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Why it's time to dump the Web 2.0 sobriquet once and for all

news.com — First, the gloomy view: The economy is slowing down and so what's up with the increasingly pointless me-too social-networking apps getting link love these days on Techmeme? They're cute, but outside of the echo chamber regulars, who really cares? Let's be frank: The world does not need another social news aggregator or online scheduling assistant.

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  • Jovensdesciple, on 04/26/2008, -45/+6There should be an article on why it's time to drop liberalism once and for all. It should be on how Obama is really one of the aliens that scientologists are afraid of, and how he's just here to swallow white peoples souls.
    • itsinmyeyes, on 04/26/2008, -2/+23What the ***** are you talking about?
    • winmywii, on 04/26/2008, -2/+17How am I seeing this, I thought I banned you?
    • mkling176, on 04/26/2008, -1/+7wtf?
    • oMeSSiaHo, on 04/26/2008, -1/+8Because EVERYONE already knows that! Duh!
    • pedepy, on 04/26/2008, -1/+4good to see that sects are making a come back ...
    • kipmartin, on 04/26/2008, -2/+5your mom is calling--its time for supper. password up and get upstairs and grab some fish sticks dude!
    • Zalyster, on 04/26/2008, -3/+3I dugg you up just because that last sentence was hilarious.
  • lacreme, on 04/26/2008, -4/+37All the glossy Web 2.0 logos and cute puns are getting a bit nauseating.
    • toxicityj, on 04/26/2008, -4/+43ibeg to diffr
    • tbeseda, on 04/26/2008, -1/+8it's all nothing but practice for web developers. They get paid a ton by investors to copy something, without any liability when it isn't used and meets the deadpool.
      • Zalyster, on 04/26/2008, -0/+2I love Deadpool. Best comic book character, ever.
    • robbie32, on 04/27/2008, -1/+3Would you rather go back to the Windows 98 look?
  • interceptor84, on 04/26/2008, -10/+1 -
  • OJdidntdoIT, on 04/26/2008, -2/+47Hey look at me I got a Myspace/Facebook/Twitter/Digg account. You want to see all my pictures of me and my family? Do you want to know the exciting life im pretending to have when I take pictures when I'm pretending to do something exciting? Let me log on to my twitter account so you will know what I'm doing all the time minute to minute in real time. I'm so popular.

  • MrViklund, on 04/26/2008, -10/+5Web 3.0?
    • pedepy, on 04/26/2008, -2/+11already in beta
      • MrViklund, on 04/26/2008, -1/+1What?
        • SuperRoach, on 04/27/2008, -0/+1I remember even the google spokes person a while back who was jokingly asked about that. His response was coy, in that he doesn't see the term being a solid "ok we are web 3.0 now", but more a transition of a truely semantic web, one that can be viewed anywhere, with content that can be repurposed and seen by anyone.
  • trixterIreland, on 04/26/2008, -3/+2just add 1900, seemed to fix many problems a few years ago
  • anagoge, on 04/26/2008, -2/+59so·bri·quet
    n.

    1. An affectionate or humorous nickname.
    2. An assumed name.


    Because I didn't know what it meant either.
    • B3000, on 04/26/2008, -30/+1dumbass.
      • Forky, on 04/26/2008, -0/+8Many of us who browse Digg do not have English as our first language.
        How about you give that a thought before calling anagoge a "dumbass" for helping us out?

        edit punctuation.
    • SlvrEagle23, on 04/26/2008, -1/+10My buddy Frank saw me at the grocery store a few days ago and told me about this dilemma he was having. His wife kept insisting that he should get rid of the awful siding that had plagued the aesthetic appeal of his house for years, but he couldn't decide what to replace it with. I asked him what look he was going for and suggested a few alternatives. He said, "I'll think about it. Stop by my house in a few days and you can see for yourself which one I choose."

