Lately I’ve found myself having the following “discussion” (I prefer “heated debate” myself) regarding ‘Web 2.0’, usually with someone who has consumed a certain amount of Web 2.0 Kool-aid:

cultist: “I want to make sure we have enough Web 2.0 features in our application.”

me: “‘Web 2.0’ is just a term, and doesn’t signify anything important in and of itself. Sure, it’s a way of easily defining things like improved usability, user-centric design, friendly applications, and other tangible concepts that developers and designers can and should take to heart, but it only refers to those practices because we’ve decided it should, as a community.”

cultist: “But ‘Web 2.0’ is such a simple way of saying all those things! It makes it much easier for people to understand what they should be doing!”

me: “Just like ‘AJAX’ makes it easier for people to lump ‘superfluous JavaScript visual effects’ under the same terminology as ‘communicating with the server without a reload’? ‘AJAX’ is not synonymous with ‘animation’, people! It’s important to know the difference as web developers and designers; it’s up to us to be the responsible party.”

cultist: “But people don’t understand those things if there isn’t a simple term to describe them!”

me: “Then perhaps they shouldn’t be using something they don’t understand.”