Web 2.0 was a bubble that never inflated — a shimmery illusion that popped well before we stopped talking about it. Precious few people got rich from the notions its proponents championed, such as user-generated content and social networks.

Calacanis was the only person of note to cash out on the blogging craze, selling a set of blogs to AOL for $25 million. That was a paltry figure in the grand scheme of things, but enough to set him up in a comfortable home in Brentwood and buy him a $109,000 electric sports car. And enough to make him a Web celebrity, with thousands of followers on Twitter and friends on Facebook — the quantifiable metrics of fame preferred by those who are not really famous.

The startups of the Web 2.0 era have proven similarly vacuous in their success. Skype, the Internet-calling service, sold for $2.6 billion to eBay in 2005; the auction giant wrote off $1.4 billion of that purchase last year. YouTube, sold to Google for $1.65 billion, is an acknowledged failure, with product managers scrambling to bedaub it with enough advertising to merely pay for its bandwidth bills. And the IPO market that powered the '90s bubble? All but invisible. The most recent big offering was in August for Rackspace, a boring company which hosts servers, and its stock has since fallen by half. With Wall Street on its knees, no one expects another IPO soon.

Will there be another bubble? Technology moves in cycles and is prone to investing fads, so yes, almost certainly. But there is nothing that looks set to inflate it. Cleantech, the next big hope of Silicon Valley, requires vastly more capital than Internet startups, and capital is now in short supply. (Falling oil prices, too, discourage the development of green energy.) While Internet users are devoting more attention to social networks, advertisers are staying away. Calacanis's venture, Mahalo, is a spiffed-up rehash of the kind of Web directory Yahoo built in 1995; he's now cooking up a new, secret project — which suggests that the loquacious entrepreneur realizes his original plan fell short. He may be onto something, if only in admitting failure. If this bubble fell short in making the likes of Calacanis rich, they have their own paucity of ideas to blame.

1. Find software that sells for $20,000 a copy. Don't try to come up with something new. If there isn't a product already, it's because there isn't a need. With something "new" you have to convince businesses or organizations they need it. An example: automated parking garage software.

2. Pick products supporting million-dollar companies. Those companies spend lots of money convincing customers they need their products. Then the customer will get quotes from everyone and might end up buying yours instead.

3. Build the product but only with the core features. Make a "lite" version initially. Use that money to continue to make it less "lite" and higher in price.

4. Get your name out in the industry. $20K software is certainly going to be "niche" software, with not a whole lot of customers out there who buy it. Get your company name out there so everyone knows you sell your systems and could be an alternative to what they already have.

5. Present yourself as consultingware. Be there on call and devoted to them and how they're using the product.

(Photo by Manuel Faisco)

After a strong resurgence in 2005 and showing strong staying power through 2007, lately most of the people I've seen use it fit into two categories: 1) people over 40 who have finally had the word passed down the cool chain from their younger friends and coworkers. 2) the "douches" originally being described themselves.

• Web 2.0.This marketing term was old when Time magazine made "You" the person of the year in 2006. CNET reporter Caroline McCarthy might have just killed it for good.
• Bubble. We can't be in a recession and a bubble at the same time, people. Pick just one economic theory to overhype, please.
• Influencers. This term is on the tip of every social media marketer's tongue as they look to find that one Facebook user who will spark a forest fire for the clients' brands. Problem is: Uncountable variables set the conditions for a forest fire. The spark is just the most visible. And research shows influencers aren't the real firestarters.
• MicroHoo. Microsoft-Yahoo is what, seven characters longer? This word is only OK if Jerry Yang and Steve Ballmer both become Jeves Bang or Stevey Yallmer. Which I don't think is going to happen. Unless more weed is involved.
• Dead simple. From now on, this phrase should only be used ironically. As in: "IsMikeArringtonADick.com makes it dead simple to find out if Mike Arrington is a dick."

Swaggle is a group SMS doohickey from Hive Mind's Jordan Schwartz that makes Dodgeball and Twitter look overly complicated and self-involved. It's kinda like the phone tree your elementary school or little league team used to maintain, without all the fuss of having to maintain a public identity.

And leave it to a subversive sticker tycoon to come up with Metanotes. Srini Kumar's new venture gives you a big, flat space to pin web ephemera, to-do lists and other stuff to share with friends (or strangers). Like a corkboard at the supermarket or the flier kiosk at the student union.

