Surprisingly, Paul Graham's essay entitled Web 2.0 is not a Naysayer one. It's critical of Web 2.0 in parts, but overall the essay is well thought out and offers weighty insights.

So how does Graham define Web 2.0?

"Ajax, democracy, and not dissing users."

What, that's it?! Well, it turns out Graham's essay illustrates the problem of trying to define Web 2.0: you can't, in a single sentence or paragraph that is. This extract is a good example of that:

"Web 2.0 means using the web the way it's meant to be used. The "trends" we're seeing now are simply the inherent nature of the web emerging from under the broken models that got imposed on it during the Bubble."

Of course that is just repeating what most of us 'Web 2.0 Wankers' have been saying for the past year, as is the rest of Paul Graham's essay. But for Graham to give this thing called Web 2.0 his Tech God blessing is a good thing.

I think he overdoes the Google = Web 2.0 theme, but hey we all have our biases.