Web 2.0 : Brickbats Galore But Hope Persists

The Blogosphere is getting to see a lot more strong views on Web 2.0. Not withstanding the galloping progress seen, Richard McManus called Web 2.0 is dead and Russel Shaw wrote web2.0 doesnot exist. Dave Winer provides the best perspective. As he rightly sees it - there are two schools on "Web 2.0."
1. Tim O'Reilly and John Battelle and their VC friends. What they're doing is slicing up Google's PE ratio, tiny slivers of it, and apportioning it to small companies they either buy stock in (that's Tim's strategy) or consult for (that's Battelle). Basically the updraft from Google's stock is so strong it can turn those tiny slivers into tens or hundreds of millions of dollars. It's a good business model as long as Google's PE ratio stays high. (Note : More than Google – Yahoo has bought a lot more Web 2.0 enterprises – Del.icio.us acquisition , Flickr acquisition.)
2. There's the Mike Arrington version of Web 2.0 – He sees it as all about the web coming out of a nuclear winter and bursting forth in a fit of chaotic growth
Let's discount the web2.0 - province of a set of people who neither make huge piles of money catching bits of Google Wind™ in their sails, nor understand the connection between the various products. They just like to be "in" on the latest stupid tech buzzword, to go to conferences and calling people evil who dare to criticize the stuff that they're so hip to.
I sort of tend to agree with Fred, when he writes, Web 2.0 encompasses many of the technological changes we’re seeing happen. It means a new way to look at web applications, services and (more importantly in my case), user experience. Web 2.0 puts the user in the center of the action and activity. If it hadn’t become a movement, many of the services emerging now would have never existed. If it didn’t have support from the right people, it wouldn’t be, effectively, changing the face of the web. It helps to keep going as long as we’re still working towards a user-centered web, better uses for data, more service integration and more simplicity. I believe that evolution requires such branding, packaging and new definitions – so for me –web 2.0 is clearly changing the face of the web & as I wrote earlier, Web 2.0’s impact shall be felt more with the emergence of platforms for the development of rich Internet applications and services. Ajax is enabling the creation of plug-in free Web apps that rival the performance of client-based desktop applications. These developments represent the very tip of exciting innovation to come — innovation that will require a new approach to venture investing led by a new breed of angel and venture investors that are able to successfully balance irrational exuberance with prudent funding to fuel the creation of new platforms for growth. Come to think of it – would Web 2.0 have become so popular without the blogosphere – it looked to me that web2.0 was blogosphere’s posterchild for several months in a row!!