Simple, free, and easy to use — these kids just might be on to something. If only Facebook app developers were so clever. (Photo by AP/Mel Evans)

• "He got fired because he was more interested in joining The 250 than doing his job."
• "I didn't blog about my deal, because I don't care what The 250 have to say about it."
• "He's writing a book? Great, I'm sure he'll sell at least 250 copies."

Ignore the endearing Flash animations and the cloud puff creature spouting, "Genius, we love you. So we wrote you this haiku. Refrigerator," while relaxing in a jacuzzi. Once you get pas that, it's just a job site with message boards and other helpful nonsense. Bill and Steve, take a memo: Nothing about Web 2.0 is supposed to be actually useful.

KP is hiring a new partner to invest in "consumer Internet" companies, VentureBeat reports. A leaked job description (Word) indicates the firm is very much still interested in the Web. The new hire will focus "wireless, network and IT infrastructure and consumer Internet activities." But the job isn't for everybody.

"The successful candidate," reads the job description, "will likely spend substantial time with Ted Schlein, Ray Lane and Matt Murphy." To stand that trio, it's no wonder the new hire will need to be "humble," possess a "sense of humor," and — crowdsource my coffee now, pledge!

(Photo by tracy the astonishing)

*then put on another shirt please

Web 2.0 is supposed to be so easy a baby can use it — hence the color scheme. But when the experts try to plot out what it all means, stand back. Here's Tim O'Reilly's early attempt, What is Web 2.0:

Dion Hinchcliffe upped the ante in March with a post titled, Web 2.0 Software Models Evolve as the Conference Season Begins in Earnest. My takeaway: There's a conference season?

I suppose I need to include this one:

Enough already. I went back to O'Reilly's original post. The guy is sincerely brilliant, he just spends too much time editing advanced programming manuals. I started erasing parts of O'Reilly's diagram until I got down to what I think is the minimum for Mom:

Any questions?

The first wave of the web was closely tied to the browser. The second wave extends the applications built on the web server and it will enable a new generation of specialized clients and automated web applications. (Emphasis added)

Where are we most stimulated?
At the Web's edge.

Digg, of course, has its own thriving videogames subsection — so Diggxbox's creator posted an advertisement for his site on Digg. His Digg account was subsequently banned. Apparently founder Kevin Rose doesn't view amateur imitation as flattery. On the other hand, this diggxbox chap should be pleased he escaped with a mere banning instead of say, a trademark-infringement lawsuit.

The success of massively multiplayer online role-playing games like World of Warcraft is driving game-makers to produce more online worlds — but, of course, they're drawing all the wrong lessons. Sony's Home for the PlayStation 3 is a social network-cum-virtual world akin to Second Life. Startup Areae is taking tips from MySpace and YouTube to build virtual worlds on the cheap. And Acclaim is using "crowdsourcing" — relying, in other words, on users instead of expensive professional designers — to design a new massively multiplayer online game.

Blunderful. This is clearly what gamers have been waiting for: Immersive experiences with the production quality of a MySpace page and gameplay as thoughtful as the comments on a YouTube video.

1. MySpace: The ugly stepchild, the target of everyone's affection. It's anarchy of customization, Photobucket widgets, audio, and image backgrounds is gut-wrenching and mind-numbing. It's also it's most distinguishing competitive advantage. Beyond MySpace's personalization features, many of its core features go unused or are poorly designed. Grade: C- (inflated from F because it wouldn't be MySpace otherwise)

2. Facebook: The antithesis of Myspace: crisp design, limited customization, focused feature set. Grade: A

3. Bebo: (Nielson has particular reservations about websites chasing the usage pattern of teenagers.) Somewhere between the crisp and functional Facebook and the chaos of Myspace lies Bebo. It satisfies its community's heartrending cries for individuality while remaining functional without inducing seizures (most of the time). Grade: B+ (for having some class while still appealing to the teenies)

4. Twitter: Focused on the core functionality of the service with limited customization of backgrounds and icons. Because it is primarily a service, the web site is often circumvented entirely by widgets, client apps, or mobile devices. Grade: A (for its avoidability)

