Here is one example that I particularly like

http://www.vroomworld.com

It integrates and offers all those features that you termed RIP, but in fact are just at the tipping point!

If it’s about the network as platform, virtually everything we’re seeing in computing is in fact Web 2.0, just like most of computing for the past few decades has been about the PC. Saying “Web 2.0 has jumped the shark” is like saying “personal computing has jumped the shark.”

Ajax has little or nothing to do with Web 2.0. It’s a nice computing innovation that’s used by lots of Web 2.0 sites, but google maps is a Web 2.0 phenomenon because of mashups (network re-use) not because of Ajax. And google.com is the pre-eminent web 2.0 app with a dead-simple, minimalist UI because search engines are intrinsically network-as-platform apps, because Google figured out how to harness collective intelligence to provide search results better than their competitors, and because they built a self-service ad network that also harnessed network effects better than their competitors. Nothing to do with the interface.

Saying that Grand Central is not a Web 2.0 app indicates that you don’t understand what I was trying to get at in my original framing of the concept. (Now, I can’t be responsible for how people have remade that concept — I can’t control how the meme evolves — but I sure as heck can use it myself the way I originally meant it!)

Why did I call GrandCentral the Web 2.0 address book in the making? Because if they play their cards right, they are going to be building a user-generated phone book that no one else has, a superset of the call history held by any one carrier. This will be a very powerful network asset.

Plaxo, LinkedIn et al are also contenders, as are any of the big email players, but GC is the first company outside the phone companies themselves that looks to have a shot at tackling this problem from the phone end. And there are a lot more phones than PCs and PC-based web browsers.

Web 2.0 is not equivalent to “innovation.” Quantum computing is an innovation that’s not Web 2.0. Synthetic biology is an innovation that’s not Web 2.0. But for better or worse (and it’s certainly worse when people bandy the term about for marketing purposes, or bash it for marketing purposes — both are equivalent misuses), it’s a term that has been broadly adopted to represent the current era of computing and computing business models.

Same old stupid technology focus. Technology is of little use to non-geeks. Wake up and look outside. Most people want solutions to their problems and are not interested in the name of technology that is used to solve the problem. sure, AJAX is a big hit with geeks, but a plain user couldn’t care less about the ‘magic’ behind it.

Gloria, I mostly agree but my answer would be a mix of “yes” and “no” not totally bipolar. Its probably true that non-tech people don’t really care all that much about the technology underpinnings and the names that geeks associate with such underpinnings. However, Ms. Gloria, I have met MANY non-geek people in the Real Estate business who just LOVE Google Maps. I had a gray beard who has worked in the Real Estate industry tell me how fascinated he is with how technology is changing the business and changing the dynamics of how people go about searching for information that just five to ten years ago was impossible (he mentioned Zillow for example). He said that its fantastic because his prospective buyers and sellers are more intelligent and are loaded with more information about buying and selling a home (or even renting). In Portland, OR for example, there’s even a web site that shows crime based on neighborhood blocks as reported to police.

I think it would be fair to say that Google Maps really gave this whole “AJAX” and “Web 2.0″ name calling a shot in the arm. People are always going to coin terms. The fact is, there have emerged applications of these technology underpinnings that have proved to be useful to consumers. But getting back to Rip’s point, there is a deeper question as to whether or not these new applications can make money and are therefore worthwhile investment opportunities (that’s a whole other ball of wax). Anyway, its naive to say that names that people coin to technology should be shrugged off and that nobody cares. Consumers are becoming more intelligent as they have access now to boat loads of information. The trick of course is how to figure out what information is trustworthy (because there is clearly also a lot of amateurism and disinformation on the web). Anyway, the web is unstoppable and new applications will continue to emerge. The applications that attract and retain an audience’s attention long-term will be the ones that win of course and the challenge for Rip and his VC friends is to figure out how to lay their bets down (but that’s their problem — the VC business is the business they have opted in to and if they don’t like it then they should quit and do something else. I never shed crocodile tears for VCs, because they are in a sense gamblers sitting at a round table in a casino roayle).

The new pink is probably, uhm, pink.

How about Pink 2.0?

my web2.0 friends and i have been web2.0-blogging for web2.0+ years, so let’s stop everyone else from saying ‘web2.0′, now, because you know, i like to act above the riffraff.