The 0 in 2.0

The questions are many. Is there a smooth upgrade, or do you have to uninstall Web 1.0 before installing the new version? What about backward compatibility? Should you wait for the bugs to be out in Web 2.1?

But the answers are reinvigorating the once-dormant Internet. At the beginning of the millennium, site designers and venture capitalists woke up to a horrifying reality: You can’t turn a profit by giving everything away for free. Now Web 2.0 has saved us all by offering new and improved ways to not charge anyone.

Here are some of the more exciting Web 2.0 sites on the Internet:

Wikicouple: Personal ads are passé. Even craigslist is oh so 2005. If you’re lonely and need that certain someone to walk into your life and complain about your dirty socks, Wikicouple makes your love life an interactive experience. Just post your needs and desires online (Straight male, 38, with good job, seeks attractive, fun-loving female who enjoys gourmet foods, walks on the beach, and collecting superhero action figures), and before you know it, thousands of people will correct and improve upon your ad (Straight male corporate VP, 32, with great abs and a face that makes George Clooney look like Danny DeVito, seeks any female who enjoys gourmet foods, walks on the beach, and shopping for clothes; looks not important). As your ad is altered, it’s also rated for desirability, making it easier for the woman of your dreams to find you.

Longertail.net: The long tail business model argues that you can turn a considerable profit by selling what no one wants to buy…provided, of course, that you can sell enough of it. This innovative site uses NMSTRoR (Name More Stupid Than Ruby on Rails) technology to identify the products that people are, in the greatest qualities, not buying. This is a more complicated job than most people imagine. With all of the money that changes hands these days on the web, it takes a complicated algorithm to determine that people are not buying hamster droppings more than they are not buying belly button lint. By offering for sale the items that no other site in its right mind would carry, Longertail.net keeps its warehousing and customer service costs to a minimum. A very long tale, indeed.

knows4knews.com: For too long the job of collecting and reporting the day’s important news has been left to professionals. Here’s a site that challenges the status quo by allowing anyone with an Internet connection the chance to write any news report he or she desires to write, without interference from editors, typesetters, or fact checkers. Why not report that President Bush was caught in a love triangle with John Kerry and a Chihuahua? Once written, just post it on knows4knews.com and let readers rate your story. The articles with the highest ratings are declared accurate, and thus can be picked up by Fox News.

Bickr: Why complain on your own? Bickr.com allows anyone to post a complaint about anything (except, of course, Bickr.com). Other surfers (or at least those that paid $19.95 for the free registration) can add tags to the complaint, making them more readily identifiable. Then, should you wish to complain about, say, pens, you can search for that keyword, and find any complaints about pens running out of ink and pens running out of pigs. Or just complaints that someone, somewhere, thought were about pens.

Oddcast: There’s plenty of great stuff available on podcasts these days. You can listen to intelligent people pontificate on economics, technology, their sex lives, their pets, or their pets’ sex lives. Oddcast is one of many sites that provides links to podcasts from all over the world, but this site distinguishes itself by sticking to one very important and unique criteria: It will not link to anything that might exhibit taste or talent. You need never worry about visiting Oddcast and hearing an intelligent argument with which you might disagree, as you will find no intelligent arguments. In recent months, Oddcast has broadened its business plan to include video as well as audio. You’ll find, for instance, a parody trailer for Pirates of the Caribbean that make it look entertaining. This has proved to be an extremely profitable business model; advertisers, it appears, like viewers who are attracted to the idiotic.

AbsolutelyPositivelyWebTwoPointOh.com: This blog, updated daily, contains random discussions on a variety of topics. But AbsolutelyPositivelyWebTwoPointOh.com is not your typical blog. For one thing, it uses a unique and original technological model--everything on this site is contained within a single html file displaying the text in a large jpeg. AbsolutelyPositivelyWebTwoPointOh.com qualifies as a Web 2.0 site on two grounds. First, its colorful logo sports a drop shadow. Second, it’s owner calls it one.

Disclaimer: Although the sites described here are fictitious, there really are sites with the domain names bickr.com and oddcast.com. I couldn’t resist using these names, even though the real sites bear no resemblance to the hopefully satirical ones I describe here. I trust that the owners of these sites will enjoy the joke (they had to have good senses of humor to use those names) and appreciate any extra clicks that result.--Lincoln Spector

© Copyright 2006 by Lincoln Spector