Researching energy relating topics for the Birthday Edition, I stumbled upon a site which claims ‘by using an easy-to-follow guide anybody can create their own magnetic power generator which produces free energy without requiring any resources like wind or solar energy’. And thanks to Web 2.0 we have access to information written by ‘the average Joe’ in the street – the guy who tested a product and blogged about it, the lass who tried it and left a tweet about it from her iPhone. Gone are the days that we only have www.company.com’s information and website to base our decision on. Thinking that this sounded too good to be true, I did what any editor would do and googled the company name to see what others have said about them.

Shockingly (really?) it became evident that this was looking more like a scam than a miracle cure to global and environmental damnation. Yet, amongst the google list, there where many stating that they have in fact used the product and it is really successful. Once I opened these pages, the blogs seemed … off. It almost seemed as if the positive blogs where created by – you will never guess – the company themselves praising the product to no end. Or blogs that clearly got paid to say nice things about the product (great marketing tactic). These ‘bloggers’ create ‘identities’ of Mr So and So from You Name It who have actually tried the product and it really really really works! Really! It must be totally legit because she left her testimonial on the blog.

Now we all know that the good bloggers are completely objective – they look at something, test it or try it or watch a video about it – and comment on both positive and negative aspects of the product. The freedom Web 2.0 has given us: the freedom to air out opinions and real experiences, the band service from that crappy restaurant (mental note: remember to go and slate restaurant x on the web for that terrible service last night) the terrible cellphone provider and fraudulent products … Luckily, our new generation of independents can see through all these tricks and hopefully be able to stop more and more power hungry greedy frauds in their tracks.