Let me start with a disclaimer right up front: I’m a pragmatist but am mostly a happy-assed, optimistic, glass-is-51%-full guy. Instead of looking at why something can’t work, doesn’t work or what the issues are, I search for how to make the inefficient efficient; the broken, whole; the impossible more possible. That’s why I rail against the negative which — while he’s amusingly right in so many ways — Charlie O’Donnell’s post about Why Web 2.0 Sucks looks like his glass is nearly empty and I must admit that I think his position sucks.

Are there issues with Web 2.0 as the world gets re-engineered around the Internetwork? No question…but Charlie, read this chunk of a speech by Teddy Roosevelt which I have framed on my office wall:

“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.“

So in that spirit, I’d prefer to focus on all the reasons why Web 2.0 is working and appreciate and admire the “doers of deeds” as Roosevelt refers to them. The items that don’t work in Web 2.0 don’t “suck” as Charlie refers to them, but rather are blazing an infinite number of trails as the builders of the next generation Web strive valiantly while admittedly quite often committing errors and experiencing shortcomings.

Web 2.0 as a concept is working because the world is transitioning from a closed model to one that is open and transparent. A world where the Internet is the primary connection network for knowledge. There is, and always will be, great resistance from the status quo whose business models, gross margins and livelihood are being disrupted…but the innovation in virtually every category I care about is stunning and I’m personally experiencing the profound transformations being brought about by those daring greatly. Is Web 2.0 ‘complete’? No…but we’re sure learning in a helluva hurry what works and what doesn’t….and what needs to be made efficient, whole and more possible.

Perhaps Charlie will appreciate that I found his post on Techmeme, a conversation tracker of the blogosphere and that the irony won’t be lost on him that his voice in the wilderness wouldn’t even have an audience (other than his pals at the watercooler listening to him rant) had it not been for innovation, participation and the connections facilitated by the Web 2.0 visionaries.

Joe had built a publishing and consulting business over many, many years but it was changing…and not for the better. Though his clients and customers loved his products and services, he found that sales had been continuing to erode even though he was bringing out new products at a feverish pace.

New products always sold well but it was exhausting to scramble to make them and he had a vague sense that the problem wasn’t his information, his insights or his delivery…it was a shift in how his clients and customers were obtaining what he created and at some point it wouldn’t matter how many new products he shoved into the pipeline…people would stop buying. They were already pretty disinterested in his print, DVD’s or most of the electronic delivery he offered. There had to be a better way to deliver what clients and customers wanted and start to grow again instead of focusing on how to stop the decline in revenue.

All Joe heard about was Web 2.0; how big media was scrambling to be relevant; that people were creating their own content and many tried to convince him to give away his product and build buzz (yeah right…and go out of business to boot!); that the collective intelligence connected via the Internet was smarter than any company, individual or small team so that unless he figured out how to build a community around what his firm offered, he was screwed.

It became crystal clear to him that — just like all the other business types being disrupted by the Internet-as-a-platform and Web 2.0 — he had to quickly map his business on to the Internet while ensuring he didn’t kill his current revenue streams. It was going to require some finesse to shift his current clients and customers over to the Web while still selling them his other offerings…but he thought they would do it. Yep…building a web asset was the key and he set about enthusiastically building one in earnest.

What he discovered wasn’t pretty.

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