Buzzwords that have lost their meaning

[ihoss.com]

I have an exam tomorrow in GUI design, and the book uses some buzzwords I find quite ridiculous. Most buzzwords don't have a meaning, but are used to add value to a product description. But some buzzwords suffer from inflation; they have been used too much, and have lost their value.

I came across these words today, and instead of sounding cool I thought they sounded old and washed out. What do you guys think of them; would you use them to describe a product you made?

Cyberspace - cliché 1990's sci-fi word.
Multimedia - everything is multimedia today, so why use this word?

Web 2.0 is probably heading in that direction soon, along with other words. Some of you probably have experience with words that you used to describe products with, but because of usage-inflation, you have stopped using it.

[gerbick]

Cyberspace, I think of Ender's Game. Multimedia... I think of my old 386 with the 1X CD-ROM. And Web 2.0 just annoys me.

"New Media" is starting to wear thin on me too, now. So is RIA.

[MagnusVS]

I hate "Web 2.0". Just stupid...

[ihoss.com]

Web 2.0 is stupid, but I really hate the people who talk about web 3.0. The next 'version' of the web ain't going to be anything like what they think.

AJAX also annoys me, because it's just a middle-management friendly term for XMLHttpRequest, but peole seem to have forgotten that it stands for anything and just define any website using javascript and/or css to be AJAX.

[gerbick]

asynchronous javascript and xml... ajax. it doesn't bother me as bad as the rest.

but if I hear "photoshop this for me" again... I'm killing.

[ihoss.com]

Then we have completely opposite views. Company names/products as verbs is something I use all the time.

But Google is getting a bit old though. Google is either the best thing in the entire world, or an evil corporation that knows everything about you. Comparing your product to Google is admitting defeat, but lots of people still do it.

[argonauta]

hacker - there are no real hackers anymore.
enhanced user experience - a penis enlargement pump comes to mind.
pageviews - not exactly a buzzword, but people measuring a site's success by telling you their pageviews number is raidicouliouz

[jAQUAN]

That's pretty much why I hate institutionalized learning. Every designer I've worked with that had been to art school were the most stunted operators. They learned a few words and methods in school and left assuming thats the way everyone does it and would ever do it.

Cyberspace? really? It makes me think of Neromancer (which desperately needs to be made into a movie btw).

Web 2.0 is a gateway term. I started seeing it used here of all places and since I can't stand not knowing what my peers are talking about I started to use it too. I took a break from flash and learned all the CSS, xhtml, js, and php I could handle. Once I got a grip on ajax I realized just how dumb of a term 'web2.0' is. It basically means "We are just now figuring out how the web should work."

There are still some hackers out there but mostly just freakers and reversers.

[Saint Benedetta]

Completely agree with the whole institutionalised learning thing. I have a unit called 'Virtual Cultures' and it is so fking annoying. One of the assignments is an "academic blog" so you have no idea how many fking times those buzzwords was used (including me...because those buzzwords are used by lecturers/tutors!).

Keep in mind, I'm a marketing student. Please don't throw rotten tomatoes at me.

- Web 2.0 (I hate it because it denotes that there are definable 'web' phases) and its cousins, Web 1.0 and Web 3.0.
- Mobile 2.0
- Hyperlocal
- Produsage (holy fk, my lecturer has a book called 'produsage' or something like that and he keeps on bloody pushing that word to us and making us reference his book! I have used the word 'produsage' about 15 times in my assignment)
- Social, social, social (social bookmarking, social media, social networking, social citations, etc).
- LOL at the AJAX thing
- Cyberspace. If I read a document using that word, it screams "I'm outdated!"
- And a heap of other buzzwords because I'm a marketing student.

I'm probably going to sound like a real tool for saying this, but I am undertaking work experience for a company and a non-profit while studying and it's a different environment compared to academia. Reading some of those student blogs p*sses me off because of the buzzwords and some just summarise and mash up content. It needs to be applicable. There is no use learning how to write a 500 word blog entry on "the differences between commercial production and community produsage", fk that. Also, some students seem to think that blogging is useless when they "go out in the real world". I'm using/implementing blogging for the two jobs - my festival manager and one of the PR/marketing people has no idea how to use blogs. Teaching them in plain, everyday language helps instead of creating a 500 buzzwordvomit aimed at academia.

/Ok, that's off my chest.

[gerbick]

You know... cyberspace is played and old. Hell, even cybersex is all but dead now... and that's saying a lot.

Now please kills pwn and pr0n. I'd rather say own and porn again.

[hanratty21]

I'd rather say own and porn in the same sentence again.

[ihoss.com]

Don't put @ in the place of a in your company name.

[Saint Benedetta]

Then we have completely opposite views. Company names/products as verbs is something I use all the time.

My friend had to fill in a form relating to her position in government (something like that) and she had to state what her hobbies are. I suggested, "Why don't you just say that you like twittering out news, myspace and facebooking your friends, listening to podcasts, reading RSS feeds and googling random words?"