I use perl primarily for application development and glue/duct-tape. As a system administrator programming is not my primary concern. However I think some of the reasons why perl loose out on the "Web 2.0" hype is the simple lack of any new and shiny web applications. Apart from use perl journals, most perl blogs I visit use Wordpress, a select few use MT and at least one (hi mjd) use blosxom. Compare the options you have, on the perl side you have the various licensed options of MT, blosxom and that is about it, even if you were to consider less supported or fully developed software such as perlblog or angerwhale we only have a handful of contenders to PHP's wordpress, serendipity, e2volution, simple machines, typo3, etc. Looking at portal or CMS software it is much the same. Granted that I find perl far superior in offering you options to roll your own implementation, but that hardly helps in the consumers eyes.

In a day and age when "Web 2.0" is of such a seemingly importance, it is not surprising to find that people believe perl to be dead, simply from the lack of web applications they read about/install/see websites using. I mean, the perl foundation had to ask it's readers if they were aware of a perl CRM (http://news.perlfoundation.org/2008/01/i_need_a_crm_package.html) , compare that search term to other languages and you quickly get a feel for which languages have the "shiny web 2.0" appeal. It's not that perl isn't a contender, it's merely a lack of showcases that makes it seem that way.