The Language of the Internet

Each discipline has its own language. The law has a rich history of words that lawyers like to use and few outside the law understand. The Internet, too, has special words, many borrowed from other fields or invented by the users in the heat of creation. Understanding that language will help you communicate with those raised with electronic devices and your marketing director.

When you start your day, you boot up your computer. The term is a shortening of the word bootstrapping, which was the name adopted by the early computer scientists in the 1950’s to refer to the start-up process of the computer. They thought of it as the computer pulling itself up by the bootstraps.

To access the Internet, you use an Internet Service Provider, which can be wireless (Wi-Fi) and is provided by a company or organization. Once there, you use a web browser, a free software program included on computers and mobile devices at time of purchase. The browsers (Chrome, Firefox, Safari, etc.) let you view online content.

Some basic terms:

•       Internet Protocol (IP) Address A set of unique numbers that identifies every computer and device that connects to the Internet.
•        E-mail Mail that's electronically transmitted by your computer.
•        Homepage The first page that is viewed when the browser starts.
•        Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure (HTTPS) It is the set of rules by which Web pages are transferred across the Internet.
•        Link or Hypertext Link An underlined word(s), phrase(s), or graphics on a Web page that transports the reader to additional or related information on the Internet.
•        Uniform Resource Locator (URL) An addressing scheme used to locate you and other resources on the World Wide Web.
•       File Transfer Protocol (FTP) The standard method for downloading and uploading files over the Internet.
•       Web Page A single hypertext file or a page that is part of a Website.
•       Website A collection of Internet pages or files.

When Sally Consumer searches the Internet and lands on your webpage, she can get there in two ways—organically or directly. Organic Traffic is not traffic unfertilized with chemicals but unpaid traffic from search engines, social media sites such as LinkedIn, Facebook or Twitter, referrals from other sites which happens when Sally clicks on a link on another website such as your SBM profile. Organic traffic is what you want to attract using keywords in your content such as Traverse City Family Law Attorney so when Sally types those words in a query your site appears.

Direct Traffic—Sally types your URL into a browser, immediately connecting with you.

Lately, we’ve heard the word “Troll.” While in folklore a troll was a mythical giant or dwarf that caused harm such as the trolls that took over the public bridge in “The Three Billy Goats Gruff,” 

Wikipedia defines the Internet Troll as: "Someone who posts inflammatory, extraneous, or off-topic messages in an online community, such as a forum, chat room, or blog, with the primary intent of provoking readers into an emotional response or of otherwise disrupting normal on-topic discussion.” Be wary of the trolls under the bridge or on the Internet.