The future of the Internet has a branding problem: It’s here, but no one knows what to call it. Eight years ago, the future had a name—Web 2.0—but what that meant remains vague to this day. John Battelle (the chairman of Federated Media) and Tim O’Reilly (founder of O’Reilly Media), who have gone on to make a great deal of money from the Web 2.0™ conference they launched in 2003, took a stab at it when they said it would be about the Web becoming a “platform” for software and services. A serviceable enough definition at the time—and for eight years since then everyone has nodded their heads in agreement and said, “Yes, a platform,” as if they understood, while simultaneously shelling out thousands of dollars in conference fees to find out why they were nodding..... Read more.
