Friday, September 29, 2006

Stop talking about Web 2.0!

I have an exam today an d then I'm off to the pub so it's fair to say you won't be seeing that much posting for me. However, I just wanted to post a little something on Web 2.0 because I keep seeing the phrase everywhere and it's starting to irk me, I shall however, try not to rant.

Putting it simply, Web 2.0 is not new. The phrase was born in 1999 by Internet geeks at a conference and was meant as a bit of a way of expressing the difference between static and dynamic driven web content. However, for some reason it has become synonomous with the notion of "user driven" websites like Blogger, MySpace etc.

Blogger and MySpace are not new though. Blogs are not new. They're personal websites just like AOLHomeTown and Geocities were in the 1990s. The interactivity is not new either. Leaving comments on a site is like leaving a guestbook message.

Web 2.0 refers to the underlying difference between static HTML and dyanmically generated html pages using scripting and xml. Please evryone, stop talking about Web 2.0 as if it is a represnetation of some sort opf new communication medium. Fundamentally, the web today is no difference to the way it was 10 years ago. Slashdot has been doing what the fashionistas call Web 2.0 since before the term was even invented.

5 comments:

Glass House said...

So...now we know

Benedict White said...

People talking bollocks about technology? Surely not!

I hate it when people miss use and misunderstand domain names, think for example that .com is an international company when it in fact is for an American comercial organisation.

Good luck with the exams and the pub!

Anonymous said...

Good luck with the exam, look forward to hearing about it later, and maybe sharing a drink too...

Croydonian said...

Seen the B3ta image challenge: just what is web 2.0? Usual mixture of the inspired, the infantile and the wilfully obscure....

Geoff said...

In fact the web still isnt functioning as conceived by Berners Lee "t is just as important to be able to edit the Web as browse it. (Wiki is a step in this direction, although Berners-Lee considers it merely a shadow of the WYSIWYG functionality of his first browser.)" from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berners-Lee. Good to meeet you at the politcal bloggers do