The milestone has been reached — today a billion humans across the face of the planet have access to the Internet. Carl Sagan himself couldn’t have said it any better.

Want some other numbers? Well, 77% of all the adults in the United States have access to the Internet.

There are, by some accounts, 50-million blogs.

Following a $30-billion holiday season, e-commerce is expected to top $200 billion this year.

In the earliest days of the Internet the promise of speed and power was quickly fulfilled. People could have unprecedented access to all kinds of information. So the data that was once only available to large corporations was now coming to small businesses and individuals. What a leveling of the playing field.

Then emerged e-mail and consumers jumped on this fast, low-cost method of personally communicating with another person.

Now, combine the information out there on the internet

became evident that that e-mail would give consumers a new ability to communicate quickly and clearly. Some companies brabbed onto the idea of creating a dialogue with their customers and created digital pipelines directly into customer and sales support units.