You’ve heard the grumblings. Web 2.0 is declining, it’s so last year….no wait, maybeWeb 2.0 is just dead. But is it really? Or has it just become so ubiquitous that it no longer needs a special label anymore? Former Forrester analyst and Groundswell author Charlene Li predicted that social networking would become “like air” – that is, social networks would be everywhere. And now they are. So are blogs, wikis, video-sharing sites, and everything else that comprises “Web 2.0.” But does that mean the era of Web 2.0 is over because it finally hit the mainstream?
We want to know your thoughts on the state of Web 2.0.
One brilliant commenter will win our swag bag from our recent trip to the Web 2.0 Expo in San Francisco – ironically an expo that seemed to be more about Enterprise 2.0 than it was about the consumer-oriented startups of days past. In fact, the most jam-packed sessions at Web 2.0 Expo were about harnessing the power of Web 2.0 for enterprise, for marketing, for advertising, etc. They weren’t about you and me and our cool new web 2.0 applications built in the proverbial garage.
So is Web 2.0 declining? If so, why? It’s the economy, right? That’s the easy answer, of course. But is it possible that maybe Web 2.0 was already reaching its heyday when the big crash occurred? Was its number about to be up, anyway?
Or is the opposite true: now is Web 2.0’s heyday. Now, everyone is on Facebook, everyone shares videos on YouTube, everyone looks up information on Wikipedia. Web 2.0 is everywhere – which, really, is the opposite of being dead.
What’s Next?
But if you think Web 2.0 is over, then what comes next? Where’s Web 3.0? The Semantic Web? That hasn’t really come to pass yet. Or will Web 3.0 be the mobile web? That’s my opinion, to be sure. The only real innovation that excites me these days is happening on mobile, not on the traditional web.
But this isn’t about my opinion today or those of any of the ReadWriteWeb authors – today it’s about yours. Share your thoughts and we’ll pick our favorite commenter to win the goodie bag from the Expo filled with t-shirts, stickers, pens, CDs, notebooks, and other goodies from the conference. Just be sure you use a real email address so we can get in touch.
The Goodie Bag:
