Web 2.0 is suffering, friends. There is a tragic shortage of desperately needed "e"s. Through bad planning and massive overuse of "e-" as a prefix, Web 2.0 has had to make do without the letter e and simply contract their names.

You've seen them on the street, with names like Flickr, Zoomr, Tumblr, Frappr, Talkr, Soonr, Rel8r... the list goes on.

Let's not be fooled here, Web 1.0 is to blame for this problem. Web 1.0 used "e" like there was an unlimited supply, with no thought for sustainability or future generations' need for e. The term "email" was an innocuous and relatively logical start, but sadly it was followed by eCommerce, eBook, eCard, eZines, eBusiness and even eEducation. Thankfully "cyber" can be synthesised cleanly in lab conditions and - despite heavy use - web 1.0 did not plunder natural stock for future generations.

But there is hope. Some applications have overcome great challenges and used e for its intended purpose. Feedburner and Twitter are two services which managed to conserve enough e to avoid the terrible fate of unnecessary contraction.

You can help. Sponsor a web 2.0 startup today and spare as much e as you can. Together, we can save the web.