Hitchhikers Guide to Web 2.0

LOGO2.0 by Stabilo Boss

If you don't know anymore what your buddies and co-workers are talking about when it comes to their online lives... take a look at the following glossary.

This is a bold-faced translation (and slight extension) of a German article by Spreeblick (Per Anhalter durchs Web 2.0) which was just too funny to be shared in the German blogosphere only. So forgive me for stealing this. ;-)

MySpace

MySpace was founded by the music industry and is the largest MMORPG in the world. Kind of like World of Warcraft, but the graphics suck. Everybody who can make up a nickname for himself may join. The goal is to add as many other players (called "friends") as possible to your own profile. The winner is the player with the most "friends". If you leave the game or get kicked out, you also lose all your friends.

Second Life

Second Life is a virtual swinger club for journalists. The platform is financed by the big media conglomerates of the world with the goal to replace editorial staff restaurants, work outings and conference rooms. And also to finally allow sexual harassment at work to the unemployed.

Flickr

Flickr was initially founded by various international lawyers who needed a central place to investigate picture copyright violations. Around 2009 all pics on the Internet are supposed to be registered on Flickr to allow the ultimate researchability.

YouTube

YouTube is the digitalization platform of the movie- and TV-industries. Everyone who collected footage of any kind on VHS or other media over the past decades is allowed to upload their digitized versions to YouTube (providing their IP addresses). The media-gathering campaign is supposed to be completed by the end of 2007. Afterwards the industrie is going to grant access to the repository for a low fee and will subpoaena the original contributers for copiright violations. The final fine will be charged by multiplying the total amount of uploaded minutes with a given rate (minus the self-produced material which exploration rights will then lie with YouTube).

LinkedIn and Xing

LinkedIn and Xing were both founded by the same mailorder companies to show off their suit collections of the past 23 years.

Google Maps

Google Maps is a webcam for people who don't have their own webcam.

Twitter

Twitter is an online self-help tool for suicidal teenagers to prevent them taking the final step to the kingdom-come. This is achieved by submitting them to a realtime-representation of other people's lives so that they can realize their own live isn't nearly as fucked up as they thought.

del.icio.us

del.icio.us is a tool to save and organize URLs you want to look at in peace later on, which you never ever do. It also provides your saved URLs to other users so that, in turn, they can save them and look at them later... which they also never ever do.

last.fm

Originally financed by the international association of elevator manufacturers last.fm has recently evolved to some kind of self-accusation platform of the RIAA (and IFPI). Users can list the songs they illegally downloaded off the Internet.

Wikipedia

Wikipedia is the largest Star Wars discussion forum on the planet.

Weblogs

Weblogs (also: blogs) are very simple electronic publication- and contentmanagement systems, developed by the CIA. Their intent is to give the average Joe the feeling to have a voice, thereby preventing possibly undesirable real actions. Weblogs are the cyber-equivalent of the right to protest.

Blog-Comments

They are kind of a reserved advertisement space for other blogs. They got the communicative value of a pub brawl but are definately not as entertaining.

AJAX

The term AJAX specifies that part of a Web-2.0-businessplan that does display the investor-captial sure, but doesn't reload it.

VoIP

With Voice-Over-IP it is possible to call someone without having a landline. All you need is a broadband Internet connection that usually comes with a landline.

Web

The Web is a tool millions of people use daily to simulate sensible activities.

Web 2.0

Web 2.0 is something you will never ever be able to explain to your granny.

Here ends the list, additions in the comments, please.