http://youtube.com/v/6gmP4nk0EOE

I never like it when I hear people casually throwing around the term “Web 2.0.” It’s Ouriel’s fault (See link to blog on roll to the right). He invests in Web 2.0 startups. But he doesn’t use that term.

Why not? It’s generic and like any other buzz word predisposed to being vague. Some people even claim that the term now extends to certain image design aesthetics, like the reflective images Apple uses on everything nowadays. I can’t say I agree with that. That is too specific.

The term is actually somewhere in between completely unclear and representative of very specific things. Those individual things can be examples, but they shouldn’t suffice as definitions of Web 2.0 as I constantly hear them being used.

This video is the first time I’ve not only felt the term explained correctly and succinctly but it’s the first time I’ve even come to understand it fully myself.

Web 2.0 is everything this video shows that it is. It is not Flickr and YouTube, but Flickr and YouTube are perfect examples of Web 2.0 principles at work.

[Thanks go to this professor and Wired Magazine for the insight]