User participation on the Internet is growing rapidly.

Yesterday’s Tech Trends Series event focused on the continual change in the Internet’s environment.

Erik Schonfeld, editor at large of Business 2.0, a magazine featuring the latest technologies, talked to the audience about the changing face of the Internet.

The focus of the event was Web 2.0, a new service which allows for people to get the most out of their Internet usage.

Mobile, advertising, enterprise and media are all used by Web 2.0.

The presentation focused on the “culture of presentation” that people have developed through the use of such Web sites as YouTube, Wikipedia and blogs.

Another site growing in popularity is SecondLife, a site where you can create your own character.

This site has become especially popular in European countries.

Schonfeld said niche sites are growing in popularity on the Internet.

“You’ve got these niche sites that focus on loyal fans, ” he said.

Two of these sites are MetaCafe and Dig. Both of these sites focus on video feeds that viewers can watch.

“MetaCafe is trying to become the new YouTube,” Schonfeld said.

Dig is similar to YouTube. Erik talked about some of the features on Dig that make it unique, especially the feature that allows users to vote on the stories they like.

He showed the difference between Yahoo! from the mid-’90s and the Yahoo! home page that is now available. New features also include personalized searches and Yahoo! news.

Chase Masters, a grad student in career and technology education, discussed the changing technologies and said he believes they produce a more friendly environment for searching databases.

“It’s easier to get information in a more multimedia enriched environment,” he said.

Schonfeld also discussed second-tier business models, Web sites and search engines that haven’t gained the popularity of Yahoo! or Google. These models include: A-Jax, AdSense and Arrogance.

Matt Kelly, a junior in business finance, said he knew about these new technologies before the event but said he learned something from Schonfeld.

“Web 2.0 is building in momentum and this presentation confirmed it,” he said.