My elitist half couldn't agree more with this article, however my capitalist half recognizes commercial potential. That said, what I find more intriguing are the frequent social migrations that have occurred since Friendster. And I believe many social sites are over-valued and over-hyped (signs of a web 2.0 bust?) given the fickle loyalty of internet-social-bees.

That said, the rise of me-too .com hives give others the opportunity to improve, but are they really making significant strides in innovation that are lasting and unique? For example, Digg significantly improved an old concept from the early 00's known at 'top sites' by shifting focus to relevant content as oppose to site-specific. But, what have followers of the Digg model offered besides servicing a niche audience?

When this same me-too trend happened in web 1.0, funding dried up for a few years while the internet cleansed itself...

It was meant to be an essay, although it admittedly came out not as poignant nor as convincing as I wanted.

I thought it was a rather nice read. It was refreshing to have a little bit of story telling along the lines of a personal experience instead of some quick snippets of facts and opinions mashed up together.

Surprisingly, I find it interesting and easy to follow. I completely agree that the quality on Digg have gone downhill, never find Techcrunch to be technologically insightful, but it is becoming garbage with the flood of recent posts about twitter and sensational microhoo merger deal.

I find readwriteweb.com to be a better source for start up news. You can see they put in sincere effort writing up those analysis.

What's wrong with Italy?