Web 2.0 hype?
as Web 2.0 tidbits appear more and more on other blogs, i get the sense that a growing number of folks are disappointed with it. some bloggers are even badmouthing people who barely mention web 2.0 positively when they feel people are overly exuberant. personally, you can count me as a person who is still excited by the various developments happening online. i love my google news. i love the gmail feature set. i love bloglines (though, i just switched to NetNewsWire and access my bloglines feeds with it). i even like that Montastic can monitor all of my domains and let me know when i have any down time and how long i had downtime (quite nice when students tell me that they couldn’t access course materials or class discussions, etc.). i am finding uses for many web 2.0-type applications. that being said, one blogger i read earlier today was complaining that web 2.0 is missing the point — how to make money.
But I still maintain that you have to think about the business model and the customers from the very beginning, incorporating them into your application and design otherwise you end up with a very different product or service than one that will allow you to create a lasting business. If you want to ‘think’ in Web 2.0, you should be thinking not just, “how can I make this cool ajaxy social web service thing,” but “how can I make MONEY off this cool ajaxy social web service thing?”
my initial reaction was to blow off what he was saying, but the more i think about, the more i think that he is on to something. if all of these various services appear and they each offer a nice little service that folks can benefit from then how long can they last without bringing in revenue? on the other hand, i tend to believe that there are many people who just want to contribute to a better web world (e.g., the wikitext project i am working on, which will be a free textbook for anyone to use). granted, i’d guess that most start-ups do have dollar signs on their mind, so maybe the blogger has a point.
but, the article has me thinking . . . for example, i came across a neat little web 2.0 service called ListMixer. Listmixer is, “an easy way to track web pages that momentarily hold your interest. It’s handy for tracking blog comments or for pooling timely web pages among friends.” i have been using it for the past week and i love it. i often come across websites that aren’t quite worth bookmarking, but i know that i want to revist the sites for the next few days to monitor things, but i’ll probably never visit again after that. to use the bookmarklet, i just visit the site i want to monitor for a short spell, tap my bookmarklet and viola! the site is saved for 30 days. each time i visit the site the 30 day count starts over. eventually, i won’t visit the site for 30 days and the site will fall out of my list-mix. but, as much as i am getting used to this little service, i have to wonder whether this will become a part of my daily workflow only to be lost because the company behind this service fails to bring in revenue. or worse, what if i am eventually asked to pay for this service? would i pay for this? i doubt it, so maybe that means i can live without it. but, there are a lot of little services i enjoy that i wouldn’t quite pay for. is a bubble going to burst eventually? time will tell, eh?
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