In a blog post about the image, entitled "Game Web 2.Over?", Pickard's stance appears at times skeptical of the Web 2.0 "koolaid" and at others somewhat neutral. She does, however, avoid taking the stand that this image may inspire: that Web 2.0 was a big overhyped bubble and you were smart if you just spent the last few years sitting on the sidelines, pouring skepticism upon these ventures and not striking out on your own.
If you were one of the idle blog commenters who declared "fail!" on every company covered by Mashable during 2007 to 2008 (and there were many of you)...congratulations, you were mostly right! And by being critical rather than trying something for yourself, you successfully avoided failure. Well done you!
However, note that those green circles represent companies that were acquired...many for millions, tens of millions or (in some cases) hundreds of millions of dollars. In fact, I propose we take this image and turn it into a motivational poster for every web company taking a chance in the social media era: against seemingly insurmountable odds, lots of Web 2.0 era companies found an exit, and many of those that didn't kept the servers humming along anyway. The same will be true of social media startups.
When someone strikes out to change the world, to do something utterly daring with the odds against them, we can do one of two things: cheer them on, or shoot them down. We choose to do the former. We hope you will too.