For most, “Web 2.0″ is either a meaningless phrase or one way past its expiration date. Yet there is undeniably a meme-complex that the phrase captures.

Now I must digress to explain meme-complexes. What defines a bird? All birds fly, but not penguins or ostriches. All birds lay eggs, but so do reptiles and the duck-billed platypus. Still, one can look at a bird and see the loose connection of almost-but-not-quite signifiers and get a good idea for what a “bird” is. We call that little cloud of memes a meme-complex or, just to be clever, memeplex.

To return to the issue at hand, with “Web 2.0″ one can see the rounded corners, the subtle gradients, the extra-legible typography and get a good idea for what it looks like (and all of these design elements are present with the friendly-looking Wii). But, of course, there’s more to “Web 2.0″ than just how it looks.

According to O’Reilly, it’s about rich experiences, user-added value, and the Long Tail (and a few more things). Of course, others have other criteria. In general, most would agree that it’s about treasuring the needs and power of the user over superfluous features.

Me and my Mii

James Surowiecki (of Wisdom of Crowds fame), acknowledges that Nintendo is thriving in 3rd place and cites reasons like recognizing limitations and focusing on making fun games instead of the bigger!faster!more! that has seduced Sony and Microsoft (both their consoles and other offerings). My first reaction was, “oh, it looks like Nintendo has read Getting Real“. While Sony loses money on every PS3, in an effort to capture market share (how Web 1.0!), Nintendo’s making money making games people want to play.

Nintendo is far from a cute, little startup. Certainly. I remember the gyroscope-spinning robot from the 80s. Still, the spirit of forsaking bloat and simply delivering the goods is delightfully illustrated in both their own commercials and parody ads. Contrast this with the sterile padded cell and black monolith in the Sony ads and it’s suddenly easy to imagine Nintendo as a ragtag bunch of passionate coders that slapped this thing together in their spare time and next thing you know it’s selling like hotcakes.

There’s a lot more that Nintendo could do if they wanted to truly embrace their 2.0 nature. I’d start with making the Virtual Console handle both downloads and uploads, so amateur gamers could share their own creations (which would require Nintendo releasing at least a junior version of its SDK). Next, take all of the “Abandonware” that is now legal to pirate and Open Source it. Let the community add new levels to Bubble Bobble or new units to Herzog Zwei. Finally, why not embrace the social networking aspects of 2.0 and facilitate players meeting other players: “Stan, we’d like you to Becky. She lives near you, is single, and always plays as Princess Peach in Mario Kart. Just like you!”