One of the problems that Web 2.0 has is the issue of unpaid volunteers moderating the content that you need in order to keep your product around long enough to look at the ads. There are a few, very few, good places left on Reddit; the mods there make them worth visiting. /r/news has 8 million subs, how in the hell can you moderate that? and how can you as a company allow non-employee randoms dictate the face of your company? Slashdot still sort-of works, so does Fark, hell Digg kinda works now that the stigma of Digg 4.0 is ancient history. I wish I had the answer to this and access to VC cash, but I'm just some dude who's been on the 'net 30+ years.
I was on a hill, in the deep rurals of Indiana with no phone, no net, no outside world for two days this weekend. Looks like I picked the right weekend to get out of Dodge.
If people want updates on news they go on news websites. If people want to get into mindless discussions with a bunch of the dumbest people they can expect to meet they go to Reddit threads on said news articles. Large subreddits can't function with the current system but let's just hope they stay over there complaining instead of finding us here.