Early Morning Thoughts 'bout Web 2.0, Vonage, MySpace

After much thought and a lot of reading, I'm even more convinced Tim O'Reilly is dead wrong in his efforts to trademark “Web 2.0″, and the people who are supporting him (particularly the Silicon Valley crowd) are nothing more than apologists who can't see the forest through the trees. Maybe O'Reilly invented the phrase “Web 2.0″ or maybe he didn't – but nevertheless it's now an integral part of the high-tech lexicon so  trying to put a legal claim on it is a mistake. Furthermore, the real value in “Web 2.0″ for O'Reilly is not owning it but how many people closely associate it with him. This gives O'Reilly cache and status as one of the Web 2.0 thought leaders. And shame on the U.S. Patent and Trade Office, which has apparently never met an idea that it won't patent or trademark.
  Update: It appears that Darcy DiNucci may have invented “Web 2.0″ given it appeared in a paper written in 1999. Hat tip to Rob Hyndman, who has excellent post on Web 2.0 that combines his expertise as a lawyer, his passion for the Web and his involvement with mesh, which I suspect we won't be calling “Canada's Web 2.0 conference” anymore.
  Okay, Vonage ended the week down at $13.20, down $3.98 from its IPO issue price. The company can't be accused of leaving money on the table! But what I want to know is who bought the IPO and why. I mean, there was so much criticism surrounding Vonage's large losses, uncertain prospects and the fierce industry competition that you would think investors would be cautious about jumping into the fray. You wonder how many Vonage customers took advantage of the “opportunity” to buy into the IPO on the belief that a company offering low prices would equate to a good investment.
   Finally, one of the most intriguing notions of the week is Scott Karp's contention that the downturn of MySpace has started. Scott's thesis is based on Alexa data and chats with people who study how teenagers behave (if that's even possible!). Mathew Ingram has a nice take on Scott's idea. He agrees with Stowe Boyd that MySpace is like a hot nightclub where people are willing to stand in long line-ups to get in – only to quickly abandon it when something new comes along. A good read is Mathew's column on social networks and their hunt for revenue.