It's all a crapshoot...

Seth Godin's Alexaholic Web 2.0 list was interesting, especially given all the different stats analyses that have been posted around the blogosphere related to Alexa. I'm inclined to think Alexa stats are a pile of crap, but who knows, it could be that everyone elses stats are a pile of crap too.

I had a look at some of the sites in the list that I hadn't seen before, and in my ultra-cynical mood this morning, I did some pico-reviews (i.e. I looked at their webpage and gauged if I liked what I saw).
As my opinion is hardly worth anything anyway, I can jump to as many conclusions as I want.

46 (up from 81)	4shared.com - Looks like a pile of crap, I wouldn't put my files there, unless I really wanted to lose them or have them viewed by the whole world
51	userplane.com - Interesting, though it only seemed to do fairly basic things. So long as it does them well, no problem, otherwise - crap!
73 (up from 128)	esnips.com - Hosting with tagging, link your crap with other peoples crap - all crap welcome!
78 (up from 130)	imvu.com - Couldn't even access the site! redefines crap!
92 (up from 149)	kopete.kde.org - Crap name, but useful, if dull, application. I was looking for 1 piece of new, innovative functionality, but didn't find any. However, not as crap as PeopleAggregator (which didn't even make the list!)
109 (up from 161)	pageflakes.com - like cornflakes only not as tasty!
123	Fckeditor.com - Like the name, but lost interest after that.
154 (up from 503)	Qype.com - Leider kann ich kein deutsch, aber scheint ein bisschen intressant - gibt aber viele sites wie dieser, also bin ich scheiss-egal!
159 (up from 303)	Stylehive.com - How many more of these 'Post my crap and see if anyone looks' sites are there?!
226 (up from 527)	Gliffy.com - Basic but looks good, if they give it a BPMN stencil I'll probably use it!
270 (up from 480)	turnhere.com - Initially I thought "another f***ing video site", but they have at least made an effort to differentiate
527 (up from 765)	RedToucan.com - Close, very close but will probably struggle to get traction (requires yet another Id, for building a network)

Someone else said (Paul Kedrosky, I think) that there is a huge gap between the good Web2.0 applications and the rest. Looking at the list of applications here, I would have to agree. It's not so much the lack of quality in design and coding as the lack of innovative, useful functionality.

There seems to only be about 5 different applications (or if I'm generous, categories) out there. Even the slightly interesting ones are fairly unimaginative.

The categories are:

• File sharing (be it video, photo, pod, mp3, business data etc) - generally involves a player of sorts and pervasive tagging, great for porn!
• Aggregator (combines information from lots of different sites into a personalised page, making it less interesting in the process)
• Forum (collect up a lot of posts and discussions and pretend that they're valuable)
• Office Online (I know, let's take a standard desktop application and put it online, reduce functionality, increase unreliability and try to sell it to Google)
• Auction/Shopping (not that different from Forum, but more focussed on e-commerce.)

I get the feeling we're on a plateau, where the real innovation has, at least temporarily, been obscured by the multitude of 'me-too' applications funded by over-eager VCs with too much money to burn!
Don't they remember Boo.com?? (incidentally I looked at the site and became very afraid!)

What's the equivalent of Selective Weedkiller for Web2.0 apps?