From Stonehenge to Edinburgh Castle and Buckingham Palace

The concern is neither cosmetic nor ideological and is rooted in the fears publishers have in their inability to generate advertising dollars and revenues when social media is able to upstage and re-distribute breaking news just as well if not with greater efficiency than the originators.

Additional issues pertain to the publisher's inability to track or measure their exact audience share due to social media dilution and thus is unable to favorably compete for investment dollars or raise capital as could be expected without the "fudge" factor in play.

The Economist Group piece suggests that if the trend continues there may be consequences "If the trend towards off-site consumption does take hold then it may be impossible to ignore". Those aren't exactly predictions of an industry that will hand over the keys and close its doors. The reality is that should this trend continue the presumed "Free Internet" will no longer be as "Free" as twenty years of growth, and setbacks, has given us - and the consumer - the latitude to believe.

We are probably pausing in bewilderment. Since when was there a free product or service? There are discounts and promos, price breaks to boost a product launch and other tools of the trade, but a free internet was never the goal.

Today's internet cost structure is shared by government agencies worldwide, private sector tele- communications and web-based business groups and the consumer/ public that has spent personal dollars and time in acquiring the gadgets and systems that are part of the content delivery and distribution systems. This industry is a three part investment, one thirds of which is from the consumer's dollars - in theory at least.

Perhaps the public's ability to make or break this new frontier for investor dollars and new technological products (as well as the newest giga employer and diplomat without frontiers) can be gauged in recent

trends in which the European consumer has shrugged off an extremely popular and once skyrocketing model of digital social media, Facebook.

Will the social media bubble burst? Is Europe starting the process of dismantling the American internet?

In recent months European consumption of Facebook has fallen dramatically, cutting advertising revenues and demonstrating how industry giants take massive hits.

The official news reason for this change in consumer behaviour? European teens are abandoning Facebook because their parents are starting to use the venue while European teens do not want to be unknowingly sharing their romantic or sexual escapades with a friend that turns out to be none other than one of their parents or a neighbor in their community. Worse they do not want to online sex date with someone older, from their parents' generation - Facebook's (almost all social media) avatars/channels can mask the true identity or age of its owner.

In addition to Facebook several other social media sites are purportedly experiencing a decline with the teen demographic most notably Twitter and YouTube.

Other roadblocks social media giants are coming up against are consumer irritation from internet spying and data collection. Europeans are seemingly a tad more prickly on matters of privacy. The 2011 article on the Blackberry Riots continues with Ross Anderson from Cambridge University "They wont be able to cope (with terrorism and bank fraud) If you want the surveillance society to become a reality, you're going to have to increase budgets by an order of magnitude".

In early 2013, Salon Magazine and the New York Times may have inadvertently scared off some portions of the public by running its story on the drama Netflix series, House of Cards, titled "Turning Viewers into Puppets" thanks to big