Web 2.0: a label for “now”
Inevitably, my article “How do you make money on Web2.0?” gathered the following comment by SidewalkPilot on digg:
What does WEB2.0 mean, and why are there no spaces?
I use the term merely as a shortcut for saying “the new internet companies”, in contrast to their predecessors from the original Internet bubble. Web 2.0 is just a slogan coined for the needs of this time period, and I use it not because I believe it means anything, but because I see a practical purpose of labeling some topics in a way consistent with general public.
The companies in question often share certain elements that are trendy today, such as technologies (AJAX, RSS, …), approach (focus on social features), or even design (the famous blue gradients). Some people try to take these features and create a definition of what “web 2.0″ is and what it is not, but I’m not one of them.
Note that it’s my personal approach on this, though. As can be expected, the topic is a subject of a lively conversation, with skeptics like Russell Shaw (“Web 2.0? It doesn’t exist”) and committed defenders like Stowe Boyd (“Traitors in our Midst: Web 2.0 Antihype”). Dion Hinchcliffe has a nice summary of this discussion.