5. Geni: The genealogy-focused social network deserves special mention because without "chasing Web 2.0", it would not be possible. It's primary interface, building family trees visually, is dependent on new Web technology and customization. It's a shining example of exploiting new technologies for new purposes. Where it is subject to criticism is its lack of greater customization and viewing options. Grade A+ (but it could use an upgrade)

Conclusion: Design always has its examples of good and bad, and most are in between. Even a good design is worthy of criticism. However, the state of web sites is no different than at other times. New technology is exploited for functional purposes and can be over-used. Customization can interfere with the user and get out of their way. Teens are the target demographic of most every market. Jacob Nielsen would have less of a foundation on which to base his criticisms without everyone's poster child, Myspace, but critics will always have a job.

Baby Boomers
Hey, in their time, the Boomers did plenty to help the future. They were the first generation raised on TV. They started the sexual revolution and used the first cell phones. They saw the first walk on the moon and one of them is Prince, who is actually from the future.

But the Boomers have turned into their parents, and now they're cramping their children's style. And children are our future, so the Boomers are giving the future cramps. They're putting parental locks on the TV, driving big old inefficient cars, and gumming up the computers of Gen X and Gen Y with e-mail forwards.

They've started diverting all the biotech research money into stuff to make old age last longer and feel better. Which, in fact, is how they might become useful again to the future. We can skip the whole civilizational step of helper robots if the Gen Xers use the Boomers. Get these aging folks on enough meds and they'll turn their social mores back on themselves; it's better than the three laws of robotics. No one gets Social Security payments without seven years of manual labor. Bam! Two problems solved! Next enemy!

The movie industry
Now, the enemy isn't movies themselves. Movies have done a lot for the future, like reminding us that technology can be evil, unless it's used to make expensive special effects. The enemy is the industry that's risen around them, the people who never touch a camera but make all the money from movies.

Why are films literally wasting away in vaults instead of being preserved? Why does it still cost royalties to publicly perform "Happy Birthday"? Why, in fact, is nothing published after 1923 in the public domain? Because the movie industry, desperate to keep its rights over the first appearance of characters like Mickey Mouse (made by Disney, which has pulled in billions by exploiting fairy tales from the public domain), has successfully lobbied Congress to extend copyright terms 11 times in the past 40 years.

But that's not all they've done to stop the future from building on the past. The MPAA has also cracked down on copying of movies (even for one's personal use) and bottlenecked movies through a panel of raters. The hegemony keeps moviemakers from bucking the system without getting shut out.

One solution is to sit back and watch box office returns stagnate. This might make studios try even harder to keep control, but a mob of renegades is beating them back by grabbing, copying and spreading movies (often before they make it to DVD). A last solution is to just watch stuff made outside the system like YouTube videos and indie films. (No, it's not all crap; come to think of it, I'd rather watch the worst blond-girl lip-synch than "Kickin' It Old School.")

Much of what goes for the movies goes for music as well, but here the industry is more definitely losing the digital war. Until Apple goaded them, labels refused to release digital music without "digital rights management" that limited, for example, how many computers a user could load a song onto.

The RIAA also just killed internet radio by lobbying to make it damn near impossible to legally play a good stream of music for listeners without going bankrupt. This was all done in the name of protecting works from unauthorized copying. Earth to the RIAA: the protected streaming audio of legit internet radio was already one of the few things keeping some listeners from just downloading the whole album on Bittorrent and Limewire or just grabbing one song at a time from their favorite music blogs. (Pretty much every rock and indie song, for example, makes it onto the Hype Machine.)

As for how the future kills the RIAA: the constant barrage of piracy and industry pressure from digital distributors will force the old models out; cell phone ringtones and commercial licensing (Moby, for example, sold all but one track of his "Play" album before it hit stores) will provide plenty of new ways to make money from music.

Cell providers
Cellular providers make yet another great industry oxymoron. Device makers can't survive in the U.S. without tying themselves to a service provider, but providers want to lock down all the potential features in phones. Thank providers for GPS being so rare on phones; it's an intensive service that most customers may refuse to pay for, so cell companies would rather not implement it. And, of course, there are the two-year contracts that keep people from quickly shifting to the best service.

