Web 2.0 is dead. R.I.P.
Written by Richard MacManus / December 18, 2005 12:38 AM
/ 21 Comments
I've had enough of the hype. I've had enough of cynicism. I've had enough of hate blogs. The nail in the coffin was this post on ZDNet, by Russell Shaw. The thing is, I agree with Russell. The term 'Web 2.0' is distracting from the real value going on in the Web right now.
Read/WriteWeb will be focusing on more media-related web technology in 2006. Enough Web 2.0.
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Now we just have to proclaim the term "Blogosphere" to be dead and I'll be happy
Rich - I hear you :)))))) I've read all the post modern texts about relativist interpretation, and even more Hollywood ones. Web 2.0 is like the weather, my viewpoint changes each day. But I wouldnt want to ban the word 'romantic comedy', 'art house', 'action' etc... even if there intrinsic meaning is low... And does that mean you are the Father of "media-related web technology".. On some cloudy days, and I meant to do it today, Im impartial to Web 2.1, as a way of introducing the audience to life after Web 2.0, while not shifting a whole generation, or being too snarky. I wonder what will be the First "Moment" of 2006, generational acronyms aside....
Glad you're going to drop that. It will do only good when you won't have to justify why something is web2.0 or not. Let's just call it 'new' from now on.
Applause.
As you point out, the value is real. And building. Every day.
"Web 2.0" has been a poor way of encapsulating a renaissance.
It amazes me how much ink has been spilled arguing against a term that could otherwise be helpful in describing the ongoing changes we're seeing on the Web.
Blackest infanticide!
:D
I'm tending to agree with you there Richard; I got caught up in the hype and excitement for a while but end up realising that the only "Web 2.0" sites I'll be going back to time and time again are the tools which help me (e.g. Backpack, Remember the milk) - not the "tagging everything on earth" sites. I want something I'll get value from quickly, tools which speed up things for me.
Hey, Richard. I was just thinking about the same thing. Trying to be the "web 2.0" guy in Korea, ever since the web2con ended, I started realiziing that "web 2.0" term is almost useless now, in a way that it's done with its job and maybe we can all move on without using that term ever again. When something new and tremendous becomes ubiquotous, we don't have to really call it by name or even be consciously aware of it because it's just there in our everyday life just like in Gartner's hype cycle. With that, how ironic is it that it wasn't until this month that mainstream media in Korea started covering web 2.0 stuff. We'll see where it goes. :)
What about your categories ?
Are you going to adapt them also ?
Danny, that's exactly it. It's time to move on.
Denis, yes I will create new categories. I won't move old content into new categories however, but I will stop using them.
wow. What does this mean for the Web 2.0 Explorer ZDNet blog?
Alex, that'll continue. It doesn't bother me if it's called Web 2.0 Explorer. It's just the whole debacle around defining Web 2.0, all the buzzwords, all the cynicism, the personal attacks, etc - that I've had enough of.
There is real value in the current Web, but the term 'Web 2.0' itself has become a liability.
Web 2.0 rules! It's the Web 2.0 community that is driving this second round of massive investment (Flickr, del.icio.us, MySpace, Attensa, FeedBurner, etc) in the Web. I suspect we'll continue to hear about such investments throughout early 2-0-6.
ummm wow! what does this mean for you and the Web 2.0 WorkGroup?
Here, here! Die buzzword die!!!
Web 2.0 may or may not be a useful term, but Web Office is here to stay.
I am currently heading up a project to build an enterprise blogging solution at one of the big-4 audit/consulting firms. There are over 130,000 people in my firm.
Internal enterprise blogs, enterprise wikis and technology like microformats are going to radically change the way the people work.
Maybe Microsoft is going to dominate this space with Office Live. Maybe the rest of the industry (the former Web 2.0 crew) is going to beat them to the punch.
