The Internet is becoming a refuge for cash strapped and jobless Americans who are finding themselves with more time than money.
If we had a surplus of intellectual capital before, it’s a firesale now!
This sudden glut of leisure time is translating into increased traffic for social networking, multimedia, game and of course job sites.
“For the last four months of 2008, LinkedIn, which has 1.4 million members in New York state, reported an 11% increase in the number of connections made between users, a 10% boost in invites sent among members and a 9% uptick in page views. Facebook reached a milestone of over 150 million active users earlier this month.”
-Crain’s New York Business.
Inna Shaulskaya lost her job at a jewelry wholesaler in November… Though she had joined a professional social network a few years earlier, she rarely checked in.
“I had a job; I didn’t have time or interest in using it,” she says.
An article in the International Herald Tribune notes the game industries hopes to capitalize on this newfound free time…
“During economic downturns, people will look for the highest return on their entertainment dollar,” said Lan Hoang, chief executive of Aeria Games & Entertainment,
“Online games provide an immersive virtual world for people to escape the daily struggles.”
The long term implications of this could be huge, web content has never been seen as desirable as other forms of media. This is particularly true of multimedia such as movies and television programs. This was mainly a question of viewing format, but with the new economic realities consumers face, watching your favorite show on a smaller screen seems like a much better option than giving it up all together.
This economy may provide the push the public requires to accept the Internet as their one home for information, entertainment and communication. Putting television in the same kind of trouble that newspapers and the recording industry are in now.