Even Apple had to pick a provider to ensure that its iPhone actually gets sold. But in doing so, the company helped pry open the business's reluctance to adopt new technologies. For example, a combination of wifi and cellular service in devices like the iPhone (some Windows Mobile devices already have this) will free up communication from slow cell service while shifting some of the bandwidth burden to the thousands of wifi providers scattered across the country.

Of course, for widespread wifi to truly decentralize wireless communication, we'll need to keep the landline phone/cable/internet providers from double-charging users and content/service providers (like Skype) for any significant use of bandwidth.

The government
Despite what the anarchocapitalists of Silicon Valley might believe, you can't really have progress without a government to keep civilization running smoothly. But damn if the government doesn't try to prove those anarchocapitalists wrong by stepping in the way of the future.

Remember all the nasty things the music and movie industries did to freedom of information and innovative digital delivery? They couldn't have done it without the help of the feds. The most heinous attack on innovation is the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, which made it illegal to get around a copy protection program, to make a tool to do so, or to even attract attention to such a tool. That's why it's theoretically illegal to even link to this number, a key used to decrypt movies on HD-DVD.

Of course, that's just a fraction of the ways the government gets in the way of the future. There's also the reactionary approach to public health: Under the Bush administration, the federal government has blocked aid to countries that fund abortions, teach safe sex behavior other than abstinence, or help sex workers avoid getting and spreading STDs.

The same government is doing its damnedest to prevent us from even having a future, with an aggressive string of policies that could let industry push the world temperature up until sea levels rise and flood our coastal cities.

Wow, we actually get to try solving this one every couple years. Speaking of the next election, I hear Al Gore plans to finally run. His platform: He'll prevent rising sea levels by fighting global warming and by promising never to plunge his ever-expanding body into the ocean.

Web 2.0
Oh, thought this one was a joke, did you? How could the forefront of the tech industry be anti-future? Well when you think about it, what is Web 2.0 really doing for the future? Sure, we got Flickr and whatever, but now we're wallowing in a sea of consumer-generated crap that goes through "indie" and out the other end. The dot-com money's all back in the hands of Google, News Corp, and Yahoo, and the users are working for them for free.

While hype gets wasted on Web 2.0, the real progress is being made in biotech, nanotechnology, and other businesses that require real money. And as putrid as the phrase "Web 3.0" sounds, it could stand for the salvation of the corporatizing Web 2.0. The next edition of the web could reverse all this user generation through decentralized services like OpenID. With everything decentralized, content stays under the power of users and multiple sites, rather than residing on one service like Facebook or YouTube. Of course, before we can make this future, we'll have to figure out how to make boatloads of money from it.

Nick Douglas writes for Valleywag, Prezzish, and Look Shiny. He's no Bruce Sterling.

Bill Gates' Road Ahead
Now here's a punch in the face. Microsoft's founder predicted a world of "wallet PCs" that could make everyday transactions, hold personal info, and work as little phone-computers in his 1995 book The Road Ahead. The book came with a CD-ROM, which included video of people using these wallet PCs to, say, pay for ice cream in the park.

Gates was looking for a version of convergence, the idea that technologies will meet and the gadgets we carry around will take over each other's functions until one convergent device can do everything. That's arguably what happened with the desktop computer, which can mix sound and video, send letters, calculate budgets, and all those other things John Hodgman and Justin Long do in the Mac ads.

Gates figured all this activity would take place on MSN, Microsoft's network (which included Hotmail and MSN Messenger). But then came the internet, in which Microsoft is just another player. Meanwhile, phones have gotten cameras, media players and internet access, making them the convergent device. And the most sublime of the smartphones? The Apple iPhone, a media-playing wifi-enabled computer-that-happens-to-be-a-phone made by Gates's nemesis Steve Jobs. The bonus: Apple's iPhone will use applications from Microsoft's other big competitors, Google and Yahoo. [Background]

The Semantic Web
The granddaddy of stillborn internets, the Semantic Web was supposed to be machine-readable, so that computers as well as humans could understand relationships between information. This would rescue humans from the tasks of categorizing and searching for data.

This involved a lot of "metadata," which is now enriching Web 2.0 sites (see below) thanks to — wait for it — humans categorizing and searching for data. Flickr tags, Facebook relationships, MySpace favorites — these all in some way fulfill the dream of the semantic web. [Background]

Cyberspace
One conceit of hacker sci-fi (and the Hollywood movies that dumbed it down) was that the internet would become a virtual world full of hip hackers wrangling with metaphorically represented data. Author William Gibson dubbed it "cyberspace" in his book Neuromancer.

