One of the obvious differences between so-called web 2.0 and web 1.0 is that we have yet to see the avalanche of IPOs that became the hallmark of the bubble that was web 1.0.

Interestingly enough, back in the heady days of web 1.0 in Australia, there were various entrepreneurial types who were converting their Laotian molybdenum exploration companies into e-commerce companies. Nowadays you are more likely to find them reconverting the shells of those companies back into Angolan oil plays.

It has also been telling during web 2.0 that we have seen outright sales of these firms rather than the IPO route. News Corporation bought Intermix (which owned Myspace) in 2005 and last year Google bought YouTube.

Given the increasingly burdensome regulatory environment in the United States, this lack of interest in the IPO route should come as no surprise. The temptation to “cash-out” if you are in your early 30s through a simple sale is also an extremely tempting thought. Finally the reality that most of these businesses are cash burn situations makes them unattractive on anything but a “strategic” basis.

The bad news for those Gen-Yers sitting around Surrey Hill design studios on their bean bags is that with the US poised to go into recession, they may have missed their chance.

This week in the US, Classmates Media, a subsidiary of Internet service provider United Online, had its IPO pulled and CampusU, an online marketing company orientated towards college students, postponed its offering on Monday. Social networking start-ups are beginning to look a bit like uranium exploration companies, very 1H 2007.

The good news for the younger siblings of Gen Y is that web 3.0 is just around the corner.