Development

WARNING: major rant!

I understand why some people like the term “web 2.0″ and its ilk. The problem is it leads people with little or no idea of the web to believe it is a product produced by a single organization and that it will have incremental “releases” when it is the exact opposite and evolves daily.

Furthermore, the concepts the term tries to define have been around since the beginning of computer mediated communication, so they’re not new, just redefined, and thus lead to additional confusion among novice web users. Fundamentals of usability state quite clearly that we should call things by their names, not invent new ones to sound cool, or just new. The only people who find value in marketing terms are marketers. The rest of us experience such terms as garbage and filter them out. Also, since this is not a product produced by a single organization, the use of the numbers leads me to wonder where will the numbering stop?

If you are a web developer or work in the internet field, please, I beg you, don’t use “web 2.0, 3.0, 4.0″ etc. when trying to define what you are doing. There are plenty of other techno-bable terms that probably suit your needs just as well that already exist. In my opinion, using such terms just makes you sound uninformed.

I feel a little better now that I got that off my chest…

PS: The link to the other techno-bable terms was the by product of the first Internet bubble. It shouldn’t surprise anyone that these terms continue to show up in today’s “web 2.0″ world. Empty language = noise. Let’s try improving the signal-to-noise ratio and minimize the interference. My job is already hard enough.