The Web is in Beta

Like many people, the term "Web 2.0" hasn't quite been sitting well with me.  And while I agree that it isn't necessarily the best of designations to give to everything going on the web right now, we do need some kind of moniker by which we can refer to everything we're now learning about what the web is supposed to be like, and how it effects us.

Recently I've really taken to the term "social media" for explaining to people what's going on and how it impacts them.  It allows me draw in the history of media, and how it's impacted politics, economics, how people communicate, even the very nature of knowledge itself.  I'm beginning to think that for the most part, Web 2.0 isn't what people need to know about.  Web 2.0 is the back end of this revolution.  Social media is the front end,

As for the 2.0 metaphor we keep applying to things, I think I know why it hasn't felt right for so many of us.  While the web has come a long way, it is not to the point that many of the key visionaries who have inspired the web have envisioned.  Their visions should give us a better idea as to where the milestone markers for measuring the web.  What we are now calling Web 1.0 was really a pre-alpha proof of concept stage and entered alpha following the dot-com crash.  Today, I'd have to say that we're beginning to enter the next stage of the web's development.  This isn't Web 2.0, the Web is just now coming into beta.