Comments on: Web 2.0 Is Dead — As A Common Phrase Anyway

By: Recent Links at Fast Wonder: Online Community Consulting

Recent Links at Fast Wonder: Online Community Consulting — Tue, 04 Aug 2009 00:54:51 +0000

[...] Web 2.0 Is Dead — As A Common Phrase Anyway [...]

By: Oliver Young: Web 2.0 is dead as a common phrase anyway « Fredzimny’s CCCCC Blog

Mon, 03 Aug 2009 03:53:49 +0000

[...] Found at http://blog.strategicheading.com/2009/07/31/web-2-0-is-dead-as-a-common-phrase-anyway July 31st 2009 by Oliver Young [...]

By: links for 2009-08-01 | burningCat

links for 2009-08-01 | burningCat — Sat, 01 Aug 2009 08:06:07 +0000

[...] Web2.0 is Dead – As a common phrase anyway Well, dead may be a bit of an overstatement, but it is clear that the phrase “Web 2.0″ is dying. [...]

By: Oliver Young

Oliver Young — Fri, 31 Jul 2009 21:17:48 +0000

Hey Gil, thanks for the comment. I think the data is pretty useful, though I would love to get similar data from Gartner, Burton, etc. to compare. But the keywords were pulled from the full inquiry text, so when the client fires off an email the whole thing is what we looked at; it was not impacted by our inquiry team. I agree that our own research will impact the inquiry load (hence both our frustration at the “Enterprise 2.0″ problem) but all in all I think it is a worthwhile barometer on mainstream terms.

As for your easy zing, that hurts! If you have any recommendations for getting editing to move faster I'd love hear them.

By: gyehuda

gyehuda — Fri, 31 Jul 2009 18:01:31 +0000

Yes indeed, I thought it ironic that Forrester and Forrester's clients did not align well on this terminology — and yet Forrester is recognized for its thought leadership here. This problem had significant implications to me, as I learned late in the game how work gets distributed there. Your CEO and some of your colleagues now use the term “social” as the catch phrase. But that seems to add more confusion between the issues of consumer behavior, marketing to consumers, and business collaboration. We are challenged by language here. “Web 3.0″ just adds more confusion to the conversation — so that's not good here either. Are we so fashion conscious that we cannot use words that are a few years old?

I think the problem is that “Web 2.0″ is the wrong term from the start. Putting a number (2.0) instead of a description makes describing the evolution of the web much harder to scale. I would rather have seen “contributory Web”, “participatory Web”, “social Web” “real-time Web”, etc to describe some of the minor shifts over the past few years — no one uses 2.1, 2.2, or 2.3 either.

But looking at your data for a moment, I'd ask if its fair to wonder if other factors are be at play that result in a reduction of these keyword-tagged inquiry. This data is easily swayed by the terms that the inquiry team uses to enter the inquiry requests you get, or by recent report titles (and blog posts). It could also be a result of a shift in client focus, or loss of interest on the topic with respect to the population that interacts with you. Wouldn't it be neat to compare other analyst's companies trends too? (e.g. Burton, Gilbane, Gartner…) Whereas I agree that Web 2.0 is becoming a dated term, this data chart my not be the right chart to prove it. Google searches might be more telling.

Oh, and report about Q1 inquiry data — out this this week! What kind of backlog are you running? It's summertime, man.