Umair Haque has posted a couple of good, short, sensible essays (hard to find these days ;-) on the topic of Web 2.0.

The Problems With Web 2.0, pt 1: Geeks vs Droids
"I think what smart players will do is look to drive growth through alliances which demonstrate viscerally to the mass market the very real power of a 2.0 value prop based on liquidity, plasticity, and networked users.

A textbook example lately is Technorati's Washington Post deal (which is not strictly marketing, but that's my point). It's killer. If you put other 2.0 services in this context (Memeorandum, del.icio.us, Jeteye, Indeed, etc, etc) for a sec, I think you'll see that there's huge room for 2.0 players to kick off similarly cool deals."

The Problems With Web 2.0, Pt 2: Geeks (New) vs Geeks (Old)
"All across the Valley, entrepreneurs are setting up shop...with the hope of getting acquired by Yahoo, Google, eBay, or FIM (in roughly that order).

I think these are kind of the wrong incentives for entrepreneurs. What made the Valley cool was it's refusal to think small, and do truly disruptive things. But getting a small change acquisition to essentially extend a Yahoo/Google/etc product line sets incentives for incremental, not disruptive, innovations and models."

I look forward to more of Haque's writing on the subject.

(See more of my Web 2.0 posts or others' at Technorati )