Robert Margel emailed me earlier this week.

He asked me a question, something along the lines of "so WTF is web 2.0. I keep seeing you mention it in your blog but WTF is it???".

Rob, good question. I'm going to answer by way of a series of posts, because there is no single and definitive answer.

The first possible response to 'WTF is web 2.0?' is this post by a tech VC, Ed Sim: it's not a way of making a quick buck.
"I am starting to get extremely tired and frustrated about every pitch that I see now where a company claims they are a Web 2.0 company and lists their principal reasons for being Web 2.0.  It reminds me of the mid-90s when everyone said they were an Internet company and sprinkled their pitch with wild growth expectations from Jupiter Communications.  Or when everyone said they were a Java company when Java was the cool buzzword.  Frankly I do not care if you are Web 2.0, Web 1.0, etc.  All I care about is what your service or product does, why it is valuable to the end user, why it is uniquely different from the competition, what the barriers to entry are, and how you plan on reaching your customers and how you will ultimately make money.  Don't start your pitch with Web 2.0 ecochamber talk."