« Travelling Zen | Main | Floating above Mark Warner » Web 2.0 won't make you richOur Bootstrap Austin Web Subgroup met last Monday for more discussion of new web paradigms (aka Web 2.0), continued from last month's meeting, where we focused more on definitions of the various aspects of Web 2.0 that Tim O'Reilly included in his seminal article on the subject. We were going to talk this time about business models; while preparing earlier in the day, I decided that "Web 2.0," while important, is more about infrastructure than direct wealth creation. I.e. don't expect to get rich by developing clever Ajax widgets or sites based on the architecture of participation. A few new companies, like Google and Basecamp, and established companies, like Yahoo, will make real money from products that they develop. However most of the Web 2.0 stuff is going to be cheap or free, and while you might make a living from some innovation you've created, you won't get rich. Consider email, which was the killer app for the Internet - everybody does email, but I can't point to any company that's built a tower of wealth on an email product. Email platforms are commodity, and there are great free packages like Thunderbird and Google's ad-driven Gmail. We also discussed how the new paradigm is tech-driven, but it's really more social than technical, and it's not exactly new. I've been preaching for years that the real character of the Internet is interactive, its real value in the way it supports connection and communication. What we now call Web 2.0 acknowledges that aspect of the Interweb, but it's not so much that we're onto something new; rather, the movers and shakers of "Web 1.0" missed the point; they were building according to media/broadcast paradigms that never played to the Internet's real strengths and advantages. We recorded the meeting; a version of it should appear on Bootstrap's Bootrap podcast... or you can check out the raw 44MB (90 minute) MP3 here. jon posted this at 6:53 AM |
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