I found this article online today while browsing on Reddit. Speaking of Reddit, Brian (CEO of Kiip) said that he worked for Digg, which “imploded on itself”. Digg was pretty much killed by Reddit. Anyway, back on track. This article talks about how the presence of internet is negatively influencing Wal-Mart and surprisingly, Amazon, which is an internet based company. The article talks about how the internet has connected so many people around the world that things that people want to buy things with “meaning” more than just regular products. An example noted in the article would be if you wanted to buy a tea-cozy. Instead of just buying one from eBay or Amazon, a lot of people would rather buy (and there is a whole company based on this) a hand-knitted tea-cozy from an elderly lady in Britain, knitted with her family’s historic knitting pattern and such. The internet allows for things like this to happen and allows for more personal interactions and items to be traded. It also talks about how there is a rising demand for “trades”, which is interesting meaning that humans are slightly going back to the barter system. All this is fairly surprising because it means that what is rising in demand is going against things that are primarily more “efficient” and “cost-effective” which is what businesses usually try to strive for.