It has suddenly become clear to me that many established Web sites seems out-dated. Well, this is my reflection based on the fact that I personally have become accustomed to the latest Web 2.0 stuff – with all the services, functions and possibilities that follows.

The last few days I have spent a lot of time closely examining more than 20 Swedish web sites. This is because I am again one of the members in the Web Service Award (WSA) jury. (See also my blog post about the upcoming event). WSA is a voluntary competition and the results are based on what actual web site visitors think (pop-up surveys). Our task in the jury is to sort out the finalists and winners from a list of participants with top survey ranks. Sometimes we can just rely on the data, but for statistical reasons the numbers do not always separate the winners from the rest.

When WSA started seven years ago it was easy to see the difference between good and bad contestants, typically because most of them still had to learn how to create a satisfactory web site. It was kind of annoying to see a lot of sites with low functionality, no contact information, terrible aesthetics and lack of conventional wisdom. After a few years our list pointed to generally very good sites (the bad ones still existed, but were sorted out from jury consideration). Over the years the competition (more than the WSA of course) simply resulted in a better (Swedish) Web.

I guess that for the majority of Web surfers, the top ranked sites in this year’s WSA are pretty good. At least that is what the numbers say. But what strikes me is that there is virtually no, I repeat NO, Web 2.0 stuff present. True, there are a couple of exceptions which I cannot share (but you may check the finalists when they are announced tomorrow).

I remember that a few Swedish blogs/MSM’s have discussed the state-of-art Web 2.0 in Sweden, but I can’t find the links right now (will update). No doubt Web sites in my native language will incorporate the latest trends. It is simply mind blowing that it has not happened yet to a lot of them.

Updates:

• 2007-01-18: Regarding state-of-the-art in Sweden I found (via Podradio.nu) Cubma¨s Swe 2.0
• 2007-01-22: Also remembered Top Web Apps in Sweden

Inlägget postades tisdag 16 januari 2007 klockan %H:%M och finns under english, weconverse. Du kan följa kommentarer till detta inlägg via RSS 2.0 flödet. Du kan hoppa till slutet och lämna en kommentar. Pingning är just nu inte tillåtet.