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Just What Does "Web 2.0" Mean, Anyway?
What should you look for? Why should it matter to you?
Bruce Arnold's Web Marketing Tips
(Issue 42::RSS Release 1011)
I invite you to go to
Yahoo.com
and run searches on the following quoted terms:
"Barack Obama", "John McCain", and "Web 2.0".
I just did, and Yahoo returned 302 million results for "Barack Obama", 220 million for "John McCain",
and 286 million for Web 2.0. This little exercise suggests that "Web 2.0" is as significant as the contenders for our
nation's highest political office. But for many, it also begs the question, "Just what does Web 2.0 mean, anyway?"
First coined by Tim O'Reilly (or was it Dale Dougherty?) in 2004 (or was it 2005?), "Web 2.0" is now one
of the most overused yet poorly-defined buzzwords on the Internet. Despite the paradox, you'll find it referenced in
articles on topics ranging from
SaaS
to
Sasquatch
... as if it were something tangible ... or at least a clearly-defined concept. It is neither. As Web founder
Sir Tim Berners-Lee sagely observed in 2006,
"nobody knows what it means!"
In 2007, Michael Wesch put together
this video
that supposedly explains what "Web 2.0" is really about. It is a cool video, but the message is all about XML,
and how it can be used to separate form from content. There was no mention of CSS or XHTML, but no matter. I was
writing XML parsers in the '90s, and XHTML/CSS web design pre-dates "Web 2.0" as well.
Now in 2008, the most honest thing we can say is that
Web 2.0 means whatever the techno-marketeer (ab)using it
wants it to mean. Otherwise, why would intelligent people like Isaac O'Bannon be writing articles asking
"What is Web 2.0?"
And, why would McKinsey's recently released and best-of-breed report entitled
"Building the Web 2.0 Enterprise"
include no attempt at defining the term other than to list the tools that comprise or enable it? And even there,
the chief ingredient is identified only as "Web Services", adding more mystery to the mix as one ethereal term is
offered up to explain another.
As originated at Onstartups.com,
"Web 2.0 is like pornography":
Nobody has clearly defined it, so you just have to
know it when you see it. If you are not sure what to look for ... or why any of this should matter to you ...
just give us a call!
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