The Power of Social Network

In the last century, we could never imagine a day when everyone can be both a role of an information receiver and a deliver at the same time.  And then came the generation of Web 2.0. More and more people become active participators in the construction of network information. It's quite ordinary for us to find what we want to know at any time and any place where it can be connected to the internet, not restricted to the books or meeting with someone to get advice. For instance, if I want to know a product whether it is ' worth buying, my way is to search key words to find comments of the product on Sina Weibo. Soon I can find the price, quality or drawbacks of the product in real time, getting rid of the advertisement from salers or other distracting information. 

Just a few days ago,my friend highly recommended me a bilingual class called Bilingual News on Podcast on iPhone. The content is about contemporary news spoken in terms of Japanese and English. She says she is addicted to the deep gentle voice of the speaker. 

Podcast is also an great achievement of Web 2.0 since it has come out in 2004 with iPodder. Not like traditionally listening to the radio by a small group of professional people, everyone can upload clips of audio or video. And people can subscribe what they like and the files will be updated and downloaded automatically via RSS.  After listened to some periods of this audio podcast, I found the speakers are just ordinary people, instead of professional linguistic teachers.  What attract me most is that after the giving the news, they deliver their opinions about the news freely and make talk interesting. I can get the thoughts of people who living in other countries  with different living experience and culture, even on some sensitive problems, in stead of boring or scaring quarreling and rumors. These won't be written in the books and it can only be achieved by today's social network platform. I believe such way for exchange of thoughts and values will help a lot to the human mutual understanding.

References

Podcast - Wikipedia

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Podcast