Legal Research

Are 1000 Words Worth a Picture?

By Simon Fodden

Of the future, that is? The British blog, cutely named, Royal Pingdom, has measured the frequency of certain terms and buzzwords, using good old Google, and compared it to that for the years since 2004 to uncover possible trends — that glimpse of the future we all seek. Unsurprisingly, perhaps, ?’Web 2.0′ peaked in 2007 and has been decreasing in 2008″ and “While the interest for ‘blogging’ hasn?t changed much over the last couple of years, ‘microblogging’ has seen a rapid rise since early 2007 (presumably due to Twitter).”

There’s a surprise or two, though, for me at least: both “RSS” and “RSS feed” peaked in 2005 and have gone on a slight downward trend since then. This, when people are still learning to use it and lawyers are learning to spell it. I wonder if it isn’t one of those technologies that was great but couldn’t get enough widespread traction to survive. It’d be a pity. The other significant result is that “wiki” has seen a steady increase since 2005.

Full post as published by Slaw.ca on January 09, 2009 (boomark / email).