A few months ago, I deleted about 90% of the RSS feeds and mailing lists I was subscribed to.  I was just plain suffering from information overload, and my thought was to get rid of most of it, see what I missed, and add those back.  So far, I think I’ve added maybe 2 feeds back.

As part of that withdrawal, I took myself a bit outside the “internet hype-loop”, which I was reminded of this week.

I was reading an announcement regarding an upcoming site launch, and I hadn’t a clue what it was about.  I’m guessing if I had stayed subscribed to all those feeds, and read Digg faithfully I would have known what this announcement was talking about.

But I don’t think it was entirely due to my withdrawal.  I’ve noted that the marketing around so-called “Web 2.0” sites seems to be done in a strange way - with all sizzle and no steak.  I recently bumped into an old co-worker, and asked him what he was doing now.  For a couple of minutes he went on, talking about “new channels to market”, and “Web 2.0” and “Community” and when he finished up to take a phone call I sat there, still wondering “Yeah, but what does the site do?” After spending some time on Google I found that it’s a place for film buffs to interact with other film buffs, and the site will also sell films online.  OK, why not just say that?

Again this week, I read another announcement about a site. The first thing that struck me was that the site hadn’t launched yet - it was yet another teaser announcement with no projected launch date for the site.  It went on to hype up the features that are “in the works” and that I should subscribe to the nifty AJAXified mailing list.  Then I could help out with the private beta at some point in the future.

My reaction...was a large stifled yawn.  First - if you didn’t already know about another site that this one is related to (and I didn’t) the whole announcement was pointless.  Second - do people still get excited about sites that don’t yet exist?  Call me cynical - but call me when it’s actually launched.  Third - why is it still about the “features”?  Is AJAX still the Web 2.0 Pied Piper - gathering users in it’s wake?  And fourth - do people actually have time they are willing to spend helping out these sites during a “Beta” phase?  Methinks Tom Sawyer would have made a killing in Web 2.0 marketing…

And so your point is.....

Good question.  I guess my point is I’m still somewhat mystified over the whole Web 2.0 thing, I’m amazed that people continue to spend time, energy and money trying to make a better MySpace, and I’m surprised that the “hyping up fluff” marketing methods around these sites are still getting used.

Isn’t it time for another round of innovation?