Social Media

Communication on the internet has become more interactive ever since the coming of Web 2.0. Web 2.0 is commonly associated with web applications that facilitate interactive information sharing, interoperability, user-centered design and collaboration on the World Wide Web. With Web 2.0, social media has also become more prevalent.

Social media describes the online technologies and practices that people use to share opinions, insights, experiences and perspective with each other. They are participatory online media where news, photos, videos and podcasts are made public via social media websites through submission. They are normally accompanied with a voting process to make media items become "popular". Some examples of social media includes social networking sites like Facebook, Friendster, MySpace, Youtube, and blogs such as blogger, livejournal, and tumblr, and websites such as Wikipedia, in which users upload and share information they have on the internet.

An example of a social media is this website.

(http://borntobeyourtaoeh.blogspot.com)

A blog is a website where entries are commonly displayed in reverse chronological order. Many blogs provide commentary or news on a particular subject; others function as more personal online diaries. For example, this blog is a website set up by a guy who calls himself the "Tao Eh", a guy who blogs about his daily life as a gangster.

His blog has text, links to other blogs, an image of himself, and even a tagboard for passers-by to leave their comments on, just like any other typical blog. The ability for readers to leave comments in such an interactive format is an important part of many blogs. Towards the end of the month, this guy decided to shut down his blog, and he asked for his readers to leave comments behind if they wanted to be credited as readers of his blog. His blog attracted 28600 views within a month, and many of them have left comments behind, thanking him for all the laughs he has given to them as a "Tao Eh". Many have even asked him to continue blogging. Whether that will happen or not remains to be seen. Others have flamed him for trying too hard to be a gangster.

Perhaps after Web 2.0, Web 3.0 will soon take over. Many has agreed that Web 3.0 is about the Semantic Web and personalisation of the internet; that is, getting the internet to understand the and satisfy the users' requests for web content. Some websites are already evolving in that direction, such as Yahoo! Music, which allows users to rate the type of music they like to listen to, and recommend music similar to the users' taste in music.