Comments on: Labels That Mean Nothing

By: Graeme Thickins

Graeme Thickins — Fri, 05 Oct 2007 17:37:23 +0000

I think Herman and James make excellent points!

By: Don Jones

Don Jones — Thu, 04 Oct 2007 23:53:27 +0000

It’s funny how the meaning of words can get watered down from overusage.

Consider “snafu”. It is a word that came from World War II soldiers, and it refers to “Situation Normal, All ***ked Up”

Now it just means a hangup.

By: Alan

Alan — Thu, 04 Oct 2007 20:02:25 +0000

Just had to share the humor I found in the fact that this article was sitting in my Google Reader directly above an article from the Mini-Microsoft blog titled “Microsoft 2.0″…

By: James D Kirk

James D Kirk — Thu, 04 Oct 2007 20:01:15 +0000

I think Brad has a good point, however, I also believe that those of us participating in these conversations are clearly the leading edge. The moniker is NOT for us! It is for all of the rest of the curve beyond the chasm we are going to help bridge. Those people need something short and sweet and descriptive in order to participate in the conversation (and all else which follows!)

By: Herman Najoli

Herman Najoli — Thu, 04 Oct 2007 15:31:28 +0000

To me it’s like a medicine bottle. The label doesn’t have the power to heal. It might give an indication as to what is in the bottle but labels can easily be switched. It’s the contents that matter.

By: JonKelly

JonKelly — Thu, 04 Oct 2007 15:22:34 +0000

I agree completely with your point about useless versioning and with the first commenter on Jason’s post. Jason’s 3.0 tag is just a shameless way to define Mahalo (and human intervention in alrorithms) as the next big thing. We often criticize algorithm-only targeting in ad serving because we believe it and because it serves our purpose, but it’s only one of many, many positive steps that are being taken to make the web more useful.

By: Anne Z.

Anne Z. — Thu, 04 Oct 2007 14:45:35 +0000

Do you think there has been a real transformation since the first dotcom boom, in terms of what’s possible online? And just that Web 2.0 doesn’t describe it? Or do you think it’s just been a continuum from then to now, with no revolution in how people approach and use the web?

I think Web 2.0, while overused as a term, does actually mean something. The first version of the web was about corporations and their audience, customers, or employees. The second version allows people to come online as individuals in their own right.

For example, Web 1.0 was iVillage, people secondary to the site. Web 2.0 is blogging, sites revolving around individuals.

Enterprise 2.0 isn’t a great term either but it also might point to an interesting shift, from hierarchical command-and-control corporate governance and IT systems towards more social and decentralized approaches. How well that can actually work when most big companies need command-and-control isn’t clear.

Still, I’d revolt against a presentation that used so many 2.0 terms too.

By: eric Norlin

eric Norlin — Thu, 04 Oct 2007 14:06:03 +0000

on web 3.blecch: http://defragcon.com/Blog/?p=138

By: Scott Yates

Scott Yates — Thu, 04 Oct 2007 13:18:18 +0000

It’s like pornography, the best deffinition anyone ever gives is: “I know it when I see it.”

That said, I think with a particular context it can be helpful the evolution of something. In a shameless bit of self promotion, I would point to this post as giving context to web 2.0 for legislation and politics.

The summary: I think Web 2.0 is the web finding its own voice. In the early days it was just an electronic version of all that had come before. Now we are seeing applications that just couldn’t have existed before.