When I was searching for websites and blogs for the IDT assignment, I saw a term Web 2.0. What is Web 2.0? Isn’t there just one web that we are using – World Wide Web? No doubt, google is one of the best tools to get this figured out. According to wikipedia.com, Web 2.0 “refers to a perceived second generation of web-based communities and hosted services — such as social-networking sites, wikis and folksonomies — which aim to facilitate collaboration and sharing between users”. I am definitely surrounded by more new terms, so I just line these terms up and try to figure out one at a time.
Social network sounds familiar. I came across this website called classroom 2.0(http://classroom20.ning.com/), which is a social-networking site. It is a good website for the educators who want to share their ideas and questions in the field of technology in learning. The subscribers have the same interest and they respond to each other about ideas, suggestions, discoveries, experiments, etc. for one purpose – to improve learning and teaching using technologies.
Wikipedia gives the definition: “A social network is a social structure made of nodes (which are generally individuals or organizations) that are tied by one or more specific types of relations, such as values, visions, idea, financial exchange, friends, kinship, dislike, conflict, trade, web links, sexual relations, disease transmission (epidemiology), or airline routes.”
How is social networking doing? Is it popular nowadays? I read the study results from a company called comScore on social networking (http://www.comscore.com/press/release.asp?press=1555). It is a very intersting result, which shows the social networking is definitely “going global”. It has given a huge impact on lots of people’s lives. The study lists several major social networking sites and compare their development in the past year. MySpace is probably one of the hottest sites we hear often. According to comScore’s data, it has expanded by 72% during the past year. How about others (retrieved from site mentioned above): Facebook – 270%; Hi5 – 56%; Bebo – 172%; Tagged – 774%. Some of these are new, but they are growing at an amazing speed, even though MySpace has a big number for its unique visitors.
This is the trend. People all over the world are using Internet as a perfect tool to build this social network. With the help of a computer, they can exchange and share anything with the people who have the same interest. It has probably become lots of people’s habit to do a little bit social networking every day. As is mentioned in the study, these social networking sites have their own populations in specific regions, either in Europe, Asia or North America, etc. The tie between the site and the population is “cultural relevance.” However, it will be interesting to see if the cultural barrier will be crossed and people from all over the world will get closer (Ivins, 2007).
Social networking is the trend and you can feel the power around us.
