Jakob Nielsen, perennial usability and interface design guru, made hay again yesterday with renewed criticism of Web 2.0 design. This is not the first nor will it be the last time Nielsen attacks Web 2.0 for a little press. Of course, there is wisdom and validity to his concerns. The Web 2.0 aesthetic and feature set are like obscenity: you know it when you see it. There is always good and bad design, and statements like "The idea of community, user generated content and more dynamic web pages are not inherently bad [...], they should be secondary to the primary things sites should get right" always ring true. However, as H.L. Menken said, "Criticism is prejudice made plausible." Let's consider the design and interface of some noteworthy Web 2.0 sites: