SOCIAL NETWORKING is the general term used to describe many web sites that allow interaction online. Some of this is synchronous (as in chat, instant messaging etc.), but much of it is asynchronous (blogs, sharing photos, videos, favorite web sites etc.). Another common feature is registering for accounts, creating an "identity" and creating a network of "friends" in this online community.

PHOTO & VIDEO SHARING - is a great services if only because it allows you to have your media hosted and served from someone else's servers and using someone else's bandwidth. To do that on your own can be very complicated and costly.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/ronk/  Flickr is getting the most buzz these days, but actually

http://photobucket.com/  and Yahoo! Photos are currently at the top of the photo sharing list.  An older site, http://webshots.com was first known as a place to download desktop photos and screen savers, but it has evolved and it is now #3 in photo sites.

SOCIAL RELATIONSHIPS

Students shouldn't be in sites like http://www.linkedin.com (for professionals) or http://www.match.com (for dating) but many of them are using sites like

http://www.facebook.com/  which began as a site for college students, was expanded to include high schools and is now open to anyone.

MySpace gets a lot of attention from students and a lot of negative press from adults and the media. I created an account in order to see what all the fuss was about http://www.myspace.com/paradelle  As with, Facebook and others, if you  have an account, you can request to be my friend. MySpace also had a blog feature, photo & video sharing, and music - so it offers quite a bit to users. It actually began as a space for indie and amateur bands to post their music to get a wider audience and there is still quite a bit of music and band space. It also (because of its poor customizing features) has some of the ugliest web designs on the Internet!

A competitor started by some local NJ kids is the site http://www.myyearbook.com/   - read more about it

A lot of this started with a site called http://www.friendster.com/ which has gotten a bit old and stale with kids now (yes, they are Internet-fickled too)

SOCIAL BOOKMARKING The idea is that you find good sites and you post your bookmarks for others to share. It's what I'm doing on this page, but really it's using a service to do it and let others easily find them. (This page isn't hidden and a search might turn it up, but it's not social bookmarking.) 

I have used these services - here's a page of bookmarks that I have on http://del.icio.us.  You'll see that others have tagged some of my bookmarks and in that way you can see what is popular with others. (Voting with your bookmarks)  Some sites create what is called a tag cloud which is a visual representation of the most popular "metatags" attached to photos, blog postings or bookmarks.

BLOGGING

A blog (or weblog) is a website in which items are posted on a regular basis and displayed with the newest at the top. Like other media, blogs often focus on a particular subject, such as food, politics, or local news. Some blogs function as online diaries. A typical blog combines text, images, and links to other blogs, web pages, and other media related to its topic. Since its appearance in 1995, blogging has emerged as a popular means of communication, affecting public opinion and mass media around the world. Blogs are sometimes referred to as personal journalism.

Search for information in the (currently 36 million) blogs using Technorati.com or blogsearch.google.com

Blogs can be hosted by (free) dedicated blog hosting services like http://www.blogger.com or http://www.xanga.com or they can be done using blog software that has been installed on regular web hosting services (including school web servers). If you want a safe and appropriate environment for your education-related blog, try http://edublogs.org which offers teachers free blog space.

One of my blogs (on educational technology) is done using open source software http://devel2.njit.edu/serendipity and is hosted on NJIT's servers. Here's a blatant piece of self-promotion - that blog was recently named "the best blog on higher ed technology" in a recent ranking of the Top 10 Web 2.0 College Campuses (NJIT was #6).

Here's an a blog entry I did on the topic of Academic Blogging. For students in professional programs, management, and writing programs, it would also be useful to examine the corporate blogging being done today.

I blog using free commercial services too. Using Blogger (which is now owned by Google), I write a blog on poetry at http://poetsonline.blogspot.com/

If you begin reading blogs (and you should!), you'll soon find that you don't want to (or remember to) keep checking them for updates. Then it's time to use something like http://www.bloglines.com, an aggregator that checks automatically all your blog subscriptions (that's done using RSS  "feeds") into one web page for you. It's an amazingly simple and powerful Web 2.0 tool.

There are many blogs I could recommend to you like http://paulhami.edublogs.org/  which has special education free resources - but it's easier to just share with you my own Bloglines account. You can take a look at my Bloglines account (the portion I have made "public" - there are others I have marked "private") and you can see and read my current blog subscriptions.

WIKIS

http://devel2.njit.edu/mediawiki/  This is a wiki I helped create for the sole purpose of teaching about wikis. There's lots of information and links there about what wikis area and how they can be used in education and other ways - and like any good wiki, you can add your own content  to it.

http://wiki.njit.edu This NJIT wiki is part of the SmartCampus Initiative and allows the NJIT community to share information and even keep track of who is online and where they are on campus.

ONLINE VIDEO

Students are now watching more video content asynchronously online and on DVDs than they are watching traditional television - and the networks are finally realizing that and repurposing their content. The most popular services at this moment are http://www.youtube.com and http://video.google.com/  which began as places to put your homemade video, but are now being used by major networks and film distributors too.

Want to sample some of this (mostly user-generated) video online? Here are some varied samples:

1. A Message from founders Chad and Steve about YouTube being bought by Google
2. Coke Commercial - a commercial production in an anti-Grand Theft Auto video game style
3. Girl Giant Doll
4. World of Warcraft/Word Up a mash up of footage captured from the video game World of Warcraft set to the song "Word UP" by Korn. A perfect example of the cut/copy/paste/rip/remix culture that is emerging.
5. Bush Sings "Sunday Bloody Sunday" - a fascinating edit of his speeches to match the U2 song - funny and also a political statement
6. Jedi Breakfast - a Star Wars spoof
7. YouTubers - collected bits from videos posted to the service - it seems ultimately rather sad to me
8. Organic Rebellion - a fan film Star Wars IV parody using a supermarket to promote using organic produce
9. Ben Takes a Photo of Himself Every Day - A take-off on the recent "____ takes a picture of ___self for __years" video fad
10. OK GO's "Here It Goes Again" - a commercial music video made on the cheap by the band OK GO that went wildly popular online - what is known as "viral video"
11. Where the Hell is Matt? - I'd say that Matt is traveling a lot!

FURTHER READING

Want to know more about what all this Web 2.0 buzz is about?  You can read the original information posted by Tim O'Reilly at http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/a/oreilly/tim/news/2005/09/30/what-is-web-20.html

Some of the best and most readable surveys and reports come from the Pew Internet & American Life Project.

Educause has some very good resources on these topics, such as "7 Things You Should Know About Facebook"

EXPLORE

http://bookcrossing.com/mybookshelf - This would make a great class project..

Miniature Earth - an excellent example of using a slide presentation - can be viewed online or for downloading a copy to your hard drive requires a contribution of $5 to Sustainability Institute (also available in Spanish & Portuguese)
Also take a look at http://slideshare.net and my samples at http://slideshare.net/ronko4/

http://www.protopage.com/ronkowitz and http://www.protopage.com/teachnology

You'll need a free account to explore http://secondlife.com/ which can be quite addictive (and can cost you money if you want to but property & things while you are there).

If you haven't gone exploring with Google Earth yet, you should download the free version. http://earth.google.com/ Besides the learning applications it has, it's just a lot of fun to play with - fly over your school or home via their satellite maps.

If you want to have a website (personal, small business, professional), a new, free, easy way to start is with Microsoft's Office Live http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/officelive/