The first and last time you'll read the words 'Web 2.0' here....

Just when you though it was safe to move on to more important things, the meaning of Web 2.0 bubbles up again.

Jeremy Zawodny opened the bag of worms with a reference to Fred Wilson's post on markets. I'm not going to rehash anything they've said, but I will share my perspective on the Web 2.0 moniker.

Tim O'Reilly's sweeping article 'What is Web 2.0' really says it all. And by all, I mean too much. Its interesting and fun to read, but if anyone thinks they can use the term 'Web 2.0' to communicate anything specific, they're sadly mistaken. Like the blind man trying to describe an elephant, it all depends on which part you touch.

Can the Open Source community legitimately claim that by 'harnessing collective intelligence' they are driving Web 2.0?

Alternatively, can hosted service providers say they're driving Web 2.0 since they don't ship packaged software?

By O'Reilly's definition, yes. I think.

I agree that they are both driving something, but weren't they driving the same thing 3yrs. ago when they were all presumably still in Web 1.0??

Having a single moniker that captures both Open Source developers and hosted service providers is nice, but I'm not going to use it for anything.

But even if I thought Web 2.0 was useful to me for something and I wanted to become Web 2.0 compliant. What should I do? It's not at all clear.

Can anyone name a single company that conforms in any meaningful way to all of O'Reilly's seven Core Competencies? Is that what it takes to become Web 2.0?

The article ends with the inscrutable statement:

'Remember, though, that excellence in one area may be more telling than some small steps in all seven.'

Just exactly what does that mean? Which is more Web 2.0: the company dominant in just one area; or a dilettante in all seven? He never says.

Don't get me wrong. I loved this article and it is very thought provoking. To O'Reilly's credit, he never suggests that there is a binary criteria for being Web 2.0. He argues that there is a wide spectrum and that at some level 'its an attitude, not a technology'.

What has spun this out of control are all the people who have used the Web 2.0 label to forward their own agenda. And why not? It's one of the hottest topics we've seen in years. O'Reilly's meme map on Flickr has been viewed over 42,000 times! This clearly has taken on a life of it's own.

So in the spirit of harnessing the collective intelligence of the web, I make the following contribution to the O'Reilly Web 2.0 Meme Map.















The project I'm working on satisfies some of O'Reilly's Core Competencies, but it in no way resembles any of the canonical examples of O'Reilly's Web 2.0. Does that make it Web 2.0?

Even if it's not, that won't bother me a bit.