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Word of the Year crown goes to "Blog" -- What else?
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ABOUT MATT MCALISTER
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Matt McAlister began his technology publishing career at Macworld Online where he covered new technologies and games. He then joined the founding team of The Standard and led the online efforts in the US from launch until 2000 when he left to help launch the European edition in London. Currently, he is VP and General Manager for InfoWorld.com by day and instigator of a dotcom media revival by night. His blog is located here.
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The press has been all over the reports that "Blog" is Merriam-Webster's most-searched word of the year. And I started thinking about what other phrases or companies might fall in the same ballpark in the Internet business this year. Skype is perhaps the most dramatic example of a disruptive business model and empowering technology. The Google IPO turned heads and signalled new confidence for all of us in the Internet business. And the introduction of Mozilla's Firefox woke a few sleeping giants. Though nothing could have been more telling that a revolution was happening with blogs than the common held belief at a recent blogger conference that CNet is "old media".
Of course, there were certain pressures that drove blogging into the popular consciousness. New media forms evoke new forms of expression. And after 2 years of depression in the markets and pain and suffering in the geopolitical spheres, the timing for a new communication form could not have been better.
I would bet that if Webster's had tracked this statistic back to 1998 "Ecommerce" would have made the top 5. We might have found "IPO" leading the pack in 1999. Perhaps "Bubble" in 2000. And, of course, "Osama" must have been the winner in 2001. (Google's Zeitgeist archive is always a fascinating study of pop culture.)
I'm encouraged to find the Internet driving pop culture discussion again, as there is so much vitality and power yet to be found here. John Doerr once proclaimed in the late '90's that we haven't hyped the Internet enough, as the transformational power inherent in the Internet as a concept is still only just starting to become reality.
If I were to make a prediction for 2005, I might guess that "RSS" becomes the new word. Though this industry has made every effort to build a more user friendly name for this publishing format, we're way past critical mass now. And as the blogging revolution unfolds, the power of RSS will start making more sense to more and more people. But we can't rule out that 2005 may be the year that "VoIP" becomes as prevalent as "Cyberspace" was in 1996.
Posted December 2, 2004 04:52 PM | TrackBack (27)
