NICK DOUGLAS — An industry of "knowledge workers" and no one knows how to speak English! "Back at the LA office to give a quick prezo," wrote PR blogger Steve Rubel. That's it, time for more bans on heinous Silicon Valley non-language.

This image was lost some time after publication.
  • Prezo: Finish your words. Using "prezo" for "presentation" makes you sound like an 80s business dude carrying a StarTAC.
  • Widget: Yes, little web modules like the MyBlogLog box are similar to the widgets in Yahoo's Konfabulator and Apple's Dashboard. But the word sounds like a doodad sold at a tourist store — or that purple alien from the 90s.
  • "Forget x, try y": In which x is any still-viable entity the reader should ignore in favor of the not-actually-analogous y that the writer is pimping. As in "Forget the Web 2.0 Expo; attend South by Southwest." (Or, um, go to both?)
  • Community: Popularized by Web 2.0 hippies, the word makes sense for, say, regular commenters on a topical weblog. But collectively, the users of a massive forum like Digg or Fark are not a community; they're a horde. And they can stay the fuck out of my quiet beach community.
  • Twitter: I know the microblogging service is too popular to change names, but I feel stupid saying I "twittered" a quote, "twittered" my friends, am laughing on the bus at a "twitter"... I'm already sick of "googling" and, worse, "wikipediaing" everything. Someone find us verbs!
  • Organic: Your "community" is not growing "organically." It's not peeing on the carpet, it's not budding and blooming, it's not going through puberty (well, Digg's community is).
  • Vusers: People who watch shows like Justin.tv are viewers. People who use services like Gmail are users. Got a combination? Use "visitors."
  • _tube: For a knockoff like PornoTube, it makes sense. As a metaphor for every startup that remotely involves video or "community," it doesn't.
  • Platform: Such an old, awkward metaphor; imagine running an app in an environment, under a tent, but not on a platform.

Photo: d2ink. Nick Douglas writes for Valleywag, Blogebrity, and Look Shiny. He talks pretty.