Alexis: not MY seven points--Tim O'Reilly's! I've rarely used the term myself without specifically meaning his conceptualization (recent hyperbole notwithstanding). I agree, too, that those seven points are "very, very specifically business oriented," though I may perceive the workings behind that a bit differently (I'm a "he," by the way). As a programmer in the late '90s, I came to love "the animal books" of O'Reilly & Associates, technical publications that focused largely on open source technologies (Jeff Friedl's "Mastering Regular Expressions," now in its third edition, is to this day one of the best technical volumes I've ever read). Their stripped down layout, engaging prose, and sharp handling of typically dry topics was a perfect complement to the DIY/toolset mentality of the FOSS community. I perceive the "corporate turn" (at O'Reilly Media and elsewhere) as a long-term strategy within the FOSS community to dispel the belief that open source was/is not appropriate to a serious commercial environment. I still see them struggling with that perception today (thus the business orientation). I'd agree with Hugemusic's explanation, that "the *term* Web 2.0 was created as a branding strategy for corporations to exploit the *phenomenon* of Web 2.0." Despite all the talk (including Tim O'Reilly's) about business models etc., I also see the most analytically relevant aspect of the Web 2.0 phenomenon on an axis orthogonal to the commercial/non-profit dichotomy. In an interview in last week's Wired: http://www.wired.com/techbiz/people/news/2007/04/timoreilly_0413?currentPage... Tim O'Reilly states that "One of the big changes at the heart of web 2.0 is the shift from the creation of software artifacts, which is what the PC revolution was about, to the creation of software services." This seems to me to support Christian's suggestion that "internet research needs to take a look at the political economy of web 2.0," specifically in terms of the implied shift from an industry that's seen as "manufacturing goods" (software) to one that "provides services" (communities, hosted apps, etc.). "Resources" (in particular bandwidth) is perhaps yet another matter, but whether we're talking a Google-sized commercial enterprise or a state-subsidized community portal, it's that shift from goods to services that I think is implicit in the Web 2.0 moniker (and is an especially telling part of O'Reilly's definition). -- Lane DeNicola Doctoral Candidate | Dept. of Science & Technology Studies Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute http://www.nacresky.com/lad Tried the Science Studies Search Engine? <http://www.nacresky.com/ssse>