Tuesday, May 19, 2009

Vanishing Things

Have you noticed how so many things are vanishing in front of our eyes? Those things we once thought of as absolutes are now on the verge of extinction. Products and services we came to depend on are going the way of the dinosaur.

Yellow Page ads are one of those. Although they will probably continue to be somewhat needed for certain services, the days of looking first in the phone book for most needs has become obsolete. Companies are spending much less of their advertising dollar on the yellow page. The newspaper is another service that is finding it difficult to exist. With instant news and information on the internet, the paper is dated by the time it reaches the stands or the home. Major chains of newspapers have folded, and the local papers have also.

Another thing that is on the downhill slide is email. Use of email addresses is decreasing. The causes can be attributed to several factors. One being the continuing annoyance of spam and unwanted emails. Another factor is the use of texting in cell phones. And yet another is with the merging trend of social networking on sites such as twitter and facebook.

For years we have used the yellow pages as a source of advertising for our church. However, we discontinued the service this year. The high cost of advertising versus the low return it brought us made us decide it was not a viable service in this budget conscious day.

What are some other things you see vanishing in this hour? Give me some feedback.

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