When I first launched this blog some seven-plus years ago, one of the taxonomy categories I created was called web 2.0.
In those days, the phrase had currency. It referred to the fandangled new (at the time) way of using the web — a move from static billboards to more dynamic approaches of communicating online. It referred to the web as participation platform. It had to do with blogging, sharing and social media.
But web 2.0’s time has passed. Nowadays, saying something is “web 2.0” is as archaic as calling a YouTube video a “moving picture” or referring to automobiles “horseless carriages.” As TechCrunch pointed out in a December 2012 piece, “Nobody says ‘Web 2.0’ anymore.”
And yet the “web 2.0” category on my blog remains. For months now, I’ve thought about killing it off. (I never have used the term precisely, anyway.) But I haven’t done it yet. Because, as that TechCrunch article also points out, the phrase used to mean something.
I do plan to stop tagging posts with that phrase. (This will be the last one. Unless for some reason I need to resurrect the tag for a future post.)
But for now, “web 2.0” will remain as a category on this blog, if only for archival purposes and in recognition of all the phrase once stood for.
Image via bensheldon on Flickr.
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