More and more Palo Alto College students are partaking in interactive websites that use Web 2.0 applications on the Internet.

Web 2.0 is the concept of Internet use being openly shared and critiqued amongst everyday users. Common applications include online communities, social networking services, blogs and other online, peer-to-peer aspects.

Among the of-age, Internet using students around Palo Alto College, the biggest Web 2.0 attractor of students’ online time has been communal sites, such as the popular MySpace.com and Youtube.com.

“MySpace has consumed my entire life into it,” said Alyssa Lazo, an 18-year-old Palo Alto College freshman. She and fellow student Lorenzo Gonzalez take turns looking at MySpace pages on a wireless laptop in the Student Center’s cafeteria area.

“It uses up all your time,” Gonzalez said.

Palo Alto College Computer/Network Coordinator Tom Duncan estimates that students evenly divide their time between leisure- and school-related matters on the Learning Resource Center’s 70 available and functioning computers.

“We have a lot of people using MySpace,” he said.

Learning Resource Center Work Study Crystalyn Wolf, a 21-year-old History major, said that the popular website creates problems of availability for the accessible computers with many students using the computers for fun and not for school work.

“Most of the time it’s filled up,” she said, in regards to the LRC.

MySpace.com has easily established itself as the forerunner of the Web 2.0 generation of Internet applications. The social networking site has attracted a population of at least 154 million users worldwide with, on average, 300,000 new users registering daily since the website was first established in July of 2003.

Palo Alto College students have made sure that their school is fairly represented, creating a total of 3,267 MySpace pages that list Palo Alto College as that user’s current school.

After choosing to display their image and list their interests, hobbies and taste in films, music and literature, users are presented with the opportunities of messaging one another, linking pages with friends, hosting pictures for peer review and maintaining a blog.

Frank Montañez, a 19-year-old Palo Alto College student and lead singer of the Emocore rock band “Till Night Falls,” uses the services provided by Web 2.0 applications to aid in the success of his music group.

“[We] get a lot of fans coming up from different cities, states,” he said of users who frequent and critique his band’s music, adding that they have even been contacted by eager listeners from Mexico.

His band’s pages on popular outlets such as MySpace and PureVolume present visitors with a selection of recorded musical tracks that allows guests to sample and comment upon their work.

“It makes it way easier to sign with a record label,” said Montañez, noting that several of his MySpace contacts are representatives for independent record labels.

Another Web 2.0 application more directly influences some students’ academic and scholarly choices.

RateMyProfessors.com, a site where students can comment on professors and classes, lists 262 Palo Alto College professors for perusal. Users are allowed to rank, comment and browse the reviews of professors who were written about by previous students. Professors are gauged on five fields: easiness, helpfulness, clarity, overall quality and student’s enthusiasm.

However, some professors do not share the students’ enthusiasm of using peer reviews when selecting college courses, claiming some students may be drawn to classes that are touted as easy.

The site’s high traffic, with some 20 million visitors a month, has helped to make celebrities of everyday people who have sometimes simply uploaded a video for fun. Popular videos of the week are even featured on national television during a segment on Good Morning America.

Lazo and Gonzalez, both enrolled in a TV Production I course, have plans of uploading a class assignment to YouTube to have it viewed and commented on.

“If you want people to see your stuff, put it on YouTube,” said Lazo, who also believes that the site’s high volume of visitors and free use makes it a great outlet for independent film and video directors.

Palo Alto College students use the Internet more than ever previously imagined. How students handle this tool and manage their time between school and fun is up for discussion.

Although only recently introduced, students cannot seem to imagine a world without the Internet or communal avenues of communication.

“Imagine the world being without the Internet. That would be something,” Lazo said. “Someone should make a movie about that.”