Renaming Web 2.0

Doc Searls thinks it's too late to rename Web 2.0 and he's probably right, but I'm enjoying the exercise of trying.  The suggested new names coming in show how people see this thing coming down the track like a turbo-charged Cluetrain.

Two names I heard this week that appeal to me are, "The Social Web," which has been suggested by several people in comments and "Web II" or "Web Two" or "Web 2," which my friend Andy Ruff used at dinner earlier this week-- but he did not spell it. It has a totally different connotation without the ".0" part of the name.

So what do you think?  Are either of these names any good? Is Doc Right? Should I just abandon the exercise as futility?

Comments

[JimMcKeeth]

There are still a lot of people who have no idea what Web 2.0 really is, and they keep getting it confused with Internet 2 (the one research centers and the govt are using). Sure, it may be late in the day, but I think it is a worthy task to give it a better name.

[Markus Pirchner]

Newsweek suggests "Living Web" and I've read of "Live Web", too.
I guess we'd need a version that translates adequately into different languages easily. Hm.

[Charles Jolley]

I remember in the dotcom days, we called it:

* Information Superhighway
* The Web
* The Internet
* dotcom boom
* New Economy
* New New Economy
* Information Economy
* Information Revolution

and a dozen others. These all had slightly different meanings but to most people they generally referred to the same thing...so what's in a name? Today we mostly call that era 'The Bubble'.

Personally, I think maybe in the long run we'll just call this 'The Second Bubble'. :-)

[Brian Brown]

Damnit Charlie, the name's Nuanda.

[Gabriel Rodriguez]

I love the idea of calling it the 'The Social Web'. I'm not sure that it's not too late, but I just might start referring to it as 'The Social Web'.

[Jack Krupansky]

Like any good marketing effort or social movement, Web 2.0 now has a life of its own, so it's best to simply get out of the way and "let it run".

Any attempt to rename it now would likely sap "the movement" of a significant amount of its vital energy.

Sure, we can think up names for Web 3.0 and whatever might follow the current constituents of Web 2.0, but why not wait until we get there.

I was at a session at the VentureOne Summit venture capital conference last week and they insisted on titling the session "Podcasting, Blogging & RSS" instead of simply "Web 2.0". I asked the panel what they thought of the term "Web 2.0" and Charlene Li of Forrester Research seemed to suggest that "Web 2.0" refers to the technologies and that "Social Computing" was the market or phenomenon that the technologies are attempting to address. So, that's a good question to answer: Are you looking for a new name for the technologies or for the market need?

I'll continue to lobby for my term "Corporate America 2.0", referring to companies reorganizing themselves to address consumer demand for "social computing" as hinted at in the Cluetrain Manifesto.

-- Jack Krupansky

[Mark Kuznicki]

The Social Web; still works for me. I'm starting to shift my language already. The Living Web works for me too, but it's a little creepy.

[stumax]

I think that names catch on for a reason, even if that reason isn't always immediately clear. If someone comes up with a better name, it'll catch on, too. But the prime function of language is to make ourselves understood, and most people at least understand what the name Web 2.0 is supposed to evoke: the end of one era and the beginning of another.

My bet would be that this battle's over. I wouldn't waste a lot of energy trying to fight the tide.

[Paul]

I started to get a little wrapped up in the 2.0 naming frenzy and I realised that obsessing about what to rename 'Web 2.0' to is pretty much the same as obsessing about the label itself. What is more important, in my humble opinion, is the underlying substance. Forget about the name, what is the thing? What is the phenomenon and how can we use these technologies to improve how we interact?

Remember all the hype about the Net in the late 90s? Same principle.

[Dave]

I like to call the web2.0 stuff "The Collaborative Web".

[Andrew]

Web 2.0 isn't that bad a name. Even if I thought it was that bad a name, I'd think that it was too late to do anything about it. If I have to go with a word rather than a number to qualify "web," I'd take "social."

[Sid Steward]

The new web (and the new media) is so personalized that niches are blooming everywhere. Maybe we need /more/ names for the web, not fewer.

[elpollo]

Is a great name, but then will we keep growing?