Web 2.0: to hopeful entrepreneurs, it has the sweet smell of money about it. To those of a more cynical disposition, the scent is more akin to *ahem* dookie. Web founder Tim Berners-Lee has just weighed in on the Web 2.0 question in a podcast interview for IBM, and he's not big on the term. In fact, Sir Tim has some really big doubts that Web 2.0 is different from Web 1.0 at all.

When asked if it's fair to say that the difference between the two might be fairly described as "Web 1.0 is about connecting computers, while Web 2.0 is about connecting people," Berners-Lee replied, "Totally not. Web 1.0 was all about connecting people. It was an interactive space, and I think Web 2.0 is of course a piece of jargon, nobody even knows what it means. If Web 2.0 for you is blogs and wikis, then that is people to people. But that was what the Web was supposed to be all along. And in fact, you know, this 'Web 2.0,' it means using the standards which have been produced by all these people working on Web 1.0."

He's big on blogs and wikis, and has nothing but good things to say about AJAX, but Berners-Lee faults the term "Web 2.0" for lacking any coherent meaning. A quick look at a list of alleged Web 2.0 sites is enough to illustrate what he's talking about. In what sense do all the sites do something qualitatively different than the sites which came before? In what sense do these sites do anything similar enough that they can all be lumped into a single category?

Even boosters acknowledge that the biggest problems for Web 2.0 are excessive hype and the lack of a real definition. But perhaps the biggest criticism of the Web 2.0 phenomenon is that it has failed to generate enough truly important products. Venture capitalist Josh Kopelman argues that too many Internet startups are targeting a small subset of the geek market, and that few 'Net entrepreneurs have a good vision for building systems with mass appeal.

The problem is too many startups trying to be "2.0" in ways that the public utterly fails to care about. Until this changes, and until Web 2.0 gains some coherence, Web 2.0 firms (whatever that means) can do us all a favor by dialing down the hype until it reenters the green (or "reality") portion of the Buzz-o-meter. The real question is not whether a site is "2.0 enough" to be hip, but whether any given site is useful and interesting, regardless of approach.