On 9 January 2005, I published the first of my Web 2.0 Weekly Wrap-ups. When I launched it I described it as “a weekly summary of news and views relating to Web 2.0 (Web as platform).” I pumped out one a week for the rest of 2005. In many ways I viewed the Wrap-Up as the anchor for my blog.
Currently the Weekly Wrap-Up is on a break – as I enjoy the New Zealand summer weather, mow the lawns, quaff coronas, spend quality time, do maintenance on R/WW’s design, strategize for 2006 and watch the cricket. So this is a good opportunity to look back at the highlights of the Weekly Wrap-Up in 2005. I’m not sure what form it will take in ’06, but it served me well in ’05.
Here’s a list of one highlight chosen from each Weekly Wrap-Up throughout the year. In a way it tells the story of the whole Web 2.0 meme, as it rolled out and eventually drove some of us to distraction. Time Magazine better hurry up and put Web 2.0 on their cover…
2-8 January 2005: Six Apart acquires LiveJournal9-15 January: Feedburner releases statistics for RSS Aggregator market share16-22 January: Lawyer Martin Schwimmer opened up a can of worms with his request (granted) to have his RSS feed removed from Bloglines.30 Jan-6 Feb: a sensationalistic headlines special. Top story: Bloglines Shocker! Butler Buys Master of the Blog Universe!7-13 Feb: 43Things gets both positive and negative publicity from Salon.com in the space of 24 hours. 14-20 Feb: NY Times Buys About.com.21-27 Feb: an Oscars special. Best New Web App Approach That Isn’t Really New = AJAX!28 Feb – 6 Mar: “If Web 2.0 was a school classroom, then Yahoo would be the teacher’s pet right now.”7-13 Mar: Microsoft’s Start.com21-27 Mar: “So… what was new at Yahoo this week?”28 Mar – 3 Apr: del.icio.us gets funding4-10 Apr: “Advertising within an RSS feed is a sensitive issue and it’s a case of softly softly for publishers, but I do think we’re turning a corner.”11-17 Apr: Rupert Murdoch’s Sermon From The Mount18-24 Apr: Mobile Web 2.Woe25 Apr – 1 May: “This week Google released two major updates to their online advertising services, which account for 97% of Google’s revenue.”2-8 May: Sirius Satellite Radio Inc. launching a podcasting show, to be hosted by ex-MTV star Adam Curry. 9-15 May: Greasemonkey gives power to power users16-22 May: Google factory Tour: “New? Google Personalized Homepage, Google Earth (a satellite mapping service), AdSense for Feeds, language translations.”23-29 May: Techie Post of the Week: chmod 777 web30 May – 5 June: RSS Ripoff Merchants6-12 June: Introducing… New apps on the block13-19 June: International Special20-26 June: “The biggest story of the week, probably even the year, was Microsoft’s bearhug embrace of RSS.”27 June – 3 July: Thoughts on Yahoo! My Web 2.04-10 July: London bombings11-17 July: RSS Growing Up So Fast18-24 July: News Corp bought MySpace – implications25-31 July: Ajax Backlash1-7 August: Hype 2.08-14 August: “A lot of interest this week in how the label ‘RSS’ is being usurped by ‘feeds’ or ‘Web feeds’.”15-21 August: Flock and WordPress.com released.22-28 August: Google releases Google Talk.29 Aug – 4 Sep: Social tools help in Katrina Hurricane5-11 Sep: “News this week that Microsoft is releasing a set of developer APIs for four MSN properties: MSN Virtual Earth, MSN Messenger, Start.com and MSN Search.”12-18 Sep: eBay confirmed its acquisition of Skype for between $2.6 – 4.1 billion.19-25 Sep: “This week saw a big increase in blog posts about Web 2.0, probably because of the upcoming Web 2.0 conference.”26 Sep – 2 Oct: “A lot of online trees were felled this week to write about what Web 2.0 means.”3-9 October: Web 2.0 Conference Special10-16 Oct: Susan Mernit quote: “The Valley is humming with activity and with what some say is acquisition fever, but is often the happy sounds of geeks being creative.”17-23 Oct: “This was the week when the Web 2.0 Naysayers reached a crescendo of cynicism and even bile.”24-30 Oct: Big 3 news…31 Oct – 6 Nov: Microsoft Live wrap-up7 – 13 Nov: “There’s something about the Web 2.0 meme that drives people into either passionate, sometimes bubble-icious behavior – or enrages them into cyncial, often foul-mouthed rants. There’s not much middle ground.”14-20 Nov: Google Base – the good, the bad and the ugly26 Nov – 2 Dec: Yahoo integrates RSS into Yahoo! Mail and their alerts service.3 – 9 Dec: Open up your media, the Lightnet revolution is here.10 – 16 Dec: Yahoo buys del.icio.us
Originally published on ReadWriteWeb (archived copy)