Comments on: OK, let’s kill web2.0

By: hugh

hugh — Thu, 15 Mar 2007 15:23:35 +0000

for the (broken) record, 2.0 is an important marker for me personally, when
(because of free tools) the web changed for me from passive to active. but really, what is the difference between saying “semantic” & “3.0”?

By: Boris

Boris — Thu, 15 Mar 2007 06:07:35 +0000

tsk tsk. sit back and let it pass. it’s almost over anyways. :)

“Web 3.0” is the love child that will arrive when the navel-gazing teenager that is Web 2.0 grows up a bit, becomes a bit more worldly and cooperative and meets a Semantic Web who has learnt to loosen up and slip into something more sexy.

They’ve already met and sparks were seen.

By: Nick

Nick — Sun, 11 Mar 2007 14:52:36 +0000

It is hard for me to see how “Web 2.0” is anything more than a meaningless buzzword. For one thing, it is cute and gimmicky and lame, like naming your kid “Mike 2.0”. It is also a piece of marketing, meant to lend authenticity and coherence to what is really a minor innovation, not to mention a very nebulous “idea”. Real ideas don’t need marketing.

“Web 2.0” refers not to an entirely new Web but a small portion of the existing web: new web sites created using mostly existing technology but augmented by new browser functionality (XmlHttpRequest) and an emphasis on user-provided content, a concept the Web was already more or less based on, just not as slick. At best, it is Web 1.0.1, but now everything is “lickable” and has an RSS feed and a podcast.

Also, I should mention that the previous “barriers to entry” for creating your own site were not so high; there has always been Geocities, Tripod, Angelfire, etc., not to mention the thousands of personal sites created in HTML 2.0 with Times New Roman and using nothing more than h1, p, and li tags, which can hardly be called “code”, and there have been WSIWYG editors for a long time now.

Anyway, I recognize that “Web 2.0” does refer to a specific type of web site. It’s clear that Google Maps is not the same as the MapQuest of old. But ultimately, not much has changed except that websites look and act a little nicer, and that we have a new class of “entrepreneurs” crowding around the buzzwords, waiting to unleash a big idea of their own, all of them pumping air into “Web 2.0” to keep the hype afloat until they can get their site bought by Google. And that is what Web 2.0 is. Drop that sucker, Hugh.

By: Hugh

Hugh — Wed, 07 Mar 2007 20:23:34 +0000

wysiwyg + free hosted services (eg blogger, and in a different way, wikipedia)

otherwise you needed to set up your own site, which again was a barrier to entry for me and millions of my non-tech bretheren.

also important, the loss of the lettr “e” at the end of words.

By: Hugh

Hugh — Wed, 07 Mar 2007 20:23:05 +0000

wysiwyg + free hosted services (eg blogger, and in a different way, wikipedia)

otherwise you needed to set up your own site, which again was

also important, the loss of the lettr “e” at the end of words.

By: Justin

Justin — Wed, 07 Mar 2007 20:12:15 +0000

You can’t expect everyone to stop using it at once Hugh, but – if someone were to ask me what ‘web 2.0’ was I’d more than likely reply ‘a marketing gimmick’. It simply doesn’t work for me to describe anything. What it spawned I think, is amazing but it doesn’t describe the effects of the technology and describing the technology itself isn’t useful to me without describing what the technology is used for and the effects it has had on culutre (culture beyond the internet.)

I forget sometimes what it meant for people who before didn’t have the knowledge to put their content on the web, but I think that in my mind once the WYSIWYG editors came out I thought ‘well now anyone can do it.’

By: Hugh

Hugh — Wed, 07 Mar 2007 15:54:12 +0000

curses!!

By: Matt Forsythe

Matt Forsythe — Wed, 07 Mar 2007 15:50:19 +0000

web “1.0” is still rampant. and its devotees are everywhere. i think its easy for those of us who live and think online to feel like its gone, but it’s not… yet. till then, i’m afraid i’ll have to continue using the new moniker.