Salutations!

Welcome to my first foray into blogging, an activity that I have, prior until now, avoided.

Unless you count the time I tried on MSN Spaces; exactly how long did that forum last, again?

I've been using 'social software' and 'Web 2.0' for a while now without really realizing that there were names for this kind of online interaction.  I've been MSN chatting since I was 15, have been a Facebook user for a couple of years, and avidly devour YouTube videos and Wikipedia articles.  I'm new to RSS feeds and aggregators.  I would have to say that I'm, generally, a one-way interactor, if that's not too paradoxical: I read blogs, I watch YouTube or other video upload sites, and I enjoy these activities; I've never really commented on anything that I've read, or participated in online surveys, or uploaded my own videos or journals (I just upload pictures on to my Facebook account and tag them; that's the extent of my 'active' experiences).  So am I a true participant in the Web 2.0 revolution?  Perhaps not.  I'm an observer, prefering to take it all in.  Perhaps my hesitance lies in the fact that I find some of the Web 2.0 activities to be very tedious for users and readers alike.  For example, I would often love to read what other people think about a particular posted video or blog entry, but they're often spammed with irrelevant entries and vulgarities; one must fish through them to find someone else's point of view on the posted content, but that potentially occurs every 100 comments or so.  That's time reading 'junk' I'd rather avoid.

Hopefully this course will persuade me to interact with the online world more than I do currently, because there IS a lot to be gained from the way the online world has evolved in recent years.