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Category Internet

What is an Internet meme?

The term ‘meme’ was coined by Richard Dawkins in his 1976 book The Selfish Gene. It describes an idea that spreads among people via the Internet. It could be a word, symbol, image, video, story – anything that becomes an instant cultural phenomenon.

A meme (rhymes with ‘team’) can be sent through email, social networks, blogs, instant messages, etc. and can spread across the globe rapidly within days. Hence, memes are a popular tool for viral marketing to create awareness about a new product among the masses.

An Internet meme may remain the same or it may evolve as it spreads. Users my tweak or it may evolve as it copying. For example, after the South Korean rapper Psy’s ‘Gangnam Style’ video vent viral on YouTube, memes were created showing various personalities in the horse-dance pose – one showed an animated Batman hopping a la ‘Gotham Style!’

Memes are popular among teenagers for their humour quotient or shock value.

 

Picture Credit : Google

What are the interesting facts about the internet?

Are they the same?

Although the world wide web and the internet are used alternatively, the two are not the same. Internet is a network of networks that links computers together. The world wide web on the other hand is a collection of lined pages that are accessed using the Internet and a web browser.

WWW for free

The World Wide Web was made available to the public for free in 1993. Initially, it was meant only for physicists at the European organisation for nuclear research (CERN) to share data.

Biggest medium of communication

The WWW is the fastest growing communication medium of all time. Imagine, it took a WWW only four years to reach 50 million people. In contrast, it took the radio 38 years and television 13 years to reach the same number.

The Apple connection

Did you know that the entire world wide web stored on a NeXT computer when it was created? NeXT was the company started by Steve Jobs after he was ousted from Apple Inc.

What’s in a name?

Before the name World Wide Web was finalised, there were other options such as Mine of Information, Information Mine, and Mesh. These names don’t sound cooler than the World Wide Web, do they?

 

Picture Credit : Google