Web 2.0 jumped the shark days after its invention. (29)

1 Name: CyB3r h4xX0r g33k 2005-10-04 16:55 ID:6D5C7A89

Right now I am seeing appreciation for "Web 2.0" on the rise. As a user of many Web apps, I have been fed up with this since practically the week the phrase was invented.

I will use this list of examples of what Web 2.0 means:
http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/a/oreilly/tim/news/2005/09/30/what-is-web-20.html

Here's a list of what I hate about Web 2.0:

  • Tagging/folksonomies. Sorting your bookmarks with other people? Fine idea, if you are that bored. Sorting them without any kind of structure or moderation? No. It sounds like fun, but God help us if we're actually looking for good content among all that rubbish that a million amateur librarians have filed away. Has this technology helped anyone? I doubt it.
  • Mass contribution in general. Peers don't do everything better. They can offset your bandwidth (BitTorrent), but they can't provide backup hosting for your website (Akamai). Wikis are great when you can fix a page, but you'd better have help on hand for the people who will be constantly abusing that service.
  • AJAX. I have seen three good implementations of this. All three are complete-as-you-type searches. Hint to webmasters: Once I load a website, I expect it to be LOADED. I don't want my browser running off to fetch more information that you failed to provide me, without a damn good reason.
  • Google. Google is a great company. I love Google. But it isn't a herald of paradigm or whatever. It's cool because it does cool things and plays nice. That has nothing to do with Web 2.0 programming.
  • Retarded CSS. NO MORE THAN 5PX OF PADDING PER OBJECT. PADDING DOES NOT MAKE YOUR WEBSITE COOLER. THIS GOES FOR LINE SPACING TOO. STOP IT. GODDAMN YOU.

The following things are great and all, but they aren't part of the "Web 2.0":

  • Blogging. Nothing new. This has been easy to do since Geocities was founded.
  • RSS. RSS has been around since 1997.
  • Unclunky release models. Durr. Free software has been doing bazaar-style programming and releases since the Neolithic era.
  • Javascript.

If anyone sees "Web 2.0" doing something useful for the world, let me know!

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