Describing a company or concept as “Web 2.0? is so, last half-decade. Never mind that most people still haven’t heard the phrase "Web 2.0". If you don’t believe me, go ahead and poll your office or family: unless you’re not allowed out of the work as tech-bloggers, my guess is that they haven’t heard or don’t understand the term of web 2.0 or Web 2.0 Technology or Web 2.0 Architecture
This isn’t really surprising. If you hear about a “new internet phenomenoon” on main stream news, the chances are it’s either on it’s way out or is so firmly entrenched as to be unremarkable. For a perfect example of this, look up ‘Facebook’ in a national publication and note the language used to describe it’s shiny new cover regardless of the fact that most people reading this article will have been on Facebook (or gone off Facebook) at least a year ago!
It even now seems that there may be a financial impact on describing your new startup as “web 2.0?. According to Mashable!, several VC’s are stating quite clearly that they won’t back Web 2.0. We have also noticed talk of bubbles breaking with the implication that it won’t last very much longer. So many potential break throughs won’t see their funding if they’re too Web 2.0.
This phenomenon is firmly entrenched in ‘technology’ social networks like Digg, buzz, technorati and many more. When I found a news story about the semantic web, I noticed the over whelming majority of comments were along the lines of “semantic webis so cliche”, or “Watch out, here comes Semantic Web 2.0”. Semantic web is a term which has only been widely used recently (relative to “Web 2.0? which was popularised by web stalwart O’Reilly back in 2005) and is already met with sarcastic scorn.
To some extent, I think this is a good thing. There might be more competition for funding and an increase in the quality of online startups. It might also mean some updates and refreshing of already started up's. While technology disapproving is easy to find and probably does not mean too much, the reality behind the bluster might just be the next set of updates to real online user experiences, and don’t try calling it “Web 3.0?.
There’s no pleasing everyone, but it seems to me that Web 2.0 is a phenomenon which, if you’re not already using it on a daily basis (onFacebook, following Twitter, using Gmail), it’s probably better not to talk about it.