Whenever I meet with VCs lately I've noticed they have a growing distaste for Web 2.0 startups. The "Web 2.0" term, in connection with a startup, and as a collection of concepts, is very tired in this community.

For example, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, Silicon Valley's leading VC firm, has stopped investing in Web 2.0 startups.

"We have absolutely no interest in funding Web 2.0 companies," says Randy Komisar, a partner at Kleiner Perkins. He mentioned this during an after dinner conversation last week. He said he had recently told John Battelle, one of the organizers of the rapidly growing Web 2.0 Summit conference, that the term no longer had the same positive cachet it once had. In the VC community it clearly has a negative one.

For the organizers of the Web 2.0 conference, that must be a tough thing to hear, since it comes from one of the country's top VC investment firms. Mr Battelle, CMP, and O'Reilly Media, have created a highly popular and lucrative conference. They have even taken legal action to prevent others from profiting from the term "Web 2.0" and they have plans to expand their franchise to larger audiences.

I didn't get a chance to ask Mr Komisar when his firm stopped funding Web 2.0 companies. But we did talk earlier in the evening about some of the fundamental changes he is seeing in Internet trends. [I wrote about part of it here: "Aggregate Knowledge . . ."

It won't be just Kleiner Perkins that has lost interest in Web 2.0 companies. The firm is one of the trend setters in Silicon Valley, with a long string of massively successful investments over several decades. And Silicon Valley VC firms always invest in trends, rather than companies. They certainly won't be attending "Web 2.0" conferences, and without VCs attending, there is no point in startups showing up and preening for their next capital raising event.

Reinvent, redefine, and reprint

Web 2.0 companies will now have to reinvent and redefine themselves. And reprint their business plans. They should also remove any mention of "long tail economics."

I have a bad feeling about the longevity of that term in the investment community. It sounds a touch too W2.

Nixing anything "long tail" is an easy way to future-proof a business plan for a few months longer.

"Social graph" is doing great right now, so make sure you pepper your business plan with that term. "Social platform" still has legs. And "attention economy" is a ricochet term with a bullet.

. . . too 1.5?

Steve Rubel won't be crying for Web 2.0 companies. [The Web 2.0 World is Skunk Drunk on Its Own Kool-Aid] And other people are certain to find pleasure in the very possible demise of Web 2.0.

My line has always been that "The thing about Web 2.0 is that it is so 1.5..." Because Web 2.0 as a concept grew out of an intermediate time in the evolution of the Internet.

We are witnessing an emerging Internet better described as an "Internet 2.0" world, where technologies such as RSS have nothing to do with the "Web" yet are unique to this phase of the Internet. It clearly looks to me that we are building an Internet 2.0 world and anything "Web 2.0" would be a subset.

当然，针对这个问题，仍然会有人有不同的看法，比如：

The usual savvy Tom Foremski has up some questionable stuff today about venture firm Kleiner Perkins and Web 2.0. According to Tom, the VC leaders at KP have "stopped" investing in Web 2.0 companies, woe betide all trend-chasing entrepreneurs and VCs.

Leaving aside that I think Web 2.0 is as overused a term as "and", "the", and "and", and that I have been a noisy critic of many of the hypesters in this area, but this is meaningless stuff. For starters, denying the massive shift to online media/ads/community is silly. There is investable change afoot, whether people like it or not.

Now, in KP's case the firm has studiously been doing deals outside of orthodox Web 2.0 for some time now, with a heavy emphasis on cleantech, security, and life sciences. The company is not exactly at the epicenter of All Things Web 2.0, matter of fact I'm hard-pressed to think of a recent exit. Then again, I'm not sure what KP calls its current batch of 2.0ish companies. The Companies Formerly Known As Web 2.0? The Investments That We Deny To Our LPs?

Anyway, what are we really seeing here? I have no doubt that KP is not doing any/many consumer/media/net deals, but that isn't news and hasn't been for a while. The firm is, increasingly, of a different generation from the current crop of entrepreneurs, and it is pursuing its own strategy, rightly or wrongly. That's all -- no more and no less