This map created by Randall Monroe of XKCD.com beautifully displays a real world map of Web 2.0. In the search engine optimization world Web 2.0 is all the rage. This map is estimated based on membership size and is a great representation of the internet and popular web 2.0 websites.

We start our journey in the icy baron winter land that is Yahoo and Windows Live, don’t get stuck up here getting out will be difficult. Venturing west we approach Reunion.com and Classmates and stop to catch up with some old friends. From there it’s short southeast through Friendster to the mammoth country of Myspace. This part of the journey takes extra long, once you’re in Myspace it’s hard to get out quickly.

We could sail across the Noob Sea but instead we’re more advanced than that, so we’ll take the scenic route around the Gulf of Youtube through Facebook and Xanga. This is a friendly area but trade isn’t as big as in Myspace. Our travels take us out of the widely populated friend sites into a world a little different.

We set sail through the blogipelago though it’s difficult to navigate at times. Here rumors and news spread from island to island. And everyone thinks they’re important and their voice matters most. Best of all here rumors repeated enough times are considered facts.

Some final maneuvering out leads us to the Wikipedia projects islands. These islands are a democracy and everyone joins together to create knowledge. There are manipulations sure but for the most part people are honest.

Finally we veer off and hit Lastfm and Flicker on our way to the viral straights. After spending some good time wasted on new music and looking at some interesting pictures we head off to Digg some stuff. One last trip through the Sea of Memes and we’re back to the real world away from social networks and internet marketing.