Web 2.0 Is Dead? It’s Not Marketing’s Fault!

Posted by Rob Rose on February 16, 2009 at 02:05 AM PDT

Now if there’s something I know a little bit about it’s that lovely line from Romeo And Juliet:  “What’s in a name? That which we call a rose.  By any other name would smell as sweet”.  As you might have guessed, I hear it from time to time when I introduce myself.

I was fascinated over this Valentine’s day weekend with an article that appeared on TechCrunch declaring Web 2.0 (the name anyway) as “dead”.   Never mind the irony that the declaration of death came in the form of a blog post with (as of this writing) more than 200 comments – and links at the top of the nav to Crunchbar, Twitter, the RSS feed ad nauseum.

Now I, first off, have to congratulate the author of the post, Robin Wauters, for one of the more talented link baits that I’ve seen in a while.  I’m sure the article will reach the top of their most popular – and will no doubt go a long way to ensure no “make-goods” for the various advertisers that have purchased space on TechCrunch.  Of course the entire basis for the argument is that looking at Google Trends, that world-wide search traffic for the term is down by some indeterminate percentage – back to it’s pre-2007 level.  Therefore it must be dead right?

But I think the thing that most intrigued me was the level of vitriol in the comments from the readers.  There are hundreds of them.  Most of these were either  the schadenfreude filled self-congratulatory plugs – for predicting that it would happen (along with requisite links to their blog post) – or really angry ones belittling the term and how it has and will always be just “marketing bs” (Note: the usual terminology was much more blunt).

I just want to make two points to this.  First off, we marketers didn’t come up with the term “web 2.0″.  Tim O’Reilly did – and it unfortunately stuck. Quick note to the angry technical folks: trust us – when given a choice to create a name to describe a movement, the marketing folks won’t stick a version number after it.  And when we do – as in the name of my blog - it will be for a level of consistency and definitely meant for the “inside baseball” audience.  

And the second (and much more important) is: who cares.  A name is just a name.  And, therefore, it’s just something to give us reference in conversation; especially when we’re trying to frame our new business or apply technology to some part of our web strategy.      Our customers don’t care about Web 2.0 as a name.   They never even knew that Web 2.0 was born, grew up, had a bunch of kids, had a few procedures done and then (apparently) died.  Online is online. Marketing is marketing. It’s evolving.  That’s all.  

And by the way, for the few that need to actually market Web 2.0 technology to Web 2.0 consumers – they’ve already moved on to other names (a la Social Media, Social Networking et. al).  Another quick note to the angry technical folks:  See what we did there…now, those are terms that marketing folks invent.

Back in the 1960′s, in the National Football League, there was a system of play-calling for the offense called the Coryell System.  It was named after Don Coryell, who really perfected the system while coaching the San Diego Chargers.   It was sometimes called the Air Coryell System, as it was a philosophy of football that relied heavily on the pass – and very little on the run (a revolutionary system at the time).

Now, unless you’re a die-hard football fan (or you’re somehow tied to professional football) – you’ve never heard of the Coryell Offense.  If you’re a casual fan, you may be aware of the subsequent name for it – The West Coast Offense.  And, if you’re like most – you just call it football. 

By any name – it’s still a sweet game.