I just got Jakob Nielsen’s Alertbox and went to the useit.com website. The website looks bare and oldfashioned but it is packed with useful information.

The current Alertbox is titled Web 2.0 Can Be Dangerous… and starts like this:

Summary:
AJAX, rich Internet UIs, mashups, communities, and user-generated content often add more complexity than they’re worth. They also divert design resources and prove (once again) that what’s hyped is rarely what’s most profitable.

Web 2.0 can be dangerous for your profits, that is. If you focus on over-hyped technology developments, you risk diverting resources from the high-ROI design issues that really matter to your users — and to your profits.

Unlike some older technologies (notably, Flash and PDF), Web 2.0 ideas are not inherently bad for users. They can be highly effective; we sometimes see examples of usability-enhancing Web 2.0 designs in our studies. But it’s more common to find Web 2.0 ideas that either hurt users or simply don’t matter to users’ core needs. While the latter case might seem innocent, irrelevant website “enhancements” diminish profits because they indicate a failure to focus on those simpler design issues that actually increase sales and leads.

I have to say that I agree with Jakob, much of Web 2.0 is surface and not useful for the user.

Note: Photo by pandemia.