Greg Verdino, one of our favorite bloggers, has a really provocative post up arguing that all the hype surrounding Web 2.0 in terms of improving social networking is somewhat overblown. In fact, his innovative, and somewhat revisionist, take is that the Internet as it came into being in the late '80s/early '90s actually originated as a social networking platform. The answer has important implications for entrepreneurs, for whom networking is like oxygen.

Verdino writes:

You logged on to participate in forums, message boards or bulletin board system -- to post messages, read others, visit and revisit to check out the latest replies. You logged on for conversations with a bunch of your closest strangers in America Online, CompuServe or Prodigy chat rooms (in fact, you might have been doing this as early as the 1980s.) If you were truly plugged in, you might have joined The WELL, one of the earliest (and today, longest running) online communities.

Verdino wisely does not go so far as to deny that anything has changed--as any regular reader of his blog would know anyway, he is cognizant of the effects of large corporations stepping into the mix, and of the stunning impact of new and better technologies. But his basic point--that rumors of Web 2.0 positively revolutionizing social networking and the way we use the Web are overblown--is nonetheless worth contending with.

The response is twofold.

First, if some overstate the impact of new technology on social networking, Verdino understates it. For starters, he says he remembers using a dial-up modem--does he remember how slow it took, and how onerous it made going on the Internet? Today's speeds may not technically make online networking any easier, but it does it encourage it greatly. What does make online social networking easier are the friendlier templates established by the likes of Apple, Google, and open-source communities (think Firefox). People were probably acquiring songs and possibly even video over the Internet in the first half of the 1990s; but it took iTunes's brilliant, streamlined interface to make downloading media the mainstream phenomenon that it has become in only a few years. Ditto with social networking: Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, and the like don't let you do all that much that you could not have done in the early '90s (although they also do provide new things), but they make it so much easier and prettier, which--and this is key--brings more people in on the process. And social networking gets exponentially better the more people are brought in on it.

Second--and this isn't really a fault with Verdino's argument, just something he decided not to address--it's worth pointing out that social networking is only part of the Web 2.0 revolution. Just as, and maybe more, important is the power it puts in the hands of small business and individuals to compete with the biggest guys in the room by lowering overhead costs significantly and leveling the technological playing field.

Still, Verdino's point is well taken. Ultimately, we'd say Web 2.0, if maybe a bit on the over-hyped side, is nonetheless a very big deal for entrepreneurs, who now have the opportunity to do more with less, and to make more and deeper contacts, than ever before--if they are vigilant and savvy about utilizing these fascinating new technologies.

Also, we'd love to hear stories/dispatches from iBreakfast's Web 2.0 NYC Best Practices Conference, at which Verdino spoke. Send them to bizboxonslate@gmail.com, or leave them in the comments.