• by Cory Treffiletti , Featured Contributor, May 9, 2007

I love to chat with people about our industry. Over the last few weeks, with all the news surrounding Google/Doubleclick and the rumors swirling about Microsoft/Yahoo, I found many chances to engage in intelligent discussions about the future of the Internet. With all those deep thoughts being exchanged, I felt this week's column was a chance for a little levity.

I enjoy hearing people's excitement when they pontificate on a new site or technology. I love witnessing the gleam in their eyes when they arrive at a personal epiphany or stumble upon a new solution to an old problem. Also fun, and something of a hobby of mine, is to enjoy seeing and hearing the new buzzwords, phrases, common misspellings and entirely new words that get thrown about and passed along from one excited person to another.

I'm not just talking about the misuse of "their" vs. "there" or "they're." I'm talking about entirely new terms and phrases which either didn't exist previously or were so out of vogue that they could be resurrected by the geek fan-boys and Internet academia (yes, myself included, as I am guilty of this from time to time as well; no one is safe). I've seen words like "doh" (the catchphrase of Homer Simpson) and "bling bling" (the catchphrase for displaying wealth) get a place in Webster's' Dictionary, but no single industry is more responsible for a change in the lexicon (officially or unofficially) than ours!

There are the usual suspects, the terms that get used day in and day out to explain new ways of thinking. "Paradigm shift" is a personal favorite. This term was popularized in the late '90s to refer to a way of examining a problem from a different perspective. It is closely related to that age-old mantra of "Thinking outside the box," which literally turns my stomach every time I hear it, because it seems to come from someone who is inevitably stumped, in way over their head, looking for help while they waste time determining what they should be doing on any given day.

There are also a number of very popular terms that end in "tion." As a matter of fact, you can pretty much create a new term by adding "tion" to the end of any word, especially verbs. The typically applied uses are "optimization," which simply means to increase performance, while making you seem like an intelligent data analyst. "Innovation" is a very useful term, but slightly overused in today's language, meaning that you have no rationale for your idea, but you think it's pretty cool. However, my favorite of these words is "monetization," which was created specifically for our industry and is not officially a word in the English language, but does come in very handy. This term was created as a direct result of the dot-com bubble to refer to something most companies were not able to do prior to 1998, thereby causing a systemwide financial correction of astronomical proportions. This period has also come to be referred to as the "dot-bomb," also a widely used term.

"Web 2.0" is the most widely used term today, along with "The long tail." Both are actually very useful, as they allow us to separate ourselves from that period we refer to as the dot-bomb. It's sort of like going to confession in that it allows everyone to start over from scratch, absolved from their previous mistakes! Any mistakes made prior to 1998 were made in Web 1.0, so they don't apply in this new version, Web 2.0. "The long tail" is also great because it allows us to aggregate together sites 100 through 2 billion of the Internet, most of which we have no clue about, nor can we possibly be expected to track and be aware of. Understanding the long tail, though, does allow us to look intelligent and speak to the scope of the Web without having to research all of it.

Of course, my absolute favorite as of late is a term that was originally used as a joke, but appears to be entering into daily usage without the obligatory winking: "orientating." Over the last few weeks I've heard people use this term twice: "I think we need to make sure that our message is orientating to that of the target mindset." "Why don't we orientate our thinking..." I love it! I hear it emanate from the mouths of really intelligent people, and it boggles my mind to hear them say it! And not just in meetings, but on stage, in front of a few hundred people!

Buzzwords are here because they make our days fun! They allow us to switch it up a bit and keep the audience thinking. I recently saw a cartoon in Adweek that showed a young Internet entrepreneur copyrighting new terms, just to squat on them and make millions when people started using them every day. I thought this was great; I predict that someone will start a company that exists only to copyright catchphrases!

What are some of your favorite buzzwords as of late?