Week 3: Web 2.0 and Podcasting - where is this heading?

Web 2.0 enables web users to become part of the "Web", that is, it enables everyone to contribute, publish, create, and manage the global area of the Web. Web users can interact with each other, share and build the Web together. For instance, Web forum is a user-oriented web space that users are responsible for the contribution of the contents and forum owners only responsible for the technical backend coding part as well as to maintain the contents flow. The topics of Web forum are vary, from sports, entertainment news, household issues, gardening to any topics that you can think of and of interest to discuss with others.

RealGM.com is one of the popular sport forums on the Web, it provides NBA news, scores, polls to users, as well as a discussion board for users to share their opinions on NBA. It not only provides a social place for NBA lovers to talk with each other virtually on the Web, but also provides opportunities for these Web users to unite as a group to watch real time NBA games together.

As Web 2.0 becoming the trend, users start to concern about the security and privacy problems since Web contents are generated among Web users, the credibility of the contents itself become a question and everyone can say anything, can edit other’s says on the Web, and it is becoming harder to define whether certain contents can or cannot be trusted. For instance, Youtube, the most popular Podcasting website on the Web are facing a problem of verifying the credibility of the contents on the site. There were users Podcasting something like personal video diary on Youtube, and the series of video generate a large number of viewers, but at the end, the video provider reveals the truth that the contents of the videos are fake, she is an actor and trying to act out someone’s life on the Podcast, and the act disappointed thousands of her loyal viewers.

We should pay attention when watching podcast videos or interacting with strangers on the Internet, and should learn how to analyze what we see and to determine if it is trustworthy. Also,we should beware of what we say and not giving important information to anyone who we do not know on the Internet.