Real Time Collaboration and Web 2.0 tools, tips, and reviews

Leslie Walker writes in the Washington Post about the multiples of increase in traffic to social networking sites, blogging sites and local city directories. Whereas overall Internet traffic increased by only 4 percent, traffic to sites like MySpace, Blogger.com and CitySearch jumped from 185 percent to 528 percent. Incredible!

For me, this underscores the value of online collaboration tools, even if it's just thousands of teenagers sharing music tracks. From a broader perspective, it's about participation, and that, I hope, will continue to expand as we move into the election season. Maybe people feel safer interacting online. Maybe the outrage that's been noticeably absent in our cities will manifest among online communities instead.