Web 2.0 was a bubble that never inflated — a shimmery illusion that popped well before we stopped talking about it. Precious few people got rich from the notions its proponents championed, such as user-generated content and social networks.

Calacanis was the only person of note to cash out on the blogging craze, selling a set of blogs to AOL for $25 million. That was a paltry figure in the grand scheme of things, but enough to set him up in a comfortable home in Brentwood and buy him a $109,000 electric sports car. And enough to make him a Web celebrity, with thousands of followers on Twitter and friends on Facebook — the quantifiable metrics of fame preferred by those who are not really famous.

The startups of the Web 2.0 era have proven similarly vacuous in their success. Skype, the Internet-calling service, sold for $2.6 billion to eBay in 2005; the auction giant wrote off $1.4 billion of that purchase last year. YouTube, sold to Google for $1.65 billion, is an acknowledged failure, with product managers scrambling to bedaub it with enough advertising to merely pay for its bandwidth bills. And the IPO market that powered the '90s bubble? All but invisible. The most recent big offering was in August for Rackspace, a boring company which hosts servers, and its stock has since fallen by half. With Wall Street on its knees, no one expects another IPO soon.

Will there be another bubble? Technology moves in cycles and is prone to investing fads, so yes, almost certainly. But there is nothing that looks set to inflate it. Cleantech, the next big hope of Silicon Valley, requires vastly more capital than Internet startups, and capital is now in short supply. (Falling oil prices, too, discourage the development of green energy.) While Internet users are devoting more attention to social networks, advertisers are staying away. Calacanis's venture, Mahalo, is a spiffed-up rehash of the kind of Web directory Yahoo built in 1995; he's now cooking up a new, secret project — which suggests that the loquacious entrepreneur realizes his original plan fell short. He may be onto something, if only in admitting failure. If this bubble fell short in making the likes of Calacanis rich, they have their own paucity of ideas to blame.

According to new stats from Hitwise, Plurk, the least cool microblogging startup around, might have the last laugh. Its Web traffic far exceeds FriendFeed's and Pownce's. And yet Twitter, while growing very fast, itself isn't very large. Its imitators are all so small, really, as to barely deserve mention, let alone magazine covers. Microblogging isn't just about very short updates. It's about very small businesses. If I wrote about them in line with their actual worth, this post would have been far shorter than 140 characters.

After a strong resurgence in 2005 and showing strong staying power through 2007, lately most of the people I've seen use it fit into two categories: 1) people over 40 who have finally had the word passed down the cool chain from their younger friends and coworkers. 2) the "douches" originally being described themselves.

• Web 2.0.This marketing term was old when Time magazine made "You" the person of the year in 2006. CNET reporter Caroline McCarthy might have just killed it for good.
• Bubble. We can't be in a recession and a bubble at the same time, people. Pick just one economic theory to overhype, please.
• Influencers. This term is on the tip of every social media marketer's tongue as they look to find that one Facebook user who will spark a forest fire for the clients' brands. Problem is: Uncountable variables set the conditions for a forest fire. The spark is just the most visible. And research shows influencers aren't the real firestarters.
• MicroHoo. Microsoft-Yahoo is what, seven characters longer? This word is only OK if Jerry Yang and Steve Ballmer both become Jeves Bang or Stevey Yallmer. Which I don't think is going to happen. Unless more weed is involved.
• Dead simple. From now on, this phrase should only be used ironically. As in: "IsMikeArringtonADick.com makes it dead simple to find out if Mike Arrington is a dick."

• Only five venture capital backed companies went public last quarter. 31 turned public in 2007's fourth quarter.
• Only 28 percent of all venture-backed companies that went public last year have shares trading above their IPO level. Usually, that number is around 50 percent.
• Angel investment is flat after growing every year since 2003.
• As the dollar drops, outsourced labor costs more.
• 2007's first three months saw just 56 acquisitions, compared to 83 in the fourth quarter.
• 2008 will see the local economy create 10,000 new jobs, down from 17,700 in 2007 and 25,000 in 2006 — the year Google acquired YouTube.

Investment portfolios of universities, pension funds and charities expanded in value as Americans put their savings into stocks. As a result, stock prices rose. Richer, these institutions put money into venture capital funds. The funds spent like drunken sailors. As long as the stock market stayed up, they could reap the rewards of their investments. Venture capitalists, like mortgage companies, relied on investment bankers to lay off some risk by selling their wares to someone else — in this case, IPO stock to the public.

If all this reminds you of the U.S. mortgage crisis, a time where anyone could get a loan because it was assumed that the price of real estate would go up, up, up, you are not alone. During the stock bubble, the SEC made no bones about its inability to keep up with the number of filings it had to process, review and approve. Something similar happened at the mortgage banks. As long as everyone signed a piece of paper saying they knew risk was involved, the loans got written. Can you imagine a Netscape public offering — the company's main product was given away — sponsored by a financial institution supervised by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp.? Me neither.

(Photo by Bub.blicio.us)

• Apple's "1984" ad
• Monster.com from 1999
• CareerBuilder.com from 2005
• GoDaddy from 2005
• Xerox from 1977
• E*Trade from 1999
• Pets.com from 2000
• Computer.com from 2000
• SalesGenie.com from 2007
• OurBeginnings in 2000

• A Goldman Sach survey of CIOs found indications of "decelerating spending growth."
  
• ChangeWave Research said 24 percent of IT departments will increase their budgets in 2008 compared to the fourth quarter.
  
• Cisco CEO John Chambers said he expects 2008 to be "lumpy."
  
• The CTO of Sony Pictures says annual eight-figure capital expenditures in tech will remain flat.

(Photo by )

Yesterday, Simon Freed, James Ashton and Sam Hamilton sold their holiday-themed Advent calendar application for a jolly $7,099. Over on AllFacebook, Nick O'Neill headlines the news "Facebook Application Sale Disappoints." The auction winner only paid 33 cents per active user, a figure O'Neill deems too cheap.

How so? Freed, Ashton and Hamilton created an app whose usefulness has a seasonal time limit. At best, they might find some other Facebook developer who wants to promote another application, a pyramid-scheme form of advertising that's proving to be disturbingly popular in the social network's microeconomy. And advertising on Facebook apps has so far been a dicey proposition. More than $7,000 for a Facebook app? Freed, Ashton, and Hamilton should call it an early Christmas gift.