Lately I’ve been getting an awful lot of requests for ‘Web 2.0′ features. I’ve always hated the term for a number of reasons.

Web 2.0 was supposed to mark a paradigm shift in the way web sites operated. It promised interactivity and community in an age where sites were static. While we certainly see more of that these days, you also have to remember that these philosophies have been central to the web for many, many years. Amazon was founded in 1994 and Ebay in 1995, and both sites heavily featured user-generated content, even in the early days. In fact Tim Berners Lee described Web 2.0 as:

…people to people. But that was what the Web was supposed to be all along.

Certainly, there’s a look and feel associated with Web 2.0, largely dictated by emerging technologies and limitations of the day. Some of the most representative Web 2.0 technologies, Javascript (created in 1995) and AJAX (1999) have been around for over a decade now. In Interweb years, that’s an age! In fact, a lot of what was erroneously described as AJAX was simply good ol’ fashioned DHTML, re-packaged and re-branded for a new audience.

My biggest beef with Web 2.0 is that it’s frequently used as just another point on the checklist of requests, without any thought as to what such features actually are, or whether they’re appropriate for the site and audience. As in, “we need the site to be usable, accessible and Web 2.0″. As such, the term is completely meaningless! Much better to find out from your users what features they actually need, and go from there.

I’ve even been asked if I can “do” Web 2.0. I usually answer that any features are possible given the right budget. Whether or not you want to give them a label of Web 2.0 is up to you!

I guess the take home message for this article is exactly as the title of this article says: stop paying lip service to a marketing term, find out what your users really need, and implement it.