I was at the O’Reilly Media-sponsored Web 2.0 Expo here in New York last week. While I wouldn’t exactly call it fun, I learned a lot. Here’s a few observations:

*** The term “Google-juice” sounds really, really gross

*** The word “leverage” is vastly overused. It’s not a verb, people. Every time you say it, an IQ point dies.

*** People love to talk about the “Wild West” mentality on the Internet. Meaning, I think, that there are no rules or ethics online. The real Wild West was about gunfights, cattle theft, drinking whiskey in filthy saloons and dying during childbirth. Making baseless claims anonymously in your underpants is the opposite of tough. There’s a big, big difference.

*** Being articulate, intelligent and well-read and being a Top Digger are not the same thing by a damn sight. I’m not going to name names, but a certain social media expert should be aware that they speak Portuguese  in Brazil — not Brazilian.

*** There were a lot of people asking “how can I leverage the power of Web 2.0 community to ‘go viral’ and drive traffic to my market share, incentivizing revenue generation through targeted content promotion?”

Nobody asked “how can I make content that’s actually good?”

I’d like to focus on that a little bit.

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Last week, I posted about the giant mashed-up colorform graffiti on the New York Subway system. The post got picked up by Gawker, Art Fag City, Neatorama and some others, garnering a little attention.

A few days later, I got a comment that said:

i know the guy who does this stuff. i can get you more info and pictures of the originals if you’re interested. these pics don’t do the originals justice. you have pics of them after they’ve been tampered with …

I got a bunch more photos out of him, and he’s right … these are way, way more fun, especially this Iron Man remix:

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Godzilla Witch Project. Nothing more, nothing less.

There’s a new Dove ad out. And, whether you agree wholeheartedly with a campaign meant to cram beauty products down your throat while saying “we’re not cramming beauty products down your throat,” this is inarguably a really, really good ad.

It’s good enough that I’m using it for content this morning, propagating the Dove message for free. Execs and directors at interactive companies worldwide are looking at this thing and saying

See, we should totally do something “viral,” where bloggers get the word out for us, expanding our market share and leveraging Web 2.0 social media space networking CTR impressions Facebook. And, since it’s viral, we don’t have to spend any money on it, right? It can be, like, I dunno, viral. And grow organically.

Not that I’m bitter …