I read an interesting article in techcrunch that suggested that the term Web 2.0 is starting to fall out of favour, both as a Web search term and as a PR subject line. A quick search at Google Trends replicates these findings. It appears that the peak search time for Web 2.0 search was actually 2007, with just a blip in 2008 bringing it back up to the 2007 level, coinciding with IBM's Web 2.0 server. Google's other search data mining tool - Google Insights - which looks at search across all Google domains, shows an even more radical rise and fall.
So why the drop off in popularity of the term? Well Web 3.0 hasn't really fired up the imagination, and perhaps Web 2.0 is just starting to sound a little techy. So while there is no suggestion that the collaborative functionality that Web 2.0 tools spawned is going away, it looks like people are starting to describe it in a new way. A leading candidate is 'social media', which Google Insights shows is starting to go supernova.
After a Masters in Computer Science, I decided that I preferred writing about IT rather than programming. My 20-year writing career has taken me to Hong Kong and London where I've edited and written for IT, business and electronics publications. In 2002 I co-founded Futurity Media with Stewart Baines where I continue to write about a range of topics such as unified communications, cloud computing and enterprise applications.