Right on my brother! And if you want to step it up a notch, unsubscribe from Valleywag and TC. I did a loooong time ago, and haven't looked back for a second.

oh btw, totally unrelated note, I'm coming to SF in Nov. I'll be spending my time from 8am on, give or take, standing in line at the Filmore. But if you're bored and wanna stop by, you can make fun of me for standing there two days in a row for 12 hours each day.

Sounds like a plan.

Bring on 3.0 baby!

Ha, I wonder what Web 3.0 will be focused around. Privacy? Data portability? I guess I can dream.

I'm thinking porn and plastics...but your guess might be better

How about a social networking site centered around gold, tobacco, firearms,
and DIY bomb shelters?

Haha, Web 3.0 = Y2K.

Web 3.0 (even though I have very little use of numerical designations that describe little) will be about the Semantic Web. The Semantic Web will have to deal with privacy and data portability concerns, but it will be primarily about new languages that help the computer to interpret meaning from web pages instead of just delivering keyword matches to the user for interpretation.

Check out the Web 3.0 Conference & Forum website for more information. I will be a speaker there and I'll be interested in the collective mood of the participants.

If it piques my interest I'll be there.

I agree completely. I just hope that as companies go under, that they do right by their users and offer people's data back (in a usable format). This is something they should have done while they were doing well, but I guess not enough people demand it until they need it.

Yeah... that in particular will really piss me off if user data is
sold to the highest bidder or some such. I have many logins and
passwords floating around from sites I don't even visit anymore.

Well, I'm thinking more along the lines of...the data within your account. Say, if Google Docs went away tomorrow - many people store all of their documents in there. If Google allowed you to download your Google Docs files in MS Word, Excel, Powerpoint formats...I think that would be fair.

It would cost them more resources to do that, though, and for a company going under, I'm sure money is pretty scarce (paying to code this, paying for additional servers to handle the load). But it would gain them trust that they could really use when they unveil their next project and hope people will use it.

Logins and passwords should be encrypted inside a database so that nobody can recover them in plaintext. And if this data was sold, well...there goes the credibility. Not only would I refuse to use any of their services ever again, but I'd tell everyone who would listen about what they have done to their loyal users.

I did some poking around the google apps a while back and pretty much all of
them allow export into another format - html, rtf, even pdfs. the
spreadsheet supports CSV files. Even with Google mail, I download everything
to my local computer daily. This is a big reason why I'm still sticking with
the google apps - they support data portability.

http://www.webomatica.com/wordpress/2008/01/09/...

Yeah, I was using Google Docs as an example, but Disqus didn't support data portability at first (they do now). Remember The Milk doesn't seem to support exporting (though with Google Gears, I can at least access my data after they close and copy/paste into something like iCal). Delicious supports exporting, and if they were to close, I'd hope they would stay open enough for people to grab their bookmarks. Flickr doesn't directly support exporting, though there are third-party apps for downloading your photos.

Just saying - supporting data portability is an important first step. Giving your users access to their data in a usable format after you close up shop - I guess we haven't gone there yet.

oh yeah, I totally agree. getting data out is one of the first things
I check on when I consider using a new web service. But I think your
point, which i also agree with, is some people won't even consider
this issue until companies start failing and have no contingency for
users to get their data out.

I always knew there was a reason I kept you on my read list besides good movie reviews. ;) Great post.

I'm really confused. Super really. So i'm sitting here, and I'm reading this, and it's the first time I've come to your blog - that's my disclaimer.

But here's the chain of events that is leaving me really perplexed. I come. Read your article. I get it. There's a lot of folks out there that feel the same way. I get that too. Doesn't mean it's what I think - but it's a damn good thing that's the case, life would be seriously boring if everyone thought the same thing.

