Once upon a time, the internet was quite open and reachable. You could wander about seldom coming across a blocked URL or password limited forum. In fact I can still remember being asked for an username and password the very first time when I attempted to telnet onto the University of Wales library system. Of course things change and one thing that's very evident using the development of the internet is an increasing commercialism. Wherever you turn you're tracked and monitored, adverts are particularly annoying inhabitting side bars with merchandises that you have previously looked at. I am now being followed every where online by adverts for leather jackets after foolishly clicking on one that appeared great. After all most people spend an awful lot of time online, itisn't really astonishing. We pay our bills, organise our affairs, go shopping and even view TV and movies too. This obviously means that there's a great deal of money to be made and most big businesses now have wide-ranging web sites which generate an awful lot of earnings. Just like in the real world, gradually we have seen profit maximising disperse across the digital world also. You'll see it everywhere, for instance when high street shops will bill more in certain towns and cities depending on typical income. A Big Mac in London will normally be more pricey than one in Liverpool for example. You might think this is tough to do in an electronic world, after all are not we all equal? The truth is that in some ways it is actually even easier to split up marketplaces online than it's in the physical world. All that's necessary to do is some factor to differentiate each customer and a method to relay them based on that information. What's generally done is to target products and services based on the location of the client. This is quite easy to do by looking up the visitors IP address and recording. By using this advice you can offer distinct products, or different prices depending on their location. Businesses normally will split up based on the country of origin at the very least but many go even farther and will offer different prices on special locations. The world of online entertainment is even more prohibitive, well at least if you use the official sites. Most put a restriction on obtaining their content from outside their home country. So for example you can't access the BBC or ITV from outside the United Kingdom, or view anything from Hulu unless you're in the USA. This practice is growing extremely rapidly, you'll see tons of messages about - this video is not accessible in your country on all the most popular worldwide sites.
Related Articles -
television, British TV, Internet, Entertainment, BBC iPlayer, UK TV, ITV Player,
|