The problem is that hackers enjoy the exact opposite: typing white text on black screens. The closest anyone's come is Second Life, a virtual world that mainly gets hacked through replicating objects. Methinks the sci-fi authors of ages past weren't hoping for flying dick attacks. [Cyberspace]

Bruce Sterling's Magical Spime World
Sci-fi author Bruce Sterling coined the term "spime," meaning an object that can be tracked through space and time thanks to embedded technology. The best way to visualize it is like this: Imagine googling "Where are my shoes?" and getting an answer. (I blogged one of Sterling's spime speeches last year at the SXSW conference.) Sterling may seem like the L. Ron Hubbard of futurism by buying into his own sci-fi, but give him another decade or two. RFID technology could make spimes a reality. [Background]

Web 2.0
Okay, Web 2.0 — the collaborative iteration of the web that lets users treat it like a platform, as explained by tech publisher Tim O'Reilly — only "never happened" in the sense that philosopher Jean Baudrillard said, "The Gulf War did not take place." Web 2.0 is not being built so much as it is evolving out of Web 1.0 as site-makers make their tools more sophisticated and internet users fill it with content.

Also like the Gulf War, reporters are mucking up the history of Web 2.0. The companies making Web 2.0 possible aren't just Flickr and its partners in a Newsweek cover story. Sites like Craigslist, Metafilter, and thousands of internet forums have been doing this stuff since the 90s. And what internet nerd didn't have a Geocities homepage back in the day? Other Web 1.0 sites have "upgraded" too: Amazon now uses tagging, wikis, and an ecosystem of commenters to add value to its sale pages. [Background]

CREATIVE GENIUS/ IDEA GENERATOR

THIS IS NOT A DESIGN ROLE.

Looking for a conceptor with a groovy hip perspective and boundless new creative ideas. We are in need of proven creative talent that is not afraid to push boundaries.

You are an idea factory with an insatiable passion for the next big idea. Your ads, PR stunts, viral marketing campaigns, storyboards, and other creative work have garnered national and regional recognition. You should have a wide variety of clients in your portfolio with innovative ideas. You must have a passion for interactive work and always be on top of the new edgy ways of doing things.

You will be assisting with idea generation for viral marketing campaigns, sci-fi and/or humorous storyboards, PR stunts, and other online marketing initiatives aimed at growing the subscription base.

QUALIFICATIONS

- To qualify for this position you should have 7+ years of interactive/ advertising agency experience
- Creative, independent "out-of-the-box" thinker
- Knowledge of direct marketing, online advertising, and web experiences, with proven conceptual abilities
- Portfolio of creative projects required

THE OPPORTUNITY

Here's a once in lifetime opportunity to join a viable Web 2.0 start-up from the ground floor. The founders are serial entrepreneurs with advanced degrees from the University of Chicago, MIT, IIT India, Carnegie Mellon, UC Berkeley, UCLA & University of Massachusetts. Our board of advisors include former venture capitalists, CTOs, and internationally acclaimed thought leaders in computer engineering. We are interested in onboarding highly-skilled marketing professionals for viral marketing.

The business model turns the current paradigm upside down. Much like Google surpassed Yahoo with its advanced algorithm, our model fully exploits advanced technologies to facilitate a value-add service for the target market. (Business model to be disclosed after offer).

EXPECTATIONS

- We are bootstrapping to maximize our equity before introducing VC money.
- No salary. Only incentive stock options.
- Project timeline to complete Beta is 6 - 9 months, realistically.
- Minimum time commitment of 20 hours per week.
- Maintain your daytime job.

If you have the creativity, intelligence, and hunger for award-winning interactive marketing campaigns, please reply with your resume.

• Say "meta" a lot. Do it in an apologetic way, like a hipster admitting that she still listens to Modest Mouse even though they're on the radio now. Take photos of other people taking photos (and yourself in the mirror), blog about blogs, and practice recursive activity until you suck the reality out of your life and are numb to the world around you. Afterward, say "Ohmygod, that was so meta!"


