lazyweb

See also: LazyWeb

English

Alternative forms

LazyWeb

Etymology

From lazy +‎ Web, coined by British designer and co-founder of Dopplr Matt Jones in 2002,^[1] and later popularized as a hashtag added to questions on Twitter, peaking around 2008.

Proper noun

lazyweb

(Internet, informal, humorous) The Internet, personified as a being that will answer the questions of those who are too lazy to do their own research.
- 2002 June 11, Matt Jones, “Make me think.”, in blackbeltjones.com‎^[2], archived from the original on 12 June 2002:
  Victor proves the first rule of the lazy-web ("if you wait long enough, someone will write/build/design what you were thinking about") […]
- 2003 January 16, Ben Hammersley, “Web-sharing the lazy way”, in The Guardian‎^[3], →ISSN:
  Some might want a little widget for their weblog that does something cool. Talk about it online for a bit—through the magical power of the LazyWeb—and they may well get it.
- 2008, Ricardo SIGNES, “dear lazyweb: hashref instead of objects”, in perl.moose (Usenet):
- 2009, Jonno Downes, “lazyweb request for reusable menu code”, in comp.sys.apple2.programmer (Usenet):
- 2011, Tim Phillips, Talk Normal: Stop the Business Speak, Jargon and Waffle, Kogan Page Publishers, →ISBN, page 175:
  If the phrase doesn't exist, you can offer a definition, or it asks the ‘lazyweb’ for one by tweeting it.
- 2011 July 7, Nicholas Jackson, “Infographic: Twitter, Lazyweb Expose the Limits of Google”, in The Atlantic‎^[4]:
  The lazyweb hashtag is rarely used anymore—it peaked in 2008 and has been declining with increasing rapidity over time—but people still turn to Twitter when they want to outsource a question.
- 2011, Martin Weller, The Digital Scholar: How Technology is Transforming Scholarly Practice‎^[5], London: Bloomsbury, →ISBN, pages 102–103:
  For instance, a lazyweb request on Twitter is likely to be successful if the requester has either responded previously to such requests […] .

References

^ Clay Shirky (7 January 2003) “LazyWeb and RSS: Given Enough Eyeballs, Are Features Shallow Too?”, in OpenP2P‎^[1], archived from the original on 27 January 2003: “There is evidence that this two-step process applies to features as well, in a pattern Matt Jones has dubbed the LazyWeb.”

[1] Clay Shirky (7 January 2003) “LazyWeb and RSS: Given Enough Eyeballs, Are Features Shallow Too?”, in OpenP2P‎^[1], archived from the original on 27 January 2003: “There is evidence that this two-step process applies to features as well, in a pattern Matt Jones has dubbed the LazyWeb.”

[1]