My site, www.innovationcreators.com, makes the simple business argument that in today's hyper competitive environment, companies must pursue a strategy of constant innovation. If you are running a bank or a big manufacturing company, the idea of constant innovation is probably something fairly new to you. Compare the number of innovations that come out of Apple (iPod, iMac) to say the number that come out of Dell. Or compare the new pill bottles at Target to nothing new at the other drug stores. BTW, good marketing, great design and packaging are innovations, just as much as fancy new electronic or software wizardry.
If are the CEO of a big company and you want to pursue a strategy of constant innovation, you need to copy good innovators, like Google. Google enlists every engineer in the cause of innovating. I bet that Dell's engineers do not spend 20% of their time on their own projects.
Recently, Business 2.0 asked Google's CEO, Eric Schmidt if Google has some kind of grand strategic plan for the new products it creates?
Dr. Schmidt replied "Virtually everything new seems to come from the 20 percent of their time engineers here are expected to spend on side projects. They certainly don’t come out of the management team."
Google uses internal enterprise blogs and wikis to help their people to efficiently communicate.
A unified, easy to use system of enterprise blogs and wikis are the beginnings of what will become Web Office technology. Web Office will not look like MS Office. For one thing, there will be no Word Processors.
For a fast definition, Web Office is a set tools that enable Knowledge Workers to consume, create and efficiently share content, structured data and analysis.
I can tell you that I know what my firm wants and needs from Web Office. My article Top 15 Requirements for Web Office is a beginning, though I think I need to add microforamts to the list. I can also tell you that my main role is working as a consultant who deals with top financial institutions, including many of the top US banks and hedge funds. I can see that our clients want and need the same thing we do.
Finally, I can tell you that no vendor that I have seen actually has anything like the complete package of Web Office solutions we want and need to turn our knowledge workers into innovation creators.
Web 2.0 may be dead, but Web Office has only just begun.
I really feel like Web 2.0 has some value in it. There is clearly a lot of innovation happening on the web today. Right now, it is mostly followed by an early adopter crowd. If we really want this new wave of innovation to go mainstream, it needs, among other things, a marketing friendly term that the media and others can latch onto.
I think Web 2.0 is a good candidate for this. It communicate the idea of the "second coming" of the web. It's also easy to understand.
Maybe instead of throwing out Web 2.0 altogether, we should all just stop arguing about what exactly makes something Web 2.0 or not and start talking more about the innovation happening on the web and why it will change the way we work in the coming years.
I wrote a blog post about this also. See it at:
http://www.sproutit.com/bigact/2005/12/21/wither-web-2-0
I think we should hang ON to "web2.0".
1: It does serve a useful purpose. Everytime I say Web2 to someone they go "what's that?" and I get to tell them about blogging, rss, ajax, and the new themes on the web.
2: If we stop using an umbrella term, a lot of these concepts will become inaccessible to the general public.
3: If we stop using web2, we'll have some other bloody buzzword move in after about 3 months, and it'l be like "Weberation X" or "The Infraweb" or something even worse like that - web2 isn't bad let's keep it!
I'm so happy to see this post. I've been pondering why every VC or entrpreneur you speak with says Web2.0 in every other sentence. If a site is not Web 2.0 it doesn't have the right to exist.
You can't call Categories categories anymore. Must call it Tags and put it in different sizes to have Web 2.0 look. Where did the value to users go ?
The most ironic is that web 2.0 became so infuencial that entrepreneurs stopped thinking originally and started thinking "what Web 2.0 site were not done yet". This thinking brought to many duplicate sites which show very little imagination and innovation, eventually Web 2.0 became a creativity block rather than enabler for new creativity as I would have expected it to be. Don't belive me - check out how many online calendars there are out there. Do they have added value to the user over old ones ? No.
Ask the GNU Project folks how successful inapproproate terms can naturally be. People have been calling a whole OS after the kernel yet we all know what Linux is, or do we?
And what does "workaholic" have to do with the root work for "alcohol"?
Ask the GNU Project folks how successful inapproproate terms can naturally be. People have been calling a whole OS after the kernel yet we all know what Linux is, or do we?
And what does "workaholic" have to do with the root word for "alcohol"?