What is New Media?

I think new media are the enhancements and/or the evolution of the old media in ways that enhance efficiency and facilitate the users by the help of popularity use of computer and internet. Average people can easily access to almost all types of information online. And share theirs as well. It can be says that internet is the foundation of the new media. Nowadays, the mainstream new media are the web based social media e.g. blogs, wiki, face book, YouTube…etc. With blog, everyone can write down their stories and publish them to the public for free. Then, readers can comment on the writings. And then, writers comment back to the reader, back and forth. That had already built up many solid friendships on the virtual world. Perhaps, later turn into real world friendship. Many companies also use blogs as a tool for promotion which, for sure, have saved them a big amount on advertisement. Take YouTube as another example, the free or low cost tools for shooting and editing make it possible for everyone to become a video producer. Most videos we see on YouTube are produced and published by average people like you and me. (Clive Thompson on How YouTube Changes the Way We Think) I also think that new media are greener than the old media. We can now be able to access to our materials with just an internet accessible device. Many publishers are now publishing in both physical and web versions. Even, this class is web based. No more carrying heavy textbook around!