I feel a little sorry for Michael Arrington. People bombard him with pitches for their web 2.0 start-ups day-in and day-out. If he likes them he writes about them on Techcrunch. If he really likes them he invests in them.

However, he must get angry once in a while. Yes, Web2.0 startups do all sorts of interesting things but they do have a tendency to conform to some annoying cliches.

1. Drppng Vwls

Web.20 companies offer services, they do things. So, its not surprising that they tend to have verbs in their names. Why though, do they have to drop vowels? Only today I’ve read about services called NrMe and Feedalizr. Then there’s Flickr, Tumblr, Where’sMeJumpr… Okay, I made the last one up but I really wouldn’t be surprised if someone came along and tried it. Part of the whole ‘dropping vowels’ thing is because domain names are easier to find if you use made-up words. Flicker.com was taken and Tumbler.com advertises The Tervis Tumbler (available in 19 different styles!). It was fun at first, but now the dropped vowel has become a cliche. Wheresmejumper.com is still free. Maybe someone should try that.

2. Uninspired Graphic Design

It’s all up there in the image above. The rounded font, the neon pinks and pastel blues, the reflection effect. Just like the dropped vowels it was interesting at first. Now it just serves to annoy. Why not try something new? Get some new inspiration – MC Escher’s been out of fashion for a while for example. By the way, if you want to create your own Cliche-tastic Web2.0 logo head to this site.

3. ‘Beta’ Status

Now, I know that starting a web service requires caution. Launching in Beta gives you an insurance policy for when things go wrong. You can just point at the ‘Beta’ in your logo and tell people “Sit tight, we’ll sort it”. Ironically, the most unreliable of the Web2.0 start-ups, Twitter, doesn’t have a ‘Beta’ status and frequently fails, whereas most services in Beta never suffer major problems. Twitter also eschews the whole ‘dropped vowels’ thing, so maybe they just like to be different. By the way, if you are going to launch in Beta, why not use a different word for it? One startup I saw recently called their service a ‘First Draft’, rather than a Beta. At least it showed some originality.