Netvibes is (another) wannabe my.yahoo.com (like Nowsy, Pageflakesy, etc…) that allows you to have a customized home page with nice borders and shading and drag and drop effects (although without all those pesky yahoo features like mail, fantasy sports, stock tickers, etc.  but they come preconfigured with Boing Boing, so I guess that’s like a win). 

Meebo is a Web-based instant messaging tool that is pretty useful (despite an annoying blog entry which pops up every time you log in), especially if you are in an environment where instant messaging is prohibited.  College kids, bankers, and the Chinese find it especially helpful for breaking campus policy, corporate IT policy, and, well, ridiculous laws.  I actually do like Meebo as a service, since it has allowed me to use Gtalk without installing any more Google software on my PC (google desktop search is just useful enough for me to put up with its piglike behaviors).

Today, they became best friends forever.

Not a big deal on its own (I’ll explain why in a moment.  if you have read this far, make sure you read to the end.  trust me a bit!), but for some reason this made its way to both TechCrunch AND GigaOm.  The big boys of Web 2.0.  The top of the line.  A+.  Top 100 bloggers.  Studs.  Pundits.  Creams of the crops. Smartypantses.

Apparently, neither blogger (and I do give them both a lot of props most of the time)is aware of the fact that browsers (with the exception of IE6) employ a neat technology called “tabs”.  In fact, a “tab” lets you have multiple browser sessions simultaneously.  This way, when you get an instant message on Meebo, it’s tab blinks.  Here it is, in action:

Big news day today, eh?

Blah blah blah Porn web browser blah blah blah.  HeatSeek. Blah blah, porn.  Blah.  Blah blah blah Porno web.  Blah. Porn Web browser blah.  Blah blah.  Blah.  Blahblahblah.  Blah blah porn.

Blah. Blah blah blah blah. Blah. Porn. Blah blah Techcrunch porn Web browser porn. Blah.

BEST WEB 2.0 SERVICE TO DATE.

Blah blah. Porn! HeatSeek.

So Infogami is some new self-publishing wiki system (get that one, mom?  you know what that means, right?) by the founders of reddit, which seems to be a site where you can go to rank unimportant blog posts that nobody actually reads (slightly more meaningless than Digg, but not much.  well, except for this guy).  Back to the topic at hand - someone emailed me a blog posting from the founder of Infogami, and I think it’s a great example of the things that are wrong with the Web 2.0 ‘tude.

Now Aaron seems like basically a decent guy (although Aaron, if you happen to read this, trust me that the classical music you don’t ‘get’ will be listened to long after most ‘good modern music’ isn’t even replayed in some VH1 flashback show) who is a little caught up in the 2.0 hype.  I have some excerpts here, and my issues along with them.

I began working on Infogami last summer, as part of the first batch of Y Combinator startups. At the end of the summer we had a working prototype and a number of offers for funding. Things were going so well I took a leave of absence from college to work on it.

I don’t know what bugs me more, that there were funding offers already (who are these people?), or that they were good enough to exit the college education process.  Even if you got the funding (reading on reveals it didn’t come through), did you really look ahead far enough past when the round ran out?  Had you even considered an exit strategy?

One Sunday I decided I’d finally had enough of it. I went to talk to Paul Graham, the only person who had kept me going through these months. “This is it,” I told him. “If I don’t get either funding, a partner, or an apartment by the end of this week, I’m giving up.”

Huh? What kind of logic is this???

Last month, when we got back from winter break, we began working on Infogami in earnest. It was clear that the prototype I’d built would never work for any serious site, so Steve built an amazing new industrial-strength database system while I built the software to talk to it. Unfortunately this amazing system is pretty much invisible to the outside world, but it’s going to allow us to quickly build software that’s more advanced than anything else out there.

So let me see if I get this right.  One guy, Steve, is able to build a “database system” that allows them to build software that’s “more advanced than anything else out there.”  Is this naivete or arrogance?  Steve can do this?? If this is true, Steve, pal, well done!

Obviously there’s lots more work to do — right now we only have the most basic of features. But instead of continuing to work on it behind closed doors, we’re going to try something different: we’re going to build it in public.

This sums it up nicely for me.  This amazing system (built by Steve) is so good that they can built it in public and noone can possibly duplicate it in the meantime.  Wow. 

I’m sure they have a plan that makes sense to them and their friends.  I am always to see excitement about anything people start.  But the thought that you are out there really building something that revolutionary, alone, in no time, with no money, is a bit hard to stomach.  Take a humble pill, and be proud of what you are doing.  But world-changing? Infogami ain’t it. 

Here’s the official Infogami-powered Dead 2.0 web site.  Is it time to give up Wordpress already?