From Web 2.0 to Web Squared
StartupTech has an article from the Web 2.0 Expo, where Tim O’Reilly suggested an alternative to the term ‘web 2.0′:
At the Web 2.0 Expo in San Francisco, internet guru Tim O’Reilly threw out the possibility that perhaps the name should be changed.
He said he and his friend John Battelle of Federated Media had been playing around with an alternative which was Web 2.0 + World = Web Squared.
I have a suspicion that some people have a grouch against the word web 2.0, because they view it as a trend and they do not view themselves as persons following trends. They do not want to be one in the crowd. They do not like these kind of hyped concepts, because they just don’t.
But the strongest resentment against the term web 2.0 is probably to be found in persons who count themselves as an authority or hope be one some day. The day the web 2.0 term withers away, the soul of the term – non-authoritative, transparency, democracy and participation – will fade away too. The technological foundations in web 2.0 will be just another tool in the capitalist raise to money and power. The soul of web 2.0 will soon be forgotten. The balance between producer and user will probably be as skewed as it was before the bottom up power of web 2.0.
