While we were at South by Southwest (a new media conference) this year, we had a chance to talk to Dan Fost of the San Franscisco Gate.

Apparently, Fost doesn’t completely buy the whole Web 2.0 meme:

I sure drank a lot of Kool-Aid 2.0 at South by Southwest last week. I don’t know what was in the stuff, but I’m catching some of the excitement that’s coursing through the Internet again.

The whole Web 2.0 thing, though, is asking for ridicule. Even most of the companies that fit in the Web 2.0 category aren’t crazy about the phrase (perhaps because it invites the moniker Bubble 2.0). But at least it’s a handy rubric.

It makes me realize how tribal the chatter is at these tech conferences. Linguists would probably love them, if they could understand them.

James Lewin, who runs Web publications on podcasting and other topics with his wife, Elisabeth, in Des Moines, Iowa, heard enough of the blather at South by Southwest to string together a typically meaningless pitch: “We’re monetizing the long tail globally and impactfully in the Web 2.0 space with tags.”

To come up with your own pitch, try this Web site from blogger Andrew Wooldridge and you’ll be streaming RSS-based widgets via Shockwave in no time.

For the record, we are monitizing the long tail globally and impactfully in the Web 2.0 space, with tags.

via SFGate