Most of America’s youth already know about and make use of blogs, wikis, BitTorrent sites and podcasts. IBM and the University of Arizona are teaming up to help them put their knowledge to use in the business world by teaching them how to actually create and run businesses around these “social technologies.”

Apparently, the interest in information technology among students has significantly decreased. The Association for Computer Machinery has reported that the number of students choosing to study computer science has dropped by an average of 32 percent over the last 4 years. IBM’s aim is to encourage more of today’s students to pursue a degree in information technology.

Gina Poole, IBM’s head of university relations said that “by gaining skills on Web 2.0 and online communities, students can help businesses and employers better market and sell themselves using powerful online mediums.”

The Univeristy of Arizona will in fact be the first to offer so-called ‘Web 2.0 courses’. Social networking has been a growing trend recently and has created a new set of jobs in the tech industry. The demand for a “community manager” is on the rise. IBM wants to prepare students to fill this position.

The course will help students to understand the concept behind social networking and will promote “leadership qualities, collaboration and peer-interaction” in the classes.

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But now, one year later, peer-to-peer technologies flourish more than ever.

P2P traffic is rapidly growing, and new services and implementations appear on a weekly basis.

Tom McInerney, co-founder of Guba.com, a video site that just teamed up with Warner Bros. to distribute TV shows and movies said in a Mercury News article:

“Shutting down peer-two-peer networks was like taking a half-course of antibiotics every six months. It just led to the evolution of more decentralized networks that are more efficient and more difficult to shut down.”

He’s right, peer-to-peer traffic is extremely adaptive, flexible and therefore hard to stop. The internet evolves, boosted by the web2.0 hype and clearing the path for even more social networking oriented p2p platforms.

BigChampagne Chief Executive Eric Garland stated:

“The social networking aspect of the Internet is continuing to blossom and no landmark court decision or watershed event changes that.”

I predict a bright future for filesharing and online media…

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.