Been Thinking About: The Bombardment of Social Networks
for the contestant, who only had three avenues of help, or lifelines, to survive to the next round. If the user answered a question wrong, they lost the game. Luckily, various spots on the ladder were insurances to ensure the user got at least that amount of money.
I don't remember if this was one of the first, but in the US, this show was on the cutting edge of the game/reality show boom that happened in the television industry. ABC tried to cash in by airing the show 2 to 3 times a week to keep the viewers hooked. Unfortunately, this was a double-edged sword as viewers got tired of the same format night after night, and the show finally ended (at least the version with Regis Philbin).
One of the other popular television shows that survived is the show "Survivor" (ironically enough). This show pits contestants against each other to see who can survive fatigue, hunger, and the various challenges that each contestant had to participate in. The very first show featured Richard, a very conieving and sly contestant that most of the other contestants hated, but whom was capable enough to win the contest and be labeled the very first "survivor." Since then, the show has done really well over the years.
Reality TV created a boom across the industry: Real World, Big Brother, Amazing Race, the Apprentice, the Ultimate Fighter, and many more shows have exploded onto the market big time. Game shows, both new and remakes have had the same success: deal or no deal, name that tune, are you smarter than a 5th grader, and more have had some success too.
I don't know if the rate or incline has been the same, but the rate of new reality TV shows inclined in the early 2000's. It inclined to the point that people felt they were being bombarded by reality and/or game shows. This feeling didn't prevent people from watching, as reality shows maintained an high viewership over the years and spawned off all kind of interesting in show variety.
I feel that another market, one not within the television industry but in the IT industry, also has bombarded onto the scene: social networks. It seems like every major application has a social network. Google, Yahoo, Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, FriendFeed, and many more sites have their own social networks where you can follow and interact with your friends. Social Networks have taken a different turn though, as they seem to have more slowly come onto the market. For instance, people are slowly coming onto Facebook; I personally didn't even know facebook existed until 2008, which it's been in existence for 1990's.
So it seems like to the average joe, the person who isn't technology heavy, is just coming into some of these social network scenes. And these industries are big money makers, which is part of what causes this explosion. Look at how personalized Facebook provides advertising for; it reads the preferences and groups that you belong to, and serves up personal ads based upon this information. And lot of existing sites that are commerce-driven sites are including social networking features (or at least similar features) to feed into this frenzy of the social networking kick that the world seems to be on.
It makes sense; if people like it, replicate it. The average person probably has more than one social networking site that they belong to. But at some point, it's got to stop right? The next big thing will be around the corner and that will be the next great thing that the world will take advantage of.