Hype 2.0

How deeply ironic that, despite thousands of blog pages devoted to Web 2.0, it took stodgy old Newsweek to bring the hype to the masses — and they had to re-brand Web 2.0 as the “Live Web” to make it comprehensible to the average person who doesn’t understand version-speak:

The generic term for this movement, especially among the hundreds of new companies jamming the waiting rooms of venture-capital offices, is Web 2.0, but that’s misleadingâ€â€�some supposedly Web 1.0 companies like eBay and Google have been clueful about this all along. A more fitting description comes from Mary Hodder, the CEO of a social-video-sharing start-up called Dabble. (Since Dabble has not yet launched, I can’t explain exactly what that means.) “This is the live Web,” she says.

The article’s themes were somehow very familiar:

Got a lot of free time? You’re going to need it to enjoy the fruits of Silicon Valley’s latest labors: start-ups that want you to spend even more of your life online.

Kind of reminds me of Who Has Time for Web 2.0?

Then there’s Nesweek’s interactive quiz How Geeky Are You?
which sorta makes me think of You Know You’re a Geek If You…

Suddenly mainstream media feels like the echo chamber, doesn’t it?

I took the geek quiz, which was absurdly long at 20 questions, all of which were loaded — four “geek” answers and one generic “non-geek answer”:

If you were stranded on a desert island, which novel would you prefer to take with you?

The Lord of the Rings
Neuromancer
Starship Troopers
Snow Crash
The Bridges of Madison County

I scored a 46 on the 60 point scale. Here’s how I “compare” to Newsweek readers:

0 to 29: Stuck in the Last Century — 46%

30 to 60: Heading to Geekdom — 48%

61 and up: Seriously Nerdy — 6%

I’d be willing to bet that the 6% who scored “Seriously Nerdy” are all regular readers of tech.memeorandum, where of course the Newsweek article is at the top of the chart.