• Complain about every service that you never sign up for. Say it'll never catch on, because, well, your friends aren't on it! This is why, because your friends don't read Reader's Digest either, that magazine does not exist.


• Ironically spell things with an added "r" at the end. If a word ends with "er," remove the "e". Do this liberally, like Pig Latin.


• When a confused non-techie asks you "What is Web 2.0?" what do you say?

  WRONG: "It's a term for a new generation of web sites and web applications that use fluid or 'dynamic' pages, compile user-made content (like videos, photos, or blog posts) instead of content from a few paid contributors, and keep more information stored on a server than on the user's computer."

  RIGHT: First, roll your eyes and sigh deeply (RYEASD). Then: "Oh god, I know, aren't you sick of hearing that word for the last three years?" This works especially well when the questioner clearly just saw the term pop up on Saturday Night Live.



• When you recognize everyone at a startup party: (1) RYEASD. (2) Signal that you're tired of meeting "the same people" at every party. (3) Ignore flyers at venue for dozens of parties centered around DJs, hipster trends, bands, and everything but Web 2.0.


• Then loudly ask where they're serving the Kool-Aid.



• Bitch about how your $300 phone doesn't support Google Maps.


• Write a cynical blog about it.

Ohmygod, that was so meta!

Images by Mike Monteiro, Thomas Hawk, and Cherry S

Whatever, the labels are just jealous of AllofMP3's huge growth potential.

AllOfMP3.com Will Not Die, No Matter How Many Angry Companies Sue It [Idolator]
Weak iTunes Sales a Blow to Record Labels [NPR]

At least, that's what the "shiny e-brochure" received via email for a "Mr. Nick Edwards," who is apparently the editor here at Valleywag, said. The not-so-critically-acclaimed Web 2.0 Wave in the US and POLAND conference took place at Stanford University just a few short weeks ago.

Did you know that Poland has the largest Skype user base? Or the leading contribution to Wikipedia, per capita? But what does that have to do with Web 2.0? And why did Poland fall victim to the Web 2.0 hype machine, promising that "many companies are breaking new innovative ground in astounding ways." Yawn.

For any who may care, the full propaganda after the jump.

—-—-—-- Forwarded message —-—-—--
From: Clay Bullwinkel <[redacted]>
Date: Nov 12, 2006 6:34 PM
Subject: "Web 2.0 Wave in the U.S. and Poland" - brochure
To: tips@valleywag.com

Mr. Nick Edwards
Editor
ValleyWag

Dear Mr. Edwards,

Below is the shiny e-brochure announcing our event. Press can be admitted free of charge. We hope one or more of you can attend. Please also forward this to fellow journalists, friends, and Web 2.0 business people who may be interested.

Poland is coming on strong with world class Web 2.0. Many companies are breaking new innovative ground in astounding ways. It's about time that they get to know their U.S. counterparts and explore partnerships. Poland has the largest Skype user base, leading per capita contribution to Wikipedia, rampant proliferation of all kinds of media aggregation sites, leading interactive mobile TV technology, and other stunning infrastructure and user interface innovations.

If you or any of your press colleagues will be attending, please let me know with a quick email. I can then make proper arrangements at our registration desk. Thank you for your consideration.

Sincerely,

Clay

Event Details [U.S.-Polish Trade Council]
The Sweet Very 1.0 Slides [Stanford.edu]
US and Polish Web 2.0 companies swap notes at Stanford [SiliconValleyWatcher]

Software makers have standard terms for stuff that isn't ready to sell to customers yet. Distilling the extensive Wikipedia entry to two lines:

• alpha — the first protean, buggy, incomplete version of a program worth test-driving. It has nothing to do with "alpha geek," a self-deprecating pun on alpha male.
• beta — an almost-ready version, shared with customers willing to report the bugs.

Alpha and beta are just Greek for a and b. They were, anyway, until 1994, when Netscape accidentally turned "beta" into a World Wide Web buzzword by giving away over a dozen beta versions of its browsers in three years. For Web hipsters, using Netscape's buggy beta features shifted from an option to a requirement. If you don't remember pounding your keyboard over Finnish sites that locked you out with "go install Netscape 2.0b3," you weren't really there.

