Children and students have always incorporated some sort of gossip and drama into their social lives. Before the early 90’s this gossip was spread only via word of mouth and extremely expensive touch-tone telephones. With the expansion of social media, WiFi and mobile technology the malicious nature of adolescent socialization has grown massively. University students can gossip about who vomited on who the night previous, high school students can spread rumors about peers that are more sexual active than others and elementary school students can find out who has coodies before the infected even finds out.

It was only a matter of time before a coliseum-like battle ground was constructed where children of all ages could gouge each other’s eyes out. It has been created, the arena being JuicyCampus.com, and the gladiators - university students from all over the world. JuicyCampus is a Twitteresque micro-blogging service that promotes university students to gossip about their friends anonymously. Ruthless huh? Well at least the battles are now sanctioned.

Recently TechCrunch wrote an article about JuicyCampus being banned at Tennessee State University (TSU) - the service’s first university-wide banning. The article doesn’t go into depth about why specifically the program was banned, but it talks about Matt Ivester’s (CEO and President) rebuttal with regards to the whole situation.

I want to start by saying I’m completely behind JuicyCampus, however I’m not completely behind Ivester. He starts by saying in his statement (full version can be found here) that JuicyCampus is “joining the ranks of the Chinese government in internet censorship, and spitting in the faces of everyone who believes in free discourse online”. I’m sorry but… What? I can’t seem to draw a real comparison with the Chinese government blocking sites regarding Tiananmen Square to a university banning a service entirely made for aggressive gossiping on THEIR network. It just seems that Ivester’s response is somewhat immature and probably something you’d actually find on JuicyCampus.com. I really hope that the offensive nature of Ivester’s statement is just a means of gathering publicity, as it’s done a great job in that respect.

On a side note, I’m also going to use this article as a call to Ivester. It seems you don’t have Canadian university networks highlighted on the site. Quite frankly, Canadian university students are surrounded by social media. I don’t have a friend that doesn’t have Facebook and doesn’t use it religiously. So in the next round of college networks to open, open Wilfrid Laurier University and I will open an account. Thanks!

Oversaturated content and ideas were the end of Web 1.0. Too many people were trying to cash in on ideas that they didn’t have. Now a whole new age of thinking has been created - Web 2.0. Where social networking and communication has been highly implemented and crazy website ideas are actually accepted. Any two-bit webmaster knows that the uniqueness of content is how to make money in this industry, and the advertisers are lovin’ it! (Some contextual advertising right there) However, everything in this world follows one of the fundamental laws of physics - What goes up must come down. And much like Newton’s apple that fell from the tree so will the internet, once again.

But why? There are plenty of advertisers with plenty of money and plenty of web startups with plenty of ideas. If you draw your attention to a couple mega-giant websites that have been somewhat of the poster boys for Web 2.0 you will see increasingly less advertising. This is because customers don’t like advertisements. A user will visit a website because they want the content of the website and don’t want to sift through “Shoot the Duck” or “Is this your Crush?” advertisements. The website makes money by applying advertisements to their content and only established websites have the resources to do so - and to be successful. Large websites are making it not okay to have advertisement banners and other primitive advertising tools - even though they owe their existence to these.

So, what’s to come of Web 2.0? If large advertisers do not create more applications and tools that fit the increasingly more semantic nature of the web, expect another depression. This will not occur for a while, and in fact, the online advertising industry will continue to grow. But, one day in years to come computer users will grow weary of clicking on sponsored link after sponsored link for products they do not want and the industry will take a dive once again. To avoid this advertisers as well as webmasters need to step up to the plate. Advertisers need to create more interesting and user specific tools. Webmasters need to make banner advertisements accepted again. Follow the Yahoo and Myspace method and monetize just about every aspect of your website, regardless if your visitors like it or not.