It's funny, but even though Web 2.0 is argued by many to be meaningless hyperbole, designed to extract money from VCs...


...it really has come to encompass several hard to understand concepts. Ideas like Ajax, tagging, mashups...all the technologies that make Web sites seem more expressive, interconnected, and social. Web 2.0 is certainly not an ideal term, but it has tremendous value as an umbrella term that communicates the general nature of the more connected, more social, more expressive Web.
Having an overarching term that encompasses lots of hard to understand concepts is a challenge that marketers are having now in talking about the 'new' marketing paradigm of using blogs, viral media, conversational marketing, citizen media, co-creative business models, tagging, podcasts, vodcasts, micromedia, microcontent, Internet PR, and the list goes on....
It is a shame that there is no term currently that encompasses 'new' marketing. In fact it seems marketers (including myself) have been busy "branding" our ideas, wonderful ideas, but we are losing an awful lot of power and equity by all trying to coin terms. Tara Hunt has her Pinko Marketing, Hugh Macleod has the Global Microbrand and the Hughtrain, Joseph Jaffe has 'new' marketing, Paul Beelen talks about Advertising 2.0, Organic is talking about Agency 2.0 and I also jumped on the bandwagon with the term Micromarketing, and then of course the grandaddy The Cluetrain Manifesto has the.... Cluetrain Manifesto.
Obviously lots of different perspectives, some related to advertising, others branding, marketing, and PR, all with their own spin, and own intelectual rigor, but the similarities, and root philosophies bind all these ideas. IMHO we would have a lot more impact on the marketplace if there was some kind of loose coalition around a concept that was relevant and understandable to business.
Oh and BTW I have "service marked" marketing 2.0 so don't go putting on any conferences about it.