Today, beta gets thrown around as a metaphor for "newer" rather than "not ready," applied to amorphous Web content and services rather than precisely numbered computer programs. It's confusing: Is Business 2.0 Beta really next month's print magazine, blogged for factchecking and typos by willing test readers? That'd be even ballsier than the issue they outsourced to India.

If you're not talking software, leave alpha and beta to the twinks who put "2.0" after any slightly changed version of anything. Instead, SVUG recommends these advanced metaphors:

• How's that business plan coming? "I can send you a pre-alpha if you promise not to laugh."
• Is your blog redesign live yet? "I think I've got a release candidate, wanna see?"
• Dude, you're writing for Valleywag 2.0! "Nah, it's more like Valleywag 1.1."

The spread (ambiguous illustration shown here) comes, of course, just in time for the Web 2.0 Conference, held by Tim O'Reilly (who coined the phrase) and his company O'Reilly Media at SF's Palace Hotel.

Dan Fost writes all five chapters of this psalm. Here's a rundown.

• DIGITAL UTOPIA: A new breed of technologists envisions a democratic world improved by the Internet: Fost gives the usual run-down of this glorious future — "the wisdom of crowds," "citizen media," and other gagologisms. Fost's piece is light on heavyweight sources, instead opting for quotes from up-and-comers like consultant Chris Messina, former visionary for the troubled makers of social browser Flock. His most relevant source is Nick Carr, the author of "Does IT Matter?" and always good for a contrarian quote.
• What exactly does Web 2.0 mean? Well...: Ugh, this question again? It's like 2001, when every article about blogs began with a definition. But this time reporters aren't content with one paragraph; no, they need a whole second article. So what is Web 2.0? It's just what the Internet looks like now compared to six years ago — Google Maps vs. Mapquest, YouTube vs. Ebaum's World, blogs vs. homepages, and Yelp vs. the local alt-weekly's restaurant reviews. It's more social, it's prettier, and you can add shit to it.
• Web 2.0 words — from ajax to wiki: Hey, this is helpful. Some of the definitions start with vapid histories ("Podcasts: The iPod portable music player created a boom in the once-sleepy world of Internet audio...") but most are as clear as dictionary entries.
• The people who populate Web 2.0: After Dan Fost chides Newsweek in "What does Web 2.0 mean" about trying to rename the movement "The Live Web," he uses another failed name, "Digital Utopians." (How 80s!) This is a decent guide to the people Fost didn't source in his other articles.
• Key Web 2.0 sites: The tricky thing about this list is that some entries (MySpace, Wikipedia, YouTube) dominate the Web, whereas others (Dodgeball, YouthNoise, Blogger) are non-starters or dying brands — even if the core San Francisco crowd uses them. Not sure if that's a flaw — because I'm not sure what use this list is.

Pew named its report "Riding the Waves of Web 2.0: More than a buzzword, but still not easily defined," a title that tells readers off the bat, "This paper won't get you any closer to understanding this phrase, but it'll get a lot of press." (That's not entirely fair. The paper does reach a conclusion: if an online business is doing well right now, then it's Web 2.0. It's the wrong conclusion but it'll do.)

Meanwhile, ClickZ News covers the report with accidental cheek: On the first mention of the slippery buzzword, the article reads: "Web 2.0 (define)".

What the $#@! Is Web 2.0? [Red Herring]
Pew Zeroes in on 'Web 2.0,' Sort Of" [ClickZ]

You've probably already seen the ridrunkulous Web 2.0 drinking game from Scifi.com that blogger Steve Rubel showed me. You've laughed at "On MySpace, take a drink if you manage to find the person you had a crush on in 2nd grade. Finish your drink if they're still hot." You even saw the added TechCrunch rules on the Supr.c.ilio.us blog. So here's one more section:

Facebook

• Drink if you get invited to a group called "Change Facebook back," "Take away the news feeds," or "We may use a social network but we're still elitist luddites."
• Do a shot every time you see a photo of your friends doing a shot.
• Drink when someone inexplicably replaces their decent self-portrait with a hideous one.
• Drink when someone tags a photo with your name because some of your elbow made it into the frame of someone else's group shot.
• Finish your drink when founder Mark Zuckerberg invades your homepage with another apology.

SHIFT: The Web 2.0 Drinking Game [Scifi.com]

The "Web 2.0 exit strategy" Badges [Central Scrutinizer]