“Jumpin’ the shark,” like Web 2.0, has jumped the shark

Richard McManus, who has written extensively about Web 2.0, now is talking about how it’s dead. Kind of. OK, really, it’s the term “Web 2.0” that’s dead. We’re getting all hung up on the semantics, McManus says, getting himself all hung up on the semantics.

The most interesting part of McManus’ post, though, gets lost in all this discussion about what Web 2.0 is, isn’t, or otherwise. He mentions that he plans to discuss “…more media-related Web technologies.” He continues, “many of the things I’m interested in are being done by Yahoo!, which by now is generally recognized as a media company.” Interesting concept, this emergence of the web-as-media, and I think he’s onto something so much that I’ve been working on a piece for the better part of a week about the very thing. The funny thing is, while no one’s willing to admit it yet, we’ve been down this route before. It, too, had a name that many bandied about back in the day that fell out of favor. They called it… convergence. Should we start calling this “Convergence 2.0”?