The present era is being called as the Information age, where we have tremendous amounts of information available as never before in the history of the mankind. This was possible with the Internet, where immense information is available in the form of billions of web-pages and can be accessed at any instance provided that you have tools to access it. The Information available online has changed living and working styles of the people to a big extent.
Impact on People
The availability of information online has facilitated people with the ease of accessing the required information and utilize it for efficient living. People use information available online in a variety of formats like video, audio, presentations, text and images for wide variety of purpose like Shopping, Education, Health, etc.
If they want to know more about any historical incident instead of going to library for earlier copies of newspapers, they can accesses any kind of details with a click. People can access global news on any topic from international journals without subscribing it and being shipped to their homes. Information available online helps people in making efficient purchase decisions. People have latest Information online about new products, price comparisons, product reviews, and fashion trends.
There are many websites that provide information on anything, right at the instance. Websites, like Encyclopedia Britannica, Google maps, which provide reliable information, are very popular. People use this information to solve their problems, to improve their knowledge, to elucidate their doubts, etc. more efficiently and effortlessly.
Impact on Businesses
For businesses it is a more helpful to have vast amount information backing their way of doing business. They can accesses information from various sources and perspectives, which helps in judging the market situations more accurately. Businesses could access information, which was not available about their competitors and their moves. With the evaluation of the information online they could know the pulse of the customer.
Information available online became an essential ingredient for businesses in making crucial and successful decisions like designing marketing campaigns, launching new products, etc. They can access latest information from reliable sources at an instance which helps them take quicker and viable decisions. Using information available online also helps businesses improve their bottom line as it costs far less than traditional forms of marketing research .
The easier access of valuable information helped to be aware of many social issues in the world like global warming, AIDS, terrorism, etc. The vast amount of information available online has helped people and businesses to come out of information deficiency and information time lag implying they are well informed about anything that leads to overall betterment of the society.