Web 2.0 - ???
I’m not a fan of “tech speak” or “marketing speak” or worst of all “new media speak” (vertical channels, affiliate space and all that) but over the last few months I’ve seen an increasing amount of chat and forum posts lately regarding Web 2.0. Fine. But what bugs me is when people refer to it as “the next big thing” or as some kind of new technology or piece of software. I’ve even seen people posting on the likes of Elance that they want a “Web 2.0 website” designing.
Lets get things straight, Web 2.0 is a *term* that was created by O’Reilly Media and MediaLive International for a series of web development conferences in October 2004. It relates to the trend that we are now moving away from static websites, the use of search engines, and surfing from one website to the next, to a more dynamic and interactive web experience.
Websites and services such as Flickr, del.icio.us, digg, MSN Spaces and Technorati are all considered to be Web 2.0. Now whilst these sites all over useful services but they aren’t really anything amazing or ground-breaking, just a natural evolution.
So lets not forget that Web 2.0 is nothing more than a buzzword to describe websites as above. You can’t go to a web designer/coder and ask for a Web 2.0 website in the same way that you can ask for website to be designed in Flash. If you do I guarantee you will look…well silly.
What I’m listening to right now: Heatwave - “Gangsters of the Groove”
Sunday, May 21st, 2006 at 6:29 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
Welcome to my blog. My name is Kieron Donoghue and I run UK Offer Media Ltd. I thought it would be fun to post a daily (well hopefully daily) blog, writing about my experiences in Internet Marketing and more specifically Affiliate Marketing. I'll include some personal stuff too, probably about my other passions, music and cars. Please feel free to post your comments and thoughts too.
May 21st, 2006 at 7:30 pm
I would have to semi-agree. Web2.0 is a buzzword, but if someone asked me to design a website for them in a web2.0 style, I would have a good idea of what they were looking for.
Shiny graphics, gradients, powerful colours used sparingly, BIG fonts, you get the idea…
I also agree that this is not some new piece of software, or anything new at all actually, just web styling for the 21st Century. It’s about time we left 800×600 bog standard 1990’s style designs in the past and moved on, or to quote Kieron, evolve!
I saw the post on sitepoint for your new website design Kieron, and I feel that I could call that a web 2.0 style website and you might agree. The ’shinyness’ and simplicity makes it a great design for me (Don’t want to post any domin names - but I’m sure Kieron will be announcing it soon anyway).
Cheers mate
May 23rd, 2006 at 5:56 pm
Id have to agree.
Not to mention the current Web 2.0 trend which is going around (Gradients, big fonts etc), but like most trends, will most probably be out of date over the next few months. Much most other trends that have come and gone…
The design trend will pass, but the technology within this Web 2.0 hype ( Ajax etc) will continue to develope.