Web 2.0 (the rebirth of the Interenet) and why it is good to be CS major

The internet is making a comeback. If you have not heard, Google has acquired YouTube this past week for about 1.65 Billion dollars. Billion people, Billion. Last Fall eBay bought Skype for 2.65 Billion dollars.

I was reading an article in the San Francisco Chronicle about the difference and similarities of the 2000 Internet bubble and Web 2.0. The thing why the first Internet bubble didn't work is because they were just too early and not many people were on the internet at the time. Now according to the article, 42% of people in the US have high-speed internet and 75% of all US are regular interent users.

If you notice, MySpace was the first social network to really blow up, but it was not the first one to come up with this idea. One of the bigger sites before myspace was friendster, but it didn't become big. Why not? i think it was too realy for its time. People didn't realize the internet as a means of social networking. How did MySpace become soo big? That i feel is pure luck.

But the sensation of MySpace really made current generation avid internet users, one aspect that was needed in the internet. Next up is the interactivity of the interent. Here along comes AJAX and flash.

Ajax, is a web language which allows users to have more interactive websites, like for example when you click something like "show cart items" instead of opening a new page, a small box pops up on the same page.

One of the best examples of Ajax, and the first to make Ajax popular is Google Maps. Before in Mapquest, in order to see what is east of some map, it would have to reload the page. But with google maps, it just moves to that side, smoothly.

Flash has become bigger than ever, especially with the ability to stream music and video with better quality. This has made the internet exponentially better and has made sites like MySpace and YouTube major success stories.

The internet has become better and in the end everyone wins, website companies have more revenue and internet users have better websites to use. So why is it good to be a CS major?
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When i started my college last year, the internet was not like this, things were barely starting to roll, but in terms of being a CS major, it wasn't that good, the Internet bubble was popped 4 years ago and many felt the internet wasn't really going anywhere.

Now with this new revenue, it will cause for more job openings. This year i went to a couple of career fairs and if you were dressed up, people would jump on you. Many people will argue that this has always been the case for any engineers, but i felt that now, there is a lot more.

The beauty about this is that you don't have to be a CS major to enjoy these things. Just a love to learn programming. Me and a friend of mine (Niels) talk about this stuff all the time. If any of you guys have ideas of a website, you should seriously look into it, and if so, you should learn web programming languages like PHP, AJAX, Ruby on Rails, Perl, Python....and any others. It is great to have a sense of job security. Web 2.0 train is starting to turn its wheels, and i plan to get a good seat on that train.