      A few days later, I decided to take the back road home from work, and drove by Frank's house. I noticed his house looked different, then I realized that he had made his decision. I saw Frank out in the lawn, so I rolled down my window and yelled, "SOBRIQUET?!"
    • ErikHK, on 04/26/2008, -0/+1I actually thought it meant that we should abolish it soberly and quietly.
  • kajoob, on 04/26/2008, -11/+2sobriquet |ˈsōbriˌkā; -ˌket| (also soubriquet |ˈsoōbri-|)
    noun
    a person's nickname.
    ORIGIN mid 17th cent.: French, originally in the sense ‘tap under the chin,’ of unknown origin.
  • jboswell2000, on 04/26/2008, -8/+4dugg for sobriquet!
    • atomicfireball, on 04/27/2008, -0/+0Ugh... buried for incorrect use of sobriquet. Sobriquet is not a synonym for nickname, it's specifically a nickname for a person. God, I hate people who look for unusual words in the thesaurus in an attempt to come across as smart, and then use the word without understanding the connotations (or in this case, the actual definition of) the word.
  • monsterette, on 04/26/2008, -1/+1...aahhh..yes, keeping a clear mind and "...just trying to stay relevant.."
  • fLUx1337, on 04/26/2008, -5/+19All web developers/designers who think Web 2.0 means glossy logos/buttons, massive BETA signs, social networking, video sharing (other than porn ;) or any word with a "r" stuck on the endr is a n00b, do not employ them for work, and do not take advice from them.

    Web 2.0 is intuative UIs which flow. Which have a use and display incoming data in a way which is helpful and meaningful to the user. And of course, have a nice API. Any information on a site can be easily used by other sites to combine with other data, everything syncs and is open.

    That's my understanding of it all, and its what I try to accomplish...
    • jtbandes, on 04/26/2008, -2/+6Whose what you try to accomplish?
    • B3000, on 04/26/2008, -1/+13Web 2.0 actually means "Hey, so what if you went broke investing in the web back in the 90's?!?! This is new and totally different - IT'S WEB 2.0!!! See it's not the same at all! Now give me your money."
    • fluffyturtle, on 04/26/2008, -6/+3No one should ever be hired that even utters the phrase "web 2.0" because they are a noob.

      All websites strive to make intuitive UIs that flow, which use and display incoming data in a helpful and meaningful way. If you aren't doing this then you aren't the most qualified for the position. Honestly this shows someone who just got into this work, someone who is trying to ride the web 2.0 wave of absolute ignorance, someone who thinks they can spout off what web 2.0 really means and think people will throw money at them because they are a hip and upcoming web developer.

      Web 2.0 existed the day the web was born, it didn’t happen last year, the year before that or even back in 2000.
      • fLUx1337, on 04/26/2008, -4/+3Can't disagree with you more, Web 2.0 (as I described it) is no where near "new", but its definitely not old.

        But as you said, any decent developer who says they develop "web 2.0" sites is a noob, although I don't acctully remember anyone saying that when they were offering their services...

        I wish "web 2.0" wasn't called what it is, because people just see it as an upgrade to 1.0 and are expecting a 3.0 for some silly reason, but there is meaning in what it stands for, some people will disagree of course. Web 2.0 == common sense in design. Something which hasn't always been the case for the majority of people.
        • jebudas, on 04/26/2008, -1/+1@fluffyturtle
          PHP, Flash, Ajax, CSS... all these things (and other new web languages & tools) were at either an early stage or didnt even exist when the web came out. Yes, it is basically a catch phrase, but the web has evolved and offers much more than the old static HTML pages, thus Web 2.0.
        • fluffyturtle, on 04/27/2008, -1/+2There have been improvements since basic HTML, why weren't they considered web 2.0 then? Why now?

          Obviously there are languages in use today that weren't around, that still doesn't mean jack. They are still nothing more than an evolution. Also these languages existed and were in use before the phrase was coined.

          There really is no argument to support the phrase 'web 2.0', no logic fits whatsoever.
          • jebudas, on 04/27/2008, -1/+1Somewhat recently, I wrote a CMS for someone that had them upload an image using a form, used imageMagick to resize and crop it, used php to write a temporary web page and CSS to use the new image as a background, then put a Flash swf over the background with a cursor that allowed them to create a thumbnail by making a square box around their desired area, then back to perl which created two new web pages on the fly.

