Is it just me, or is web2.0 losing it's steam?

I remember about a year ago when just about any time of the day I could login to del.icio.us/popular, digg.com, popurls.com, originalsignal.com, etc. and be completely and utterly blown away by the amazing content that so eloquently ebbed and flowed on their most popular lists.

I've become a frequent visitor to buzz.originalsignal.com, labs.digg.com/swarm, and http://technorati.com/pop/ and maybe its just my warped sense of what I find to be interesting, but over the past few months, the quality of content that rises to the top of these sites has gone way way down hill. I still get my daily dose of web2.0 crapola from these sites, but a year ago I was learning all sorts of new and interesting stuff from just about every link I clicked from the above mentioned sites. Now it seems like the quality of the coent being submitted has gone down significantly. I think I saw an article yesterday about the "dumbness of crowds." I think where I'm heading with this post is perhaps a completely factless and baseless hypothesis that as these social sites grow their userbase, quality suffers. I think I'll go explore the "dumbness of crowds" meme and report back.

Fellow tecnho-geeks, is it just me, or is web2.0 played out? Are the amazing benefits of socialsoftware and related web2.0 technologies, techniques, and philosophies meant to stay with us techies and never reach the masses? I sure hope not. What is it going to take to gain widespread adoption and bring the benefits of web2.0 to the masses?

standards for tagging
standards for tagging
standards for tagging

Tags: web2.0, hype, bubble, burst, socialsoftware, trends