national hearing THE semantic OF USAGES. Participate, collaborate, contribute, cooperate, consult. All these semantic instations of the current arrangements for describing and describing the mass uses of the web. According to the French Language Treasury 1, ‘contribution’ can be defined as the ‘share in a joint work’. In this case, this joint work will be made up of the web; “collaboration” is “participation in the development of a joint work”. The semantic proximity of the two terms is obvious, although in the context of Web 2.0 it is possible to envisage forms of collaboration that are not necessarily contributory. Collaboration would then be more part of the commitment, and contribution, of the action. ‘Consultation’ is ‘the action of consulting something, examining it in order to search for intelligence, information, an indication’. Any dimension of altruism or the construction of a common aim or work is evacuated here. Finally, ‘participation’ is ‘the action of taking part in something’ in the second sense — ‘showing adherence, complicity, intellectual consciousness’. COLLABORATIVE LADDERS. The Forrester 2 ‘social technographics’ studies and scales are tools to better describe the different modes of online interaction and to monitor their evolution over time. This scale offers a typology of around 7 types of online interactions, from the least to the most implicit: Inactive (no interaction) ‘spectators’ (who simply read listening and watching content online). ‘Joiners’ (who maintain a profile on social media and consult others) the ‘collectors’ (who add tags, use RSS wires and use ‘voting’ or stars systems) the ‘critics’ (which post opinions, comments, on blogs, in forums, which write revues-reviews-of books or cultural products). Conversationalists (which mainly use their ‘status’ in terms of publication, opinion or comment) the ‘creators’ (who have content editing and publishing or uploading). This article puts in perspective 4 of these studies: 4nd quarter 2006 3, 4nd quarter 2009 4, 2nd quarter 2010 5 and, most recently, 3nd quarter 2011 6. The first corresponds to the moment when the “social aspect” of the web has actually started to become a reality, as recalled by Wikipedia in its web page 2.0: ‘This expression used by Dale Dougherty in 2003, broadcast by Tim O’Reilly in 2004 and consolidated in 2005 with the position paper ‘What Is Web 2.0’ became established in 2007.’ The latter is part of a web that feeds prominently on applications and the multiplication of mobile terminals, but also on the structuring of a business offer around community marketing issues, as well as on the essential pegging of the collection and processing of large data sets (Big Data, Data Analyst, DataViz).