Web 2.0 becomes the one-millionth English word

Posted on 11 Jun 2009 at 11:06

Web 2.0 has become the one-millionth word in the English language after it was recognised by the Global Language Monitor (GLM).

The Austin, Texas-based institute documents, analyses and tracks trends with an emphasis on 'global English'. It defines a new word as having the minimum of 25,000 citations.

Several other words were considered for the millionth spot, but the rational for choosing them seems strange to us. For example, Jai Ho! (made popular by Slumdog Millionaire) is listed as the 999,999 English word, despite the fact the GLM acknowledges that this is both 'Hindi' (not English, then) and a 'phrase' (not a word, then).

Web 2.0, seems like a strange choice regardless of whether you class it as word or not. The GLM describes it as "The next generation of web products and services, coming soon to a browser near you."

This in itself is odd, as Web 2.0 has been bandied about since 1999; ten years later is hardly 'coming soon'.

Then there's the fact that Web 2.0 is a pointless and stupid marketing term that doesn't mean anything. According to the Wikipedia entry 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 utilize the Web".

That says it all: Web 2.0 does not actually exist. All of the so-called Web 2.0 sites, such as Facebook and YouTube, merely use technology that's been around since the advent of the internet.

Author: David Ludlow

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