Weblogsky: "Where's Web 2.0?"

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"Where's Web 2.0?"

The Boston Globe has a new definition for Web 2.0: "...the second wave of Internet start-ups, based on Web content, social networking, digital media." In an article that focuses on Web 2.0 as VC-funded business, Robert Weisman writes

Since the Google offering, however, venture investors have been disappointed by the dearth of successful exits by Web 2.0 start-ups that have gone public or have been sold to established companies. An exception was MySpace.com, the popular social-networking site snapped up last year by Fox Interactive Media for $580 million.

The search for niches that can generate substantial paydays for their venture backers is intensifying as many traditional high-tech sectors, like computers and software, have matured.

This sounds like the sort of VC feeding frenzy that led the boom -->bust in the 1990s/early 2000s. Web 2.0 was the Phoenix that rose from the ashes of that era, as web coders and creatives with nothing much to do kept building to keep busy. Unconstrained by coroporate or VC considerations, they just built, and real innovations emerged. Now that investors are interested again, what impact will that have on creative urges? (Dear Mr. VC: give me some money and I'll research that question.)

jon posted this at 9:41 AM
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