Usually, these moves are timely publicity stunts of sorts by dictionary makers. However, the move today by a group called The Global Language Monitor to make “Web 2.0” the one millionth word in the English language is a bit puzzling, considering that term seems to have run its course. In fact, search volume for the term is about 50 percent off of its peak at this point according to Google Trends.
According to the group, their methodology for adding words is based on total number of searches for it, so, it sort of makes sense that they might be a bit late to the party.
That said, the term Web 2.0 was certainly significant – and remains so to some extent – to the recent history of the Web. However, the things that constituted “Web 2.0” two years ago – like social networking, web-based software, and content sharing – have become so commonplace that it’s rare we refer specifically to them in that context anymore.