Alex - while i totally agree that it's gotten conflated in all sorts of ways, i actually do think that it is an effort to signal a shift that has taken place. The shift has multiple dimensions, some of which are business, few of which are technical, most of which are social. I've written parts of this in different places. Many are under "Design, Web2.0 and Social Software" at http://www.zephoria.org/ thoughts/bestof.html Social technology practices have changed dramatically post-crash. Much of this has to do with the fact that so many people are online and it's no longer a marginalized minority. People are organizing around friends (and Friends) instead of around topics of interest. The structure is built on networks of people and information instead of room and place metaphors. Corporations are motivated to help people connect and share rather than just buy. Sure, there was a lot of early CMC tools that were adopted en-masse but community sites like The Well never scaled to the degree that the current ones do, nor did they provide the same types of socialization opportunities for mainstream culture. Uploading media was a bitch if you didn't have a unix account and a decent webserver. Now, hosting and locating media is not the issue. You're welcome to ignore the term "web2.0" (and i definitely have huge huge huge problems with it) but it's meant to signal a shift that people know and can feel, even if they can't describe. Of course, it's an ugly term... but so is blogging and we've (finally) embraced that. Blogging is a good example of something that was not a shift in technology but in practice. I think that the same is true in what web2.0 is meant to signal. On Apr 21, 2007, at 8:23 AM, Alex Halavais wrote:
Again, my greatest concern is that it doesn't mean all that much, while conflating far too much. Lane's post notwithstanding, Web 2.0 seems to be little more than a shortened way of saying something about the Web as it is used today. In other words, Web 2.0 is the Web: why proliferate terms in an area where we already have a surfeit?
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