But the thing is this. I caught this link on the Startup Successes friendfeed. Whoever started it sent me an invite to it, that showed up this morning, in my gmail. I scroll down and I'm reading your comments, and over to the side I see a twitter post. Hmmmm. Then I link to your tech articles to see what you've written, and I picked the Twitter Is a Crappy Restaurant type-titled article. And you sign off on it saying you haven't used it in 2 weeks on the 30th, but your last Twitter post was on the 22nd. It may have come via friendfeed, but that's just a tool - it's not the platform. You were still using the platform... and then your posts die for a couple of months, and then they spring back into action - without account of why.

So I guess my confusion is this. I end up seeing your post on friendfeed (2.0) via an email i got to my gmail account (cloud computing) and when I get here - I read about how Web 2.0 is dead, but you're using a wordpress platform (2.0) and I'm leaving you comments (2.0) and as I write I'm feeling suffocated by your friendfeed plugin (2.0) on the right which is displaying your tweets (2.0) and your google reader (2.0) and your feedburner (2.0) stuff. I'm so confused.

Don't get me wrong. If you don't want to write about 2.0 it's your frikkin right to do whatEVER you want. But seriously - how many contradictions can you fit into one site, not even - let me take that back - how many contradictions can you fit into a couple of blog posts?

If you're "so over web 2.0" then why don't you unplug? If it's so worthless and bubble inducing - cool, get rid of it. Just, you know, practice what you preach. But while we're on the subject - the market is pinching all of us - silicon valley just happens to be as vulnerable as the alley, their late arrival to that understanding I tend to believe has to do more with them being from California than it does to them working in 2.0 tech fields. Final disclaimer: I really can't stand California.

Sincerely,

A loyal member of the NYC Tech Mafia.

Your comments are like telling someone who is critical of the US to leave
the country, or critisizing a vegan because their boyfriend wears a leather
jacket. Things don't have to be so black and white, there are many shades of
grey. The "only" web 2.0 services I use regularly are FriendFeed, Twitter,
the Google apps, and yes, WordPress. If you were a regular reader of this
blog, you'd know I've given up on a slew of them (Digg, Mixx, Facebook),
gradually, over the past year. The general trend is definitely down.

I'm afraid I have to disagree. A bubble is where some market is overvalued when there is no real content to justify that value; when returns finally become necessary, they don't appear and so the "bubble bursts". Web 2.0 is a conceptual application of certain technologies in certain ways towards certain ends, and there is about zero likelihood of any net users abandoning that application. Social media, and Web 2.0 in general, show a return and have changed the very fabric of how the internet functions. People are not somehow going to return to an isolated web and companies aren't going to stop their pushes to utilize "groundswell"-type phenomena.

And I have to agree with @haldol...I found this post through SocialMedian, am commenting through Disqus, on a Wordpress blog, and this comment will then show up on all the various social aggregators I use. So you have used Web 2.0 to announce the death of Web 2.0...and without Web 2.0 technology no one would have known, cared, or been able to comment.

Of course, I think you are smart enough to know all of this. Which raises the question of "why write a chicken-little post like this". Linkbait, much? :p

I'll just cut to the chase. This isn't link bait. It's a statement on my
part to the regular readers of the blog to not look to this site for any
more coverage of Web 2.0 from me. I'd rather blog about what I want than
continue to blog about stuff I've lost the passion for.

wait, what IS this web 2.0 you speak of? never heard of it.

Thakns for this good post.

may be web 3.0 will focus on privacy. Good post.

Thanks

Nice post on web 2. 0, can you elaborate on That Vshaped recovery. I certainly am with you on this problem.

yes ,its over please stop blogging on this stuff,this is too much i already through this things,now it's time to change everything that surround you!

How bout blogging about web 3.0, am not really a fan of mac :))

I wonder what now this Web # will be accompanied with, I am sure it will have revolutionary features bringing in a lot for bloggers like us to explore.

Oh. All the heated comments I read through here certainly proves that there certainly are a lot of Web 2.0 fans out there. I personally don't consider myself one. I'm neutral to this kind of conversation because I use whatever suits my needs whether it be Web 2.0 or Web 3.0.

I'm not really into Mac. No need to be so negative about it. SImply replace it with something that will meet your needs . :-)