Kitty came by my office to remind me that the Web 2.0 conference is next week. As part of the lead up to the conference I can see the technology geek blogosphere is buzzing with the What is Web 2.0? discussion which was sparked off by Tim O'Reilly's posting of the Web 2.0 meme map created during FooCamp. The meme map is below for the few folks who haven't seen it 

The meme map is visual indication that "Web 2.0" has joined "SOA" as a buzzword that is too ill-defined to have a serious technical discussion about. It is now associated with every hip trend on the Web. Social Networking? That's Web 2.0. Websites with APIs? That's Web 2.0. The Long Tail? That's Web 2.0. AJAX? That's Web 2.0. Tagging and Folksonomies? That's Web 2.0 too. Even blogging? Yep, Web 2.0.

I think the idea and trend towards the 'Web as a platform' is an important one and I find it unfortunate that the discussion is being muddied by hypesters who are trying to fill seats in conference rooms and sell books.

I'm in the process of updating my Billl Gates Thinkweek paper on MSN and Web platforms to account for the fact that some of my recommendations are now a reality (I helped launch http://msdn.microsoft.com/msn) and more importantly given recent developments it needs to change tone from a call to action to being more prescriptive. One of the things I'm considering is removing references to "Web 2.0" in the paper given that it may cause a bozo bit to be flipped. What do you think?