            You couldnt do this before. The web is changing and new languages and tools are being developed separately but integrated together to enable amazing things to happen. Web 2.0 is the convergence of new tools and ideas which create a more dynamic, interactive, and productive experience online.
        • fluffyturtle, on 04/27/2008, -1/+3"Web 2.0 == common sense in design"

          What in the world are you talking about. You are one of those people who go to a coffee shop and order some 80 syllable drink that is nothing more than coffee and think it’s different because it has a different name.

          Common sense is an oxymoron. People have been trying to design 'well' since forever and failing miserably a lot of the time even today. Nothing has really changed, ever since more and more people have had access to the internet there has been an explosion in traffic and with it we have evolved from a website with nothing more than black text on a white background.

          There are cases of prior art as well, we didn’t call that web 2.0 back then because why?

          Again, it is downright impossible to deny the logic of the situation. 2.0 doesn’t even technically do anything different from what some sites were doing probably 10+ years ago. Even if you do consider the sites now doing something substantially different you CAN’T claim 2.0 status because technically they, if anyone, would be considered 2.0 because they were already different from earlier sites in that regard. Though that is a downhill slide because blah blah blah the site before etc etc so there is no real versioning here.

          Web 2.0 is a phrase coined by clueless people, it’s equivalent to the internet is a series of tubes comment.
    • mlavergn, on 04/26/2008, -4/+6Web 2.0 == AJAX ... that's it ... that's all ... no matter what anybody says. AJAX was not around at the beginning of the web, but XMLHttpRequest, the core of all things AJAX, has been around in non-beta form since 1999. The defining characteristic of Web 2.0 being that content could be updated without a full page refresh (frames don't count) and it was a breakthrough in web application architecture. There was a way to cheat prior to XMLHttpRequest by leveraging an img tag or a hidden frame which let you do something similar, though it was a hell of a lot less elegant. On that note, peering into my sobriquet crystal ball, I think offline web apps will become what will be Web 3.0. Stuff like AIR, Silverlight (please god NO!), and XUL. I hope that XUL wins, but it's been around for a long time and doesn't have a hell of a lot of traction. Of the three, I think AIR will win out, mostly because it's cross platform and based on Flash which is widely used.
      • fLUx1337, on 04/26/2008, -3/+3Web 2.0 == AJAX? Is it really? I personally don't think that at all.....

        Alot of the time, sites can use AJAX to minimize on page reloads, but its definitely not all Web 2.0 is.

        I guess there will never be a clear definition of what "Web 2.0" acctully means, but personally I don't think its any one thing, nor is it anything set in stone. And its definitely not something you should use to describe your site, unless you are with people who know you ain't the kind of person who will use glossy logos, and if I said something I was creating was "web 2.0ish" to my mates, it would just means stuff like tagging of data, nice URLs, and a clean semantic look....etc...etc...etc...
        • djJohnnyG, on 04/26/2008, -1/+2fLUx1337 7 mins ago: "I guess there will never be a clear definition of what "Web 2.0" acctully means, but personally I don't think its any one thing, nor is it anything set in stone"

          fLUx1337 1hr ago: "Web 2.0 is intuative UIs which flow"

          I love consistency
        • mlavergn, on 04/26/2008, -0/+1Merriam Webster doesn't define Web 2.0 as == AJAX, but pretty much every write up on Web 2.0 focuses on dynamic exchange of data between disparate sources on the Web. There's only 1 explicitly defined, non-plugin (with all due respect to Flash and in spite of the fact that XHR started as an ActiveX) way to achieve on the client side and that is via XMLHttpRequest. If Web 2.0 only meant shiny buttons and nice layouts, then it's would be no different than Web 1.0 which also featured shiny buttons and nice layouts. Remember that CSS has been around for at least a decade, probably more, I remember using it back when Netscape was the hot browser.
    • Jakerius, on 04/27/2008, -1/+4"Web 2.0 is intuative UIs which flow."

      Uhh, no. That's called good design practices.
  • fluffyturtle, on 04/26/2008, -2/+6It should have never been picked up, websites have always followed a similar trend in layout and design. Just because the buttons are shiny or something looks clean doesn't increment the version of the friggin web.

    As for the type of content or the way the content is manipulated by users, sure, sites like digg started doing something a little different in that regard. Never before was it taken to that extent but slashdot has been around for a while folks, newsgroups since forever and they ALL share the same 'social networking' ideals. So even in this context the web wasn't incremented version wise.
  • painperdu, on 04/26/2008, -1/+10"Silicon Valley survived the Internet bubble . . ."

    Say what? It was called the "dot com" bubble. Internet bubble? The Internet was never on the bubble. In fact, the Internet is still growing!
  • pedepy, on 04/26/2008, -1/+6spot on ... ill puke if i see another pownce happen. this market's saturated and its time to opt-out.
  • tcardone05, on 04/26/2008, -1/+3http://h-master.net/web2.0/
  • unluckier, on 04/26/2008, -4/+5Web 2.0? How quaint. Web 4.0 is where it's at:
    http://the-mathclub.net/site/toorconbeta/slides/
    • voyvf, on 04/27/2008, -0/+2The "internet dongs" ascii art at the end made that slideshow worth the 20 seconds that it wasted.
  • FaNtAsMa, on 04/26/2008, -3/+4Competition leads to creativity, so I say the more the better.
    • Tahiri, on 04/26/2008, -0/+5And smaller user bases, defeating the point
  • B3000, on 04/26/2008, -3/+4I could actually use about 12 more social news aggregators and 3 or 4 more online scheduling assistants.
  • kipmartin, on 04/26/2008, -2/+3i have a friend who actually said it would be cool if you could 'get myspace on your phone'. any day now, he'll throw a sheep at someone on Facebook with his RAZR. now THATS social networking!

    he might have a future at Microsoft if he moves his ass to Redmond.
  • SpykerSpeed, on 04/26/2008, -1/+7If you had told me about the wonders of Digg and Twitter and Facebook etc. 8 years ago, I would have been supremely underwhelmed. Something big has got to change about the internet before I get excited again - in the meantime, I'm off to go pitch an idea for a site to a bunch of VC's. I'll sell it by next Thursday and live off the interest for the rest of my life.
  • regeya, on 04/26/2008, -0/+5The world doesn't need another news aggregator, either.
  • fxu1989, on 04/26/2008, -6/+4Gradients and shadows don't pass well to printing.

    When I see logos with gradients and shadows, I puke.

    Keep it to vectors and 2-3 colors max.... good ol' way.
    • toomuchpete, on 04/26/2008, -1/+5"Colors, shapes, and motion don't pass well to radio. Keep it to sounds... the good ol' way."
    • voyvf, on 04/27/2008, -1/+2Now, correct me if I'm wrong, but I thought that was what the media attribute of the link tag was for.

      You know, like media="screen", or media="print"

      Those smarmy W3C folks might just know what they're doing... (:
  • mediaspree, on 04/26/2008, -2/+2Web 2.oh noooooo!
    • MacTyler, on 04/26/2008, -1/+2I see what you did there...

