That entire model has changed in the last few years. The new concept, roughly known as Web 2.0 is user/reader centric. The largest websites are still corporate, but the content on these sites is no longer created or built by corporations or organizations. Rather, Web 2.0, is all about the user creating content and 'publishing' it to the world wide web.
What's this got to do with Santa Clarita?
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The idea of Web 2.0 is that it "lets people collaborate and share information online in a new way." The methods and means people use to collaborate online are as varied as the internet itself. So let's take a look at a few very popular "Web 2.0" applications and see how Santa Clarita fits in:
- Social Networking: Most parents have heard of MySpace.com. Love it or hate it, MySpace.com is the premeire social networking site on the world wide web. The site was only built in 2004 and today has over 100 million users. Rupert Murdoch at Fox bought the website for over $500 million in 2005. Literally thousands of Santa Clarita junior high, high school, and college students use MySpae.com daily to communicate with each other, post photos, write blogs, and meet in virtual communities. It's not just teens who have MySpace pages though. Increasingly, SCV companies, bands, churches, and other SCV organizatiosn are publishing content on MySpace. Just take a look at some of the MySpace groups with "Santa Clarita" in their title.
- Online Photography: Prior to "web 2.0" applications, sharing photos over the internet usually involved emailing them to friends and family. Putting photos online was often times a difficult proposition. Not anymore. The most popular online photo sharing site is Flickr.com. Periodically, I'll login to flickr and see what pictures SCV residents and visitors have posted on that site about Santa Clarita. Check it out. Some photos are posted by residents of the valley, others were taken in extreme situations (the 2003 fires for example). Yet others are from people passing through on their way to Los Angeles or points north. Some are more political. This woman, for instance, chronicles "Fortress America" and uses Santa Clarita as a prime example. She mocks master planned communities, subdivisions and suburbs in general. Yet others use Flickr just to post pictures of their family outings and friends.
- Video Sharing: Since 2005, YouTube has become one of the top 40 visited sites on the internet. Again, no content is created by YouTube, rather videos are uploaded by users. Santa Clarita has a presence on YouTube as well. Skateboarders post videos of "bombing the WalMart hill," SCV churches post videos of choirs singing, and yet other residents create video journals of popular SCV events, such as the 4th of July Fireworks setup atop the Valencia Town Center parking garage. One artistic YouTuber even created a spoof of Spielberg's 1971 hit "Dual" by filming in and around Santa Clarita. Google Video also has a few Santa Clarita videos.
- Collaborative Information: Web 2.0 applications aren't just for sharing media, however. Wikipedia, the free web based encyclopedia that anyone can edit, has become the gold standard for online encyclopedias. Though it hasn't been free of controversy, the website is still very useful. Santa Clarita has a page on the site, edited and updated through the years. The depth of the article on Santa Clarita is only limited by how much readers care to input.
- "Groups": There are literally hundreds of email lists hosted by the major internet providers. My favorite is Yahoo Groups. Several interesting groups of Santa Clarita residents exist on Yahoo.
While traditional media will always have a presence on the web and in the real world, it's interesting to see how the internet has created millions of publishers. Santa Clarita and Web 2.0