When I first moved into my current apartment, my roommates did not have cable television. They had a TV with a DVD player to watch movies and a Hulu account, but no one wanted to pay the extra cost each month to add cable. Eventually, I convinced them of the benefits of cable for things like watching a Law & Order SVU marathons on a rainy day and HGTV shows on Saturday mornings and they gave in.

Contrary to popular belief, the rise of Netflix and other online streaming sources has not led to the death of television. While there may be fewer people choosing to watch live TV or even purchasing cable packages, television is still alive and well. This is because the major networks have noticed this change and they have adapted.

One thing that is around now that wasn’t when I was a high school student is a DVR. Those who choose to have cable or watch TV now have the option to record their favorite show and watch it at another more convenient time. On Demand is another feature that has grown more and more popular as well. Companies have even built commercials into their On Demand show streaming so that they can still profit off you watching.

Another way that the major TV companies have gotten around the rise of online streaming is to provide content online as well. The day after the show airs, you can go online to the networks site, like abc.go.com or cbs.com and watch them right then and there. The networks offer the show for a certain amount of time, usually 4 weeks before taking them offline and they insert commercials into their online account so that they can still profit off its viewers.

Social media has also kept the major networks in line. They have created a mentality of “Watch or miss out.” Some commercials for new episode say things along the lines of “If you don’t watch it tonight, you will hear the spoilers tomorrow.” With today’s social media and instant notification society, that couldn’t be truer. If you miss the finale of your favorite show, you run the risk of seeing a spoiler on Twitter, Instagram or Facebook. Yahoo might even do a write up and put it on the front page of their site and the entire episode will be ruined for you. These networks have also created a “hive mentality” when it comes to shows and social media. They offer ways to engage with their fans through the use of hashtags throughout the show. Some of the actors even retweet or answer questions while the show is on air and if you don’t watch on time, you miss the chance to interact with your favorite celebrity about your favorite TV character. A great example of this is Shonda Rhimes and #TGIT (Thank God Its Thursday.) Thursday is the day that all of the Shondaland shows air so you can watch Grey’s Anatomy, Scandal, and How To Get Away With Murder back to back and interact with all of the cast and producers of the shows online using the hashtag.

While Netflix, Hulu and even YouTube+ are creating new and valuable content at more affordable prices than a cable subscription, people who use these sites also watch re-runs and old seasons of shows that once aired on major networks like NBC and FOX. They are adding something new to the market but they are not yet at the point of replacing it.

I have to admit when I first started this course, I had no idea what Twitch was and I was a little disappointed that I would have to spend an entire semester researching and doing work on the subject. However, I soon realized that Twitch was it’s own niche. Much like how I can watch hours of family vloggers and sermons on YouTube, there are many game obsessed people who can spend hours watching other people play on Twitch. To each their own! And with that, I set out with an open mind.

Monetization on YouTube has always been plain and simple. YouTubers make money through clicks, commercials, and sponsorships (affiliate links, brands, etc.) There are plenty of other ways that YouTubers with thousands and millions of views can make a living too, these include becoming represented by a management company or doing partnerships with larger well-known brands. Overall, you must put in a lot of work in order to have a successful channel to make a high level/quit-your-day-job type of income.

Things are a little bit different on Twitch. Yes, there are commercials and brand sponsorships, but users can make money through other means such as “sponsors” that pay $5 a month for faster content and song requests. This is something that I found to be so strange. As much as I love watching family vloggers and beauty tutorials on YouTube, I couldn’t commit to paying $5 per month consistently. In addition, some of the more popular Twitch users can make money through donations. Many channels have a link that leads to a Paypal or other account that will accept personal donations at any amount. The highest donation that I saw in my research was over $20,000! I am sure there are more donations of that size or even higher.

Overall, it’s important to remember that these YouTubers and gamers on Twitch are targeting a certain niche and there will be people willing to pay money to see their favorites succeed and create more content for them to consume.

In my personal opinion, it is definitely easier to make money off of YouTube and posting videos than it is through live streaming your game on Twitch . It is said that consistency is key to becoming successful at anything, especially when it comes to creating online content and building a large audience. In my opinion, it is much simpler to spend one day a week recording all of your YouTube content and scheduling them to go up throughout the week versus scheduling a few hours every day or every other day to play your game so that you can live stream it to your audience.

When I first heard that Amazon would be partnering with UMass to bring textbooks to campus, I was excited. I shop on Amazon for everything and as soon as the company launched Amazon Prime, I signed up because I wanted two day shipping all the time. I thought that this would be a match made in heaven, but as I’ve grown to know more of what happens on the other side, I’ve grown weary to think that this is a perfect partnership.

When Amazon at UMass was launched, there were a lot of promises made. Amazon promised UMass students speedy delivery times and affordable books. However when you look at the Amazon site, you are not able to purchase the cheapest option of the book you are looking for. Most of the time, the book available to Amazon prime delivery was a used version that cost almost as much as a brand new copy. As an English major who has to order several different textbooks for nearly all of my classes, this was disappointing to me. A book that I could’ve ordered used from another Amazon retailer for $3 is being offered to me for $25.

In terms of delivery times, Amazon offered students free 1 day and 2 day shipping. However they neglected to put the infrastructure in place to be able to handle so many deliveries. While the pick up location in the campus center was an added bonus, many students elected to have their books delivered to their dorms, which inundated the Residential Service Desks and the student employees with bags and bags of packages to handle and log in a timely manner. As a Customer Service Associate for the residential service desks, I can attest to the fact that each day during the add drop period we received close to 900 packages nearly every single day, three times more than what the desks normally handle.

Students are not the only one’s frustrated with the system. There have been professors who were told at the last minute that a book for their course is not available, forcing them to reconfigure their syllabus right at the start of the semester. Books that are marked available to students are actually not even shipped for weeks, leaving students behind and unable to complete course readings.

When Food For Thought bookstore closed on 2014, I was a little devastated. As a book lover, I much prefer to wander around a bookstore and find something that interests me than to just order something offline. Nothing beats the feeling of a book in your hand and to smell the pages as you cracked it open for the first time. This was an experience that ordering off of Amazon and Barnes and Nobles could never give me. However, I hate to admit, I never ordered my academic textbooks from Food for Thought. What I failed to realize at the time is how much the local bookstores depend on textbook sales.

Amazon has taken UMass by storm, but it seems to be at the expense of the students and of the local community. Students are not saving as much money as they thought they would. Local bookstores are closing and leaving the community without a choice of bookstore for residents. If Amazon wants to be successful, they should partner with the professors and the community to come up with something that works well for both. They should put the people they are working with ahead of the profit they are making in order to have a perfect partnership.