Where this “Web 2.0″ is failing

I’ve been reading FlockSucks. Whether I agree with anything said there or not, the guy has great points.

Most importantly, listening to him and the readers that comment there is a good counter to all the “Web 2.0″ buzz that I find so annoying. I mean, made up words, meaningless technologies, social this-and-that… it’s not impressing me.

But more important than that, I’ve realized something important. This “Web 2.0″ stuff, and all the new technologies coming out every day, is really just helping people who already use the web. It’s not bringing new users in. It isn’t teaching people who know nothing about the web how to use it. For example, Flock “landed.” Flock should be the answer to the social web. It should make it possible for all users to get into technologies like blogging, Flickr, del.icio.us, etc… but if you were someone who knew nothing about these things, or the web in general, would you even know what Flock was? A look at the website doesn’t tell you anything. Please, the frontpage doesn’t even say “browser” anywhere. If I didn’t already know what Flock was, I would never find out at the website.

Nor would other services like del.icio.us, Digg, Flickr, Wordpress, etc. They all have this minimal approach, and some employ the “pastel colors and rounded corners” look splattered with buzz words that embodies “Web 2.0.” This is nice for savvy users like me, but it does nothing to bring new users in.

Don’t believe me? I’m not kidding! I’m at a big university, where everyone uses the internet daily. A lot of people here have no idea what “blogging” is, have never heard of Flickr or Digg, and most don’t even know there’s an alternative to Internet Explorer, or why they should switch. Many of them spend their time on a few websites, namely Facebook, MySpace, and Xanga. I wish more of them knew about this stuff, but where would I point them to? There’s no introduction to all these new technologies, no tutorials, no explanations in plain english, buzz word free.

So where does the fault lie? I’m going to guess that the developers of these new technologies are to blame. They see a sizable market for the next syndicated-ajax-social-blogging-podcast service, and they set out to do one thing: make money. In the end, they don’t think about the bigger picture. They don’t think about how to net more users or make their technology friendly to the newbie user. They just set out to get the attention of that niche group of internet users that spends all day online. The same group. Always.

If these “Web 2.0″ geeks suddenly start trying to bring in new users, other than the same blogosphere crowd, then I’ll be impressed. Until then, the “Web 2.0″ is not doing it’s part to expand the web.