Like every other innovative industry before it, Web 2.0, too, has developed its own language. Our friends over at the Royal Pingdom blog took a close look at the buzzwords around Web 2.0 today and found some interesting trends. Using Google Trends as the basis for their research, Pingdom, for example, concludes that searches for term ‘Web 2.0’ peaked in 2007 and have been decreasing every since. Some of the main terms of the Web 2.0 world like ‘RSS,’ or ‘cloud computing‘ have also been on a steady downward trajectory, while ‘blogging’ is still holding steady.
On the other hand, terms related to social activities on the net like ‘social media,’ ‘social network,’ or ‘microblogging‘ (thanks to Twitter) have seen a steady rise in searches over the last few years.
‘Web 3.0,’ however, seems to have peaked as a term to describe the next wave of Internet innovation before it even had a chance to happen.
For a the full list of Web 2.0 buzzwords, head over to the Royal Pingdom blog.
Conclusions?
We wouldn’t want to draw too many conclusions from this list, as it is based on search terms, and as users get more familiar with these and start bookmarking their favorite sites, they will probably start using search less. Also, as these terms become household names, fewer users will look them up on Google.
In some ways then, we might be able to interpret the decline of searches for ‘RSS’ or ‘cloud computing’ as a positive thing, as users have replaced searches for these general terms with more specific queries.