      ...it just wasn't funny
  • karolisonline, on 04/26/2008, -2/+1first, web 2.0 really not the way to go. second, IT will be enlarging as economy shrinks, because usually IT helps to reduce cost's by replacing people job with computer/server job. ok, there is only one exception - if we will be doing open-source software for business, IT will fail. how don't You understand that what is good for home user is not good to do with corporations... do You think huge company that uses free-software reduces cost of they product because they have no expenditures for software? no, they are getting bigger profit. and that is why open-source as it is now, has to be burned on the fire. open-source os, home-user soft, dev-platforms(c++,python,php...) - OK, free word/excel, crm, cms for commercial site, free e-shop - NOT ok.
  • annalaurab, on 04/26/2008, -0/+4I tend to agree. There are already tons of web 2.0 applets. So many I don't know how anybody can possibly use them all.
  • drgmdp, on 04/26/2008, -0/+3ABOUT TIME
  • lcmatt, on 04/26/2008, -1/+9Good hopefully Digg will remove the 16 javascript files which causes browsers to stall and then choose a minimalistic design.
  • thatsmyaibo, on 04/26/2008, -1/+1This is a stupid article. As long as 2.0 businesses continue to do well, they will keep popping up. It's about content and usability. 2.0 is something geeks just do to classify it but is making a ton of money on the average user that doesn't care if it's 1.3 2.8 or anything else.
  • jab9990, on 04/26/2008, -2/+4Someone should tell this guy about 'biting the hand that feeds you'. Nobody would be reading this crap right now without digg.
    • fugazied, on 04/26/2008, -1/+1Yeah its like 'the death of web 2.0' broadcast to the masses via one of the web 2.0 social news websites. I only go to 1 or 2 old media news sites now (abc and nytimes), I can find the other news faster through digg and reddit, especially breaking news.
  • robthom, on 04/26/2008, -2/+3WTF is sobriquet ?
  • jasalo, on 04/26/2008, -0/+2How many profiles and accounts should I have to be a Web 2.0 guy? Do I need aggregators?
  • DeFex, on 04/26/2008, -2/+1can i put sobriquets in my sobarbecue ?
  • joeanon, on 04/27/2008, -0/+2What does the recession have to do with anything.

    History shows entertainment consumption goes UP... not down during recessions.

    Look at game console sales... they are up 57%. Game consoles and surfing the internet is DIRT CHEAP compared to seeing a movie or going out to eat.

    People are staying home, using the internet, watching TV and playing games more because they have less money to go out.

    IT does mean they just sit home adjusting their thermostat all day to save energy. They still have to find something to do, it just has to be cost effective.

    There is almost nothing as cheap and versatile as the internet. So, it only makes sense these service will boom and the recession will only help.

    It's not as if you need high bandwidth to use a social networking site, so the cost are minimal.

    I say... bittorrent should make a site that piggybacks on the torrent clients making it decentralized and not easily bought out by corporate powers looking to data mine and mass advertise.
  • aspire2x, on 04/27/2008, -2/+0I just got back from the web 2.0 expo in San Francisco this week, great event! Lots of new technologies are approaching mainstream adoption very soon!
  • p0tent1al, on 04/27/2008, -1/+1What the hell do you expect? All the good webnames have long been accounted for, and you have companies that squat on any of the good ones left. Any good startup knows that the length of your domain is pretty important, so they take existing name and change them in a way that is still recognizable and short to type.

    And guess what? All your favorite sites are weird ass names that we all are just accustomed to. Google? Yahoo? Digg? All second nature to all of us, but really think about these names, they are extremely off the wall names. If these companies didn't exist and you were to suggest any of these names for a company, people would laugh in your face.

    And it's only going to get worse, people will have to start using numerical values in their url. I can understand the hatred for the glossy buttons and all the stuff that comes with Web 2.0, but in reality the people that come up with these off the wall domain names are really trying to make it easier for the end user, and trying to stave off the inevitable; using double digit domain names, and using numerical values.
  • Pherdnut, on 04/27/2008, -0/+1Neat-stuff-that's-free-gets-popular.whatever-the-crap-you-want-to-call-it
  • zongamin, on 04/27/2008, -1/+1***** you for caring
  • leonwestbrook, on 04/27/2008, -0/+2Very few of these companies have made money. It will be the dotcom crash all over again. Its coming.
  • binaryloop, on 04/27/2008, -0/+3Dugg up for using a word I'd never heard before. I learn something new everyday.
  • starkraving, on 04/30/2008, -0/+1I don't think there's going to be another crash, or if there is it won't be near as big as the previous one. The big difference now isn't about technology, it's about investors. There are still impulsive projects out there of course, but I think enough investors are savvy now and require more from a startup's business plan than just the term "IPO" that there will be more successes than failures. It took a while for the correction but I think the Bubble of the 90s was a good thing overall for the Web.
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