Web 2.0 on the Ropes. . . Kleiner Perkins Halts Investments - SVW

Tom Foremski caught a passing remark from a Kleiner Perkins partner, Randy Komisar, which he interprets as ‘we are no longer investing in Web 2.0 companies.’ In the blowbank, Komisar qualified what he said — or what Foremski heard — but still…

I think Web 2.0 is played out as a metaphor, and not for the deep inner thinking by Tim O’Reilly of the ‘web as a platform’ or whatever else Web 2.0 was supposed to mean.

Web 2.0 was once a forward leaning metaphor, but now is only relevant as backwards-oriented map.

What we learned is that the most important part of Web 2.0 is social. The social web has remade the world, and the rest turns out to be plumbing.

KP is still investing in social, and social is still changing the world. Lots left to go.

Kleiner’s Bing Gordon: Social Web due for shake-up, old media will “eat their young” | VentureBeat

Kleiner Perkin’s has acknowledged the social web revolution by putting together a new fund to go after new investments.

This is like Goldilocks and the Three Bears: they waited until it was ‘just’ right — not too cold or too hot. And they may in fact make some awesome investments. But this is not groundbreaking.

One things this does, perhaps, is to confirm that social is the fuel making the web revolution go zoom, not ‘internet data’ or ‘the web as OS’ or ‘the semantic web’ or any and all of the other technological mumbo-jumbo being spouted by various internet gurus.