I hate those flaky terminologies that are used to describe certain ICT phenomena’s without actually defining them. Everyone is talking about it but nobody really knows what it entails. The term ‘Web 2.0’ is a good example of that.
Ask anyone and they will either come up with some elaborate but non-descriptive explanation or simply say it is the new thing out there. Even Wikipedia keeps it about as vague as possible:

“(Web 2.0) …does not refer to an update to any technical specifications, but rather to cumulative changes in the ways software developers and end-users use the Web.” 

Yeah right. That explains it……

The problem is that the more flaky it is the more popular it starts to become so I wasn’t surprised to hear someone talk about  ‘PR 2.0’ today at all. It is clearly catching on. Just stick ‘2.0’ to the end of it and it’s a whole new ball game!

At least ‘….2.0’ is relatively save. I couldn’t help but chuckle when I read some tweets that speculated about the name of the next Lotus Notes release and that it shouldn’t be called Lotus Notes 9 as it sounds like ‘Lotus Notes Nein’ (Nein being German for ‘No’). Look hard enough and you’ll find an alternative meaning for almost any term in some other language some where.

I mean, SOA still can be kind of a tricky subject for any self respecting Dutch account manager to bring up in a conversation. Not because customers are weary of thinking about the concept of using ‘services’ but simply because the term is actually widely known as the acronym for Sexually Transmitted Disease (STD). And say Flickr to someone in The Netherlands and people won’t think you’re talking about sharing photos on the web but think you’re actually calling them a faggot.

But hey, what’s in a name!