Web 2.0, social networking, the social web… all different terms for the Internet phenomenon that is promoting greater interactivity and connectivity between people of similar interests. It’s also my term for what’s going on in Lake Tawakoni State Park in Texas. With SPIDERS!

Tonight on the way home from work I was listening to NPR’s All Things Considered and heard this story about spiders in a Texas state park. The spiders have teamed up to build a huge communal web that covers some very large trees and stretches for several hundred yards.

Instead of relying on what could be caught in their individual webs, these spiders have created what amounts to one gigantic web. The main trees in question form a curve around a pond which is a breeding ground for mosquitoes. They said that when you walked by these spiderwebs, you could hear this buzzing sound from the mosquitoes trapped in the webs. The spiders were eating so well that they weren’t getting to all the new mosquitoes getting caught in their webs.

Testimonial to the benefits of the Social Web! :-)