I never really took time to read up on this talk of the Web 2.0, but now there’s an article celebrating the new wonderful things made possible with the AJAX scripting and all the other stuff that makes it so new and exciting.
I haven’t actually used any of the sites they list in the article. They’re mostly social tools for your own personal use such as calendars or startpages, or pages for sharing bookmarks videos, photos or texts. Or . The Netvibes page does look rather cool with its movable and customizable boxes.
And that seems to be the main gripe against all of this talk of Web 2.0. A lot of techies frown upon the use of the term “2.0”, since the amount of new features are severely limited, and that this Web 2.0 revolution is mostly social, rather than technological.
It seems that the whole “Web 2.0” is generally meant to imply that the web is evolving rather than being revolutionized. People are beginning to develop distinct habits on the web, customizing and personalizing content to a greater and greater extent. This is probably best seen on the MySpace websites.
But despite the (supposedly) good intentions behind term “Web 2.0”, it does seem forced, tired, and something that is meant to impress investors. With the dot.com bubble still in recent memory, there is good reason to frown at this kind of marketing glossing, and its tired rhetoric has been mimicked quite hilariously.
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Also, I haven’t played World of Warcraft beyond a few hours to try it out as part of my Digital Rhetorics course, but when you read an article like this, you realize just to what degree people are immersing themselves in the game, and how others are perfectly willing to abuse this. Scary.
