While I like marketing-readiness of the term Web 2.0, a part of the metaphor doesn’t ring true to me, namely this: in software, version 2.0 is a replacement for version 1.0; you usually don’t keep version 1.0 around. With Web 2.0, however, Web 1.0 (and 1.1, 1.2, etc.) are still around and likely will be for a long time. Web 2.0 isn’t replacing what we have, only supplementing and augmenting it. And living alongside it.
All this AJAX stuff is pretty cool, but we shouldn’t forget that one click away is still certs.com…
i think the ironic nature of “versioning” The Web with a 2.0 moniker, does exactly what we need it to do. a simple term like “web 2.0” fresh in our skulls makes us all look up from our designs and code to take a daily account of the bigger picture and where our individual work fits into it.
anyone getting too caught up in the nomenclature discussion can’t see the forest through the trees anyhow.