites to be able to get hold of the report.
Without the Internet, the report would reach the hands of a few
news agencies and media houses, besides the officials concerned.
What the public would see would at the maximum be a few pages
from the 445 - page report. That too what the media saw fit, because
of space constraints and the graphic description of the entire
affair.
But since it was released on the Internet, millions of people around the world got their hands on the report within minutes of it being posted there, and could read the entire report with all its gory details. According to CNN, the millions who accessed the Starr Report is the single highest number to have ever used the computer to access a single document. In addition, NetRatings reported that those accessing the report itself were spending an average of 30 minutes viewing it, about 30 times the normal one minute that the average user spends looking at the average web page.
Those interested can download the report (in about 10 minutes)
from the following official sites:
http://thomas.loc.gov/icreport/
http://www.house.gov/icreport/
http://www.access.gpo.gov/congress/icreport/
Be warned however that the report contains graphic details that
are not suitable for everyone and may be objectionable for some
people. In plain English: for adults only. For those who intend
downloading the report to read the sleazy parts, some advice,
don't waste your online time.