The Technical Meaning Vs. the Conversational Meaning of the Open Web

posted by on Wednesday, November 18th, 2009 at 7:00 am

Early nominations for the Mashable Open Web awards are in and the 500 nominees make fascinating reading.

Apart from the nominees themselves, it is interesting to see the categories for the choice of ‘Open Web’. By referring to ‘Open’ in context of the Web, one would expect to see a W3C standards  based discussion but ‘Open Web’ is a vague term which suits well for getting nominations, as the list clearly illustrates.

Categories for the Open Web include the following (there are more but I have used an indicative subset):

Best Brand Use of Facebook

Best Brand Use of YouTube

Best Brand Use of Twitter

Best Non-Profit Use of Social Media

Social Media Ad Campaign

Social Media Agency

Social Media Gadget

Best Twitter App

Best Facebook App

Best Facebook Game

Most Creative Use of Facebook Connect

Best YouTube Channel or Personality

Funniest YouTube Channel

YouTube Video of the Year

Best Flickr Photographer

Flickr Photo of the Year

TwitPic of the Year

This is a motley mix of Twitter, YouTube, Facebook, Flickr and others. It even includes TwitPic – a relatively recent phenomenon.

Certainly, the categorization is not conforming to the technical meaning of the Open Web (as in W3C formats), but it seems to be aligned to the conversational meaning of the Open Web. Clearly, the two are not the same if we see the list of categories for nomination.