Web 2.0's Moore's law: every two years, the smarminess of the latest communication platform doubles

I used to think that Twitter was pretty damn smarmy and pleased with itself--until I used Google Wave. Ho-ly Christ. Bold prediction: Google Wave will fail to take hold in any significant way, because it is way too over-designed and way too concerned with finding solutions to problems that don't necessarily exist.

Here's the thing: Twitter was smart in that it kept things extraordinarily simple for so long. They let actual user behavior lead feature creation, rather than the other way around. For example, users would come up with hashtags on their own, and then Twitter would develop features and widgets around that. With Google Wave, though, it seems just the opposite: there's this preening tone to the whole endeaver that just seems to say, "We Google geniuses are so genius that we know what you want before you do. We're envious of you that you are just starting out on your journey, and have not yet had your mind blown by the sheer elegance and revolutionary user experience that awaits you."

(PS: Key indication of an application's smarminess? "Cute" error messages. Fail whale???!?!?! Why, these aren't some boring old programmers--what a sense of humor! Everything will be "shiny"??!?!?! Hey--that's from Firefly! These guys have some serious cred!)