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# What's in a name?
- URL: https://werd.io/whats-in-a-name/
- Published: 2006-05-27T16:19:19.000Z
- Updated: 2025-06-12T11:01:20.000Z
- Author: Ben Werdmuller
- Tags: General, #ben-684a32da145d7d001be71dae, #Migrated-1749693130536, #wp, #wp-post, #Import 2025-06-11 21:52

Over on Boing Boing, Cory Doctorow has [a piece about the O'Reilly / Web 2.0 trademark issue](http://www.boingboing.net/2006/05/26/can%5Fanyone%5Fown%5Fweb%5F2.html) that I [mentioned yesterday](http://elgg.net/bwerdmuller/weblog/23345.html). O'Reilly are asserting that Web 2.0 is their trademark, thereby assuring everyone they've well and truly jumped the shark in terms of being a name to trust in web culture.

What I don't understand is - and I realise I'm being a hypocrite here - why we have to use the 'web 2.0' term at all. Can't we all agree to just call it the web? Any non-static website that doesn't use the 'web 2.0' technologies is obsolete, end of story. While it was a useful marketing term, that's what it always was: marketing. This stuff is changing the direction of software and how we use computers; I think what we call it is really the least important of the many issues we're going to have to deal with.