August
Buzzword 2.0
I am so sick of hearing “web 2.0.” Anyone working with websites generally has to put up with a certain amount of worthless, empty jargon, but this one has a longevity and infectious nature that disturbs me. It’s like the ebola of buzzwords. At the phptek conference in Florida, some guy stood on stage and tried to define it (a “web development professional” doing this), and I wanted to cry. All he did was spew out bits of lesser jargon. It was as if “web 2.0″ was a definition-less word bomb with lots of meaningless word-flack inside that blew off it and killed the audience. Or their attention spans at least.
In general, if you can’t define a word, don’t use it. Most of the contexts I’ve seen “web 2.0″ used have been instances where the user was either too ignorant to talk effectively in specifics or too inarticulate to talk effectively in generalities.
So, a little RX for web 2.0:
Let’s all step over here and see what, if anything, it means anymore.
Now let’s work on using alternative words and phrases to describe the concepts that we mean by web 2.0. That way, when we have conversations, write blog entries, or even present at conferences, we’ll be actually saying something rather than using a phrase frought with ambiguity and picked over by the carrion-feeding-salesmen of the web.
August 10th, 2006 at 4:20 pm
Congrats on entering the blogosphere. I agree that web 2.0 is overused and overhyped. I’m afraid the same thing is about to happen with web 3.0, so I’m thinking about skipping right over that buzzword and on to web 4.0. Whaddya think? ;)
Andrew
August 10th, 2006 at 7:24 pm
Agreed. I am tired of nebulous terms being used. Web 2.0 (in whatever usage) is hardly anything revolutionary as it is being made out to be. At best most of the technologies that people refer to when talking about Web 2.0 are evolutionary. Let’s not call it 2.0 until revolutionary changes are made to the http://WWW.
August 11th, 2006 at 10:15 am
[…] Web what-dot-evah. Morgan Davis’ erelevant blog is brand now, but he’s off to a great start. His recent post, Buzzword 2.0, takes a lot of us to task for tossing “web 2.0″ around in conversations and on our blogs (guilty). His advice: “let’s work on using alternative words and phrases to describe the concepts that we mean by web 2.0.” […]
August 12th, 2006 at 9:59 am
Web 4.0… How about going the Microsoft / Adobe route and chucking version numbers altogether. We could have Web Xtreme! … All my buzzwords are still in beta :(