Today’s tired Web 2.0 metaphors are brought to you by the letter ‘B’ for boring and the number ’9′ as in the 92 million times someone has used phrases like "It’s MySpace for X" or "The YouTube of Y".The most recent example includes CNN Exchange being dubbed the YouTube of News.
Besides the fact that it’s generally annoying to read that sort of comparison everyday, I think it’s a wrong approach to commenting on what’s happening. It’s presumptuous for two reasons: 1) Many outside of geek-dom don’t know anything about these sites. 2) Even though there are strong network effects (MySpace) and first mover advantages (YouTube), it’s still early in the game – the history of the web would prove that it’s future is simply unpredictable. Partnerships like this one for blip.tv, for example, could seriously have an impact on the video sharing space…and then maybe bloggers and others would be writing about how so-and-so has just launched the blip.tv of blah. Wouldn’t that be fun?
