I just received a newsletter from a local D.C. business organization.
Within the newsletter, the group’s president recaps the year and provides a response to Time’s Person of the Year selection. To highlight an example of a 2.0 company the president chose LinkedIn.com. Here is what he said:
Get yourself into the Web 2.0 world now!“ One of the most prolific and successful business applications of Web 2.0 is LinkedIn.com. This site allows you to take the first step in on-line publishing and allows you to publish on your favorite topic: “You”. You post who you are and keep your information current. Although LinkedIn is not new, its adoption has now hit critical mass and like the old days of fax machines and emails, you will at some point just be expected to have a LinkedIn profile.
What I disagree with is the last stanza. In my opinion, to imply that users will be “expected” to have an affiliation with any website, or company runs contrary to 2.0 philosophies. Web 2.0 is all about letting users decide whichever services or applications they want, then designing systems capable of ’talking’ to one another so those system operate seamlessly.