The Next Big Thing: Why Web 2.0 Isn't Enough
It's easy to spot revolutions or major events in the past. The shrinking of computer parts in the 70s, the PC revolution of the 80s that led to the Internet explosion of the 90s, etc. At the beginning of the new millennium, we had at our fingertips millions of pages of information.
Context & Ripple Effects
By mid-2007 the "Web 2.0" label had been under attack for nearly two years: Wired News reported in October 2005 that the cracks were starting to show, the web2.wsj2.com blog catalogued ten issues facing Web 2.0 going into 2006, and in June 2007 Marc Andreessen published his argument that there is no such thing as Web 2.0. This TechConsumer column joins that line of critique from the commentator side, framing the participatory-web era not as a destination but as one link in a chain running from 1970s hardware miniaturization through the 1980s PC revolution to the 1990s Internet explosion.
What gives the argument teeth is how much identity got bound to the label: TechCrunch's December 2005 roundup of Web 2.0 companies it couldn't live without shows products marketing themselves under the banner. If the term collapses the way Andreessen and now this column suggest, that positioning is what erodes first.
First-order effects
- Startups and media properties carrying the Web 2.0 brand face a growing legitimacy problem, with the critique now coming both from prominent builders like Andreessen and from consumer-tech commentators arguing the label describes too little.
- The column's own lineage — chips, PCs, Internet — pushes readers to judge current web companies by which underlying platform shift they ride, not by their Web 2.0 credentials.
Second-order effects
- Whoever successfully names the successor to Web 2.0 captures the framing advantage: press coverage, conference themes, and investor attention follow the new label, forcing branded companies to reposition or defend the old one.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, the industry settles into a recurring branding cycle in which each platform generation is labeled, commoditized, and declared insufficient — while the durable layer beneath the labels (miniaturized hardware, personal computers, ubiquitous connectivity) keeps compounding.
The trend: Tech commentary since 2005 has been dismantling the Web 2.0 label, signaling a search for the next platform-generation brand to organize products, capital, and coverage around.