Web 2.0 Stuff

In Feb. 2004, a Harvard student launched a social networking site to help students get to know each other. Within 2 weeks half the student body signed up. Within 4 months the network expaned to include 30 colleges. After 6 months, Friendster offered to purchase the company for $10 million. The offer was turned down. In Sept. 2006, the site was opened up to anyone with an email account. That same year Yahoo! offered 1$ billion to acquire the social network and Mark Zuckerberg, the founder, turned it down!

The company is Facebook. Their growth is unbelievable. In 2007, over 1 million users signed up every week! They averaged over 40 billion page views a month! The average Facebook user spends 19 minutes using Facebook. They are the 6th most trafficked site in the U.S.

Last year in October, Microsoft invested $240 million into Facebook. You know what Microsoft got with that investment 1.6% of the company--only 1.6%. That means that $240 million had a valuation of $15 billion making Facebook the 5th most valuable Internet company (http://www.crunchbase.com/company/facebook).

These social networking sites are fascinating. They are part of the emerging Web 2.0. These sites that provide social networking, blogs, wikis, etc. Examples of these are MySpace, YouTube, Blogspot, and others. In fact, in 2006, YouTube serves 100 million videos daily, with 60,000 videos uploaded monthly.

Something drives people to these sites. How do we create that in education? How can we get learners to be just as motivate in their own learning?

Learning 2.0 capitalizes on these Web 2.0 technologies. I am trying to find more on Learning 2.0, but there isn't a lot out there. The personal learning environment seems to be relate to Learning 2.0.

Let me know if you know of any resources on Learning 2.0 so I can do some more research on it.