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Dave Winer did a good job of showing us the basic flaw of using Web X.0 jargon. Sometimes we get so caught up in the genius of each new turn of phrase that we forget to ask ourselves what we are really talking about. The usual answer, “not much at all.” Social Graph is certainly not the first, nor is it the only word that has been pulled into the digerati’s lexicon in recent years. Lets explore a few more.

Web 2.0 Glossary

Advertorial

1. A form of advertising leveraging personal reputation to give creditability to product promotion.

2. An old advertising scheme that has been refactored for new media.

3. What bloggers who claim superiority to the PayPerPost “rabble” call their sponsored endorsements.

Aggregator

1. A web service that uses an API or scrapping to pull in data from across the web.

2. A product that repackages and refocuses content ostensibly to improve user experience.

3. The folks who “borrow” and refactor your content and wrap Adsense around it.

Blog

1. One of many next generation content management systems designed to make web publishing easier for the masses.

2. A platform that allows a two-way platform between commentators and readers.

3. A vehicle for your Google ad units.

Blogging

1. The free and open expression of ones opinion through words and pictures.

2. A form of journalism in which short form news and editorials are created and published on a generally fluid schedule.

3. The exercise in self-flagellation that fuels the overwhelming sense of self-righteousness in the blogosphere.

Blogosphere

1. A colloquial term for the group of authors that write, edit and publish blogs.

2. The idea that blogs and their authors form an ecosystem around which conversations occur.

3. Where rationality and measured discussions go to die.

4. See also: Bedlam

Business Model

1. The who, what, where, when and why of your business.

2. The path that you will take in order to generate shareholder/investor value.

3. An archaic term that has lost all meaning in the Web 2.0 landscape, often scoffed at as being “so 1998…”

Conference

1. An event at which people who share a particular interest come together to discuss their respective industries.

2. One of many events held in and around Palo Alto where entrepreneurs, journalists, and their hangers on come to explore technology.

3. A two day exercise in self aggrandizement that culminates in a raffle, a party, some poorly written pitches and a general increase in the attendee’s sense of self-loathing.

Crowdsource

1. Applying the creative talents of users in order to generate creative work for a social media project.

2. The concept that many Web 2.0 sites including YouTube, Digg and Flickr are based off of.

3. Free content

Digg

1. A social news site that allows users to submit, rate and discuss the relevant news of the day.

2. A “democratic” news source that allows content to be promoted by a community

3. A traffic vector for your next “Top X Y” list or LOLCats mashup.

Facebook App

1. An application based on the Facebook API that was launched at the F8 conference.
2. Usually an extension of a commonly used Facebook feature or a subset of features from another web service that have been pulled into the Facebook walled garden.
3. How Mark Zuckerburg outsourced Facebook’s code development and reduced costs by convincing coders that Super Poke was actually a viable business model.
4. See also: Crowdsource

Funding

1. Investment capital used to get a startup off of the ground.

2. Something so easy to get in the Valley that even a 6 year old can do it.

3. How I paid for my Z4.

Google

1. A search engine engine company created for the express purpose of indexing all the world’s data.

2. A bastion of technical innovation in the search and content aggregation industries. A company that designs, launches and maintains a massive portfolio of search related web services.

3. An advertising driven Golgotha the likes of which the world has never seen.

4. See also: Skynet

Mainstream Media

1. Traditional news sources that usually can be distinguished as having a presence in either print media or on television.

2. A sometimes tongue and cheek term used to describe the “old guard” of the media world that is beginning to lose relevance in the digital economy.

3. The straw man that bloggers burn in effigy daily in an attempt to deny the fact that they still manage to break news faster than we do despite their “old media” stodginess.

Mash-up

1. The act of combining two concepts, one of which is usually a software API, to create a new product.

2. A way to leverage pre-existing software platforms to speed the development cycle.

3. The backbone of Web 2.0 which historically involves three guys in a garage deciding that the entire world could really use a way to graph Google Maps data against locations in which Lindsay Lohan has passed out.

SEO/SEM

1. An attempt to use particular formats and techniques to increase a web page’s placement in search engines. Most notably, Google.

2. An industry of professionals who design and implement these plans and manage a web sites traffic through leveraging search engines.

3. A mostly alchemical science that seeks to turn crap into gold.

4. See also: Voodoo, Black Magic

Social Network

1. A web service designed to bring users together around a subject of interest.

2. A product, usually containing a “friends list” and “profile page”

3. A publicly searchable database of personal information used to generate customized marketing lists.

4. See also: Rapleaf

Social Media

1. Social media describes the online technologies and practices that people use to share content, opinions, insights, experiences, perspectives, and media themselves.

2. The blanket under which most Web 2.0 services fall. Any collaborative communications medium.

3. The holy grail for tech journalists who don’t remember AIM. An interesting footnote in the history of the web for everyone else.

Startup

1. A business often marked by an innovative management style, a fast development cycle, and a single product.

2. A young company that is often still creating their first product, refining their monetization strategy and developing business relationships.

3. The only way to convince 50 year old professionals to burn several million dollars, often in a furnace located somewhere in or around Palo Alto.

Tags

1. The use of “real word” categories to organize content in a way that is more in line with the way that real people understand it.

2. A collaborative sorting scheme used in many Web 2.0 web services.

3. When a robot comes from the future to save us from our inevitable self-destruction, this is the technology that will likely be touted as the beginning of the end.

The Valley

1. The southern part of the San Francisco Bay Area in Northern California in the United States.

2. A mecca of technological development, and a bastion for entrepreneurial developers, specifically those with an interest in internet technologies.

3. A place where 6 year olds get millions of dollars in funding, and where genius comes second only to smug self-satisfaction.

Valleywagging

1. Spreading unconfirmed rumors, or overblown editorials often in an attempt to generate traffic or “linkbait.”

2. A colloquialism based on the name of the popular Silicon Valley gossip rag, Valleywag.

3. See also: Blogging

Viral Marketing

1. The use of psychology, advertising, and framing to manufacturer content designed to be spread “virally” over the internet.

2. Any attempt to create an advertising campaign that is spread primarily by word of mouth.

3. Pandering to the lowest common denominator in an effort to shill some otherwise unsellable product.

Web 2.0 Roundup

There were just too many of these to really do them justice, if you have any others that just have to be added to the glossary leave them in the comments. Thanks Dave for finally prompting me to put this together.

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