Web2.0 Kickin' Continues as Joel Puts Boot In
The latest in what's becoming quite a long list of people putting the boot in on the Web2.0/Bubble2.0 frenzy is Joel Spolsky who viciously kicks down what he calls The Architecture Astronauts
Now it's tagging and folksonomies and syndication, and we're all supposed to fall in line with the theory that cool new stuff like Google Maps, Wikipedia, and Del.icio.us are somehow bigger than the sum of their parts. The Long Tail! Attention Economy! Creative Commons! Peer production! Web 2.0!The term Web 2.0 particularly bugs me. It's not a real concept. It has no meaning. It's a big, vague, nebulous cloud of pure architectural nothingness.
Anything that gains popularlity quickly hits a peek before the inevitable spiral down as people kick the shit out of it for a bunch of crap. It's not the concept of Web2.0 for most out there that are dismissing it, it's what its synonymous with, which is the kind of crazed mentality we saw back in the late 99/00
Fortunately, this time round there are some smart VC's influencing the fall of "web2.0" in a bid to keep business models grounded in erm.. can this make money.. rather than "hey, we've mashed together all this stuff, can we have some money please?".
The SEO crowd have been "creating mashups" forever, only when we do it's called "spamming" - you see, it's not how you do it, it's how you market it heh...
Would never go Mainstream ...
IMHO except MySpace (even though i have doubts about the half billion valuation) no other web 2.0 services have the potential to become mainstream - they all appeal to the same 10 million or so geek/blogger crowd.
The average joe searching for free paris hilton video dont give a f*ck about del.icio.us or flock :)
Hype 2.0 is mak'n me crazy
Nothing new to see, move along, just journalists trying to sell rags.
I think del.icio.us is mo.ron.ic but hey, maybe that's just me.
I really fail to see the hype about del.icio.us, too
It *may* have been first, but it's since been surpassed by Spurl, Furl, and even Y!'s MyWeb... all more feature rich and often faster. But hey, geeks are not always a logical bunch...
Nothing like a Pencil Neck Geek
Geeks are typically just high functioning autistics, commonly tagged with labels like "PhD" and often spotted gathering in nerd herds at places with names like "Google" and "Yahoo".
Geek herds can easily be dispersed by setting up a volleyball net and opening an icy cooler of beer which sends them running from a basic fight or flight response learned early in life at something called "Gym" or "Physical Education".
Drifting off topic at 2:30am, what a shock.
They can all Flock off. I
They can all Flock off.
I really dislike delicious and all its dots.
This Web2.0 thing is all very arseolish, hmmm, good word.
Although, I do like the long tail, it's made me a lot of money. How else can you describe what it describes, using two words.
Time to update your stereotypes, though, Bill ;)
High functioning autistics, anti-social... undoubtedly sometimes. But in a delicious bit of irony... there's a (popular) volleyball net right in the middle of Google's campus. Can't speak for Y!, but Google and Googlers have some pretty damn cool parties. Icy coolers of beer abound. Google recently installed a pool, and they have popular gym classes.
Apparently, the gym's popular at Y!, too, and most of the (admittedly few) Y!'ers I know are active in dance or sports and hardly autistic.
Indeed, the majority of geeks I know here in the Bay Area are athletic, social, and often blessed with hot significant others.
Maybe the rest of the country/world hasn't caught up yet that Geek is the New Cool? :P
Geek is the New Cool
Geek was the new cool ten years ago, at least over here. All those MIT double PhDs living large. Not anymore.
I figure the folks at the Plex and the (what cute name does Yahoo's HQ have) can live it up because they're surrounded by their own. Geeks among geeks can be as geeky as they want to be and consider it cool. They just have to make sure no frat boys crash the party.
The "Web 2.0" word bugs me
The "Web 2.0" word bugs me as well, it's a pure marketing buzzword used to try and avoid the requirement for any business plan. It's pretty meaningless and seems to just be a club for 'cool' people to join.
I stopped reading Jeff Jarvis because I just got fed up with him going on about web 2.0 type stuff all the time, it just gets really really boring to hear them evangelising about it all the time and seeing huge problems with some of these 'cool' new web apps.
Some of the idea's associated with it, web apps being easier to use and making sharing on the net actually a lot for effective now than they have been in the past, is good. I just wish there wasn't all the buzzword crap to go along with it, and that under the new term of AJAX, Javascript hadn't suddenly been reborn for people to screw up with annoying effects that were annoying in 98.