Back to PR: Magazine calls Web 2.0 bluff after study

German industry mag w&v calls Web 2.0 a bluff, interpreting a Dialego study. According to the report, knowledge of the terms “Web 2.0” or “Weblogs” has not or only minimaly increased between 06/206 and 12/2006 in Germany (the study also includes numbers for UK and France):
“Have you heard of the term Web 2.0?”
35% yes in June vs. 37% yes in December
“Do you know weblogs or blogs?”
65% yes in June vs 62% yes in December

The study also asked in regard to awareness level of sites like Wikipedia, YouTube, Xing, Flickr and more technical sites like digg, technorati, 30 boxes, 43 things, with the result that only few people knew or held accounts with the last group of services.

One problem with these results is of course that we don’t know how the 1000 people questioned were put together and whether the same 1000 people were questioned 6 months later. But even somebody with a little insight should be able to draw the correct conclusions from these results which do not necessary lead to calling Web 2.0 a bluff.

For example, few Wikipedia accounts is not a reason that Wikipedia doesn’t work. It is well known that only a small percentage of the users edit and even fewer write articles (10%, 2%, if I remember correctly).

As for other services mentioned, one has to keep in mind that there is very often more than one provider. Here in Germany e.g., we have del.icio.us, flickr and blogger competitors with interfaces in German.

Lets look at the YouTube figures. While almost 60% of the people questioned have heard of YouTube in December, less than 10 hold an account. So what? You don’t need to have an account to watch the videos…
All in all, a poor interpretation I think, trying to hype the hype in some way.

Technorati Tags: web20, wuv, study, research