Tim O’Reilly retries the definition of his term “web 2.0”:
Web 2.0 is the business revolution in the computer industry caused by the move to the internet as platform, and an attempt to understand the rules for success on that new platform. Chief among those rules is this: Build applications that harness network effects to get better the more people use them. (This is what I’ve elsewhere called “harnessing collective intelligence.”)
I have a lot of respect for Tim’s work, but I have to say here that this definition sucks. It’s too long and, well, indefinite. Gladly, Tim quotes Google’s Eric Schmidt with a shorter definition:
Don’t fight the internet.
I like this one better.