Web 2.0 abuse and misuse

You've heard of "Web 2.0", that ubiquitous and over-reaching marketing term plastered on everything from average websites to moldy bread. How does it apply to everything and is it related to "Jake 2.0"? I can't tell you much about the "Jake 2.0" part, but I have my ideas about the rest.

What seems to make "Web 2.0" so useful in marketing is that it seems to have no meaning. In reality, most don't know what it means, and all the rest have their own unique definition - most likely one that describes their own product. I've seen it used to describe everything from a UI button to an entire company. The most popular definitions deal with social networking or the Ajax based web sites.

Our own product Timeless Time & Expense Enterprise Web uses Ajax extensively, but I wouldn't call it Web 2.0 because it is just a web application. We have been doing the same thing in the desktop world for years. The term Web 2.0 is often used to justify applications with minimal functionality. Or even justifying forcing the user to 'tag' their application data when 'tagging' is really for disparate data you do not control. I did say it was a marketing term, didn't I?

But I digress. In my opinion, if you had to apply Web 2.0 to anything, it would have to be the social Internet phenomenon. Though I hesitate to call it social. In some respects it is highly anti-social with the main goal being popularity. The web has always been about popularity (how many incoming links do you have?), but it becomes more direct with the social Internet custom of voting, friends and favorites.

That said, some of us used our spared time and got our feet wet in this Internet popularity contest. The site is MyCampaignPlatform.com. The site allows you to create your own campaign platform for the 2008 Presidential election. Done right, you will probably learn more about the issues that you thought you would and be more prepared to vote in the election. In true social Internet fashion, you can even include your own YouTube or Google video and vote on other platforms.