Web 2.0 Poison.

The phrase “Web 2.0″ has has been poisoned. It’s become a negative moniker for ill conceived, inbred projects - a mark of death totally unrelated to the empowering, enriching and inspiring concepts behind it. I’ve been hearing a lot of trash talk; and rightfully so - there’s a lot of trash to talk about. For the record, for the sake of good taste I removed the hyper links to examples of said trash.

On the other hand, Micki Krimmel over at worldchanging is talking about

[T]he possibility of the “Web 2.0” moniker creating another bubble and lessening the substantive value of “remix cultures, long tails, software as a service, collective intelligence, tipping points, and, of course, the vast active living intelligent blogosphere” in affecting social change.

Well clearly, all recycled idea’s, buyout projects and inbreeding aside, there are still powerful and positive tools and forces in the concept. Micki mentions a few great projects from the N2Y2 conference that are a bit of a breath of fresh air. My personal favorite (and the champ of the conference, receiving a $25k grant) is Maplight.org

MAPLight.org illuminates the connection between money and politics. We connect campaign contributions and votes for U.S. Congress, providing groundbreaking transparency so that bloggers, journalists, and citizens can hold legislators accountable.

In related news, while Facebook (a community and tool I hate) is stealing all my friends from Flickr (a community and tool I love), my good friend Adam Bognar is trying to set things right and bring justice into the world. Adam and I happen to be working on a set of design patterns that explain both the love and the hate - I’m rather excited about the whole thing, so sit tight.