Given the statistics in this 2007 report from Avenue A Razorfish and recent anecdotal feedback from non-geek friends, students and relatives web 2.0 is firmly entrenched in the mainstream.
Ordinary people regularly get their news by checking online newspapers, flick through YouTube when they are bored, share links to online media and upload family photos onto Facebook.
Heritage media is unable to provide fast enough access to news in a crisis. So when events like the recent Mumbai attacks or the New York plane crash occur ordinary folks turn to social media for their real time news updates.
Since the launch of the iPhone and other smart phones (like my beloved HTC Dual Touch) ordinary people are also discovering that they can access web services via their mobile devices relatively easily.
This all adds up to web 2.0 being mainstream. It also means that it’s not just about geeks anymore. This is borne out on Twitter, where recently a bunch of lawyers have been using it to communicate with each other.
It is not a bad thing that the time of the geeks is over for web 2.0, it means that the geeks are moving on to the next big thing. More about that later …
[Image source: Avenue A Razorfish]
Aide Mémoire 
its interesting that the survey shows a lot of people using the new technology and especially the mobile data applications – I still struggle with etiquette in some social circles with respect to updating things like twitter – its an inherently social thing to do but is it ok? are there still boundaries between those sitting in front of you and the bigger internet community? perhaps we need another leap in tech to break this last boundary?
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