Web 2.0 in the News!

On the way home from Iowa I was listening to NPR, and imagine my surprise when I heard this story!

If you have a few extra minutes, it's interesting to listen to, but if you don't, I'll put it in a nutshell. Apparently Comcast was actually trying to block BitTorrent sharing and uploading with techniques they called "traffic-shaping." All of this info "hit the fan" last October, and this past week it was announced that Comcast and BitTorrent will be working together to ensure peer-to-peer file sharing activities can be conducted. The NPR story does a great job explaining some of the details in layman's terms for Luddites like myself.

Here's where things get really interesting, though. Not only was an arguably more "Web 1.0" company interfering with the success of a "Web 2.0" one, but it could also be argued that Web 2.0 is the reason this behavior has been corrected. According to Adam Theirer in an article I read, "The Internet community has the ability to closely monitor service providers and call them out when they make boneheaded moves. The power of collective pressure can keep providers in check." He and others think that it is this pressure that motivated Comcast to become a team player. The moral of the story? Don't mess with Web 2.0, or you may get more than you bargained for!