Some of the earliest proponents (see also this) of Web 2.0 in 2005 now say they will not focus on it for 2006. They say that are tired of dealing with all the new people who are rushing in to adopt the term, polluting the meaning of the word and ruining the conversation.

I say, let them come.

Innovation is back on the web. It is happening in a lot of different arenas at once. That’s great!

Since the dotcom bubble burst in 2000, not much interesting happened on the web for a few years. Now people are trying new things, solving new problems, and having great results. Their efforts will change the way we work in the coming years.

For the last year, talk about Web 2.0 has mostly been limited to early adopters. I sometimes wonder how many people realize that. Most people still don’t know anything about RSS, Ajax, Ruby on Rails, social media, content aggregation, or even blogs.

That is about to change. Web 2.0 is ready to go mainstream. I think it will happen in 2006.

The early adopters have been talking about Web 2.0 for a few years now. With Microsoft’s new focus on software as a service, the majority will finally get reference applications from a credible source. That will prompt them to explore all these new innovations further. It won’t be long before the majority of people know about these new technologies and use them on a regular basis.

Will this new wave of innovation continue to be called Web 2.0? I don’t know, but to attract more people it needs a label and “Web 2.0” is certainly a fine one.

Who cares if “Web 2.0” is a marketing term? Who cares if has become an umbrella for a wide variety of technologies? If assigning a name to this era of innovation brings more attention to it, why is that a problem?

Web 2.0, broadly, refers to the growing wave of innovation happening right now on the web. If we want this to continue, we need to get more people interested all of these new services. More demand means more smart people will get involved, which means more innovation and more great tools that all of us can use. We all win. If “Web 2.0” can help us get there, who can argue with that?