These sites attract millions of users and viewers or users and viewers and have become a source for the proliferation of popular culture.
There is also a view from scholars that the link between popular cultures and the Internet is synergistic. In other words, the increase in popular culture is a motivating force for the increase in Internet usage and at the same time the new online technologies that are being developed are providing the platform for increased popular culture activity. In a paper by Hakan Selg, entitled Popular Culture as a Driver of Internet Use, the author stresses how developments in popular culture have become associated with increases in Internet usage. (Selg)
There is little doubt that the future of popular culture is intimately tied to and dependent on the developments of the Internet and related technologies, such as mobile communication. There are however many who are pessimistic about the future of popular culture in the digital age. Some are wary of the development on the Web and fear that the uniqueness of forms of popular culture are already being manipulated and absorbed by large business and corporations. For example, theorists like Adorno "...arrive only at dismal conclusions about cooptation and reabsorption." (Hoover, and Stokes 21) What is certain is that the future shape and form of popular culture will be influenced by the Internet and the various new modes of communication and interaction that are bound to emerge.
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According to ComScore"... 50 million U.S. Internet users visited blogs in the first quarter of 2005, up from about 34 million a year earlier.... (http://www.internettrends.org/aug-2005-internet-trends-archives/0077-08-25-2005-internet-trends.html)
