October 17th, 2008 - Web 2.0, who helped define (in a single phrase) the business revolution in the computer industry caused by the move to the Internet as platform, and an attempt to understand the rules for success on that new platform, has passed today. The cause of this passing has been determined to be distinguished insignificance.
While Web 2.0 undoubtedly struggled with it’s own identity and was often abused by media wonks and hype over the course of it’s four-year lifespan, it did have a place in the hearts of all of in web industry who struggled to bring value and interaction to the medium in past years.
Web 2.0 was nurtured into this world by two loving parents, Tim O’Reilly and Dale Dougherty, in 2004 and was quickly adopted and loved by technology experts and professional marketers as a buzzword industry-wide. While some adopters viewed Web 2.0 as the second coming, there was criticism that Web 2.0 does not represent a new version of the World Wide Web, but merely a continuation of existing technologies to provide more value, interaction, and communication within the medium.
At it’s time of passing, it was determined that Web 2.0’s networth was approximately 362,000,000 web-based references as indexed by Google. Web 2.0 leaves behind several children by technicality including AJAX, REST, SOAP, XML, and the widely-adopted RSS.
While Web 2.0 will always hold a place in our hearts and minds, its passing signifies a larger adoption of the underlying philosophies Web 2.0 tried to hard to communicate in it’s years. Web 2.0, you will be missed from mainstream vocabulary, but not forgotten.
I come here not to praise Web 2.0, but to bury it.