
Which startup’s collapse will end the Web 2.0 era? - peter123
http://andrewchenblog.com/2009/02/23/which-startups-collapse-will-end-the-web-20-era/
======
larryfreeman
I think this is a classic mistake in analyzing trends. What we are going
through is a typical hype curve:
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technology_hype>

First, a technology/trend gets way too much buzz and results start to
disappoint so it curves down. Then, when everyone's cynical, the real value
companies start to take off.

Web 2.0 has used up its currency as a buzz word. Fine. But the technology
itself has been wildly successful.

I work at HubPages.Com, a Web 2.0 startup that gets revenue from online ads
and we have never been doing better than right now.

~~~
cosmo7
Way to jinx your company dude.

~~~
larryfreeman
Hi Cosmo,

Thanks for your concern about HubPages. I personally don't believe in jinxes
and even if I did, I'm not sure I would agree with your reasoning.

Are you saying that you are so sure of your viewpoint that Web 2.0 is dead
that anyone who is doing well is lucky and if someone (me) takes this luck for
granted, then the luck will go away.

HubPages is doing well because in this economy, revenue sharing web sites are
a great way for people to make extra money. As long as businesses need to
advertise and as long as online advertisement is a critical way to do this,
web sites like HubPages will do fine.

Business model is key. Jinx is irrelevant.

-Larry

------
sutro
I was working at a startup south of Market in SF during the dot-com boom and
bust. Industry Standard, the TechCrunch of its day, had a billboard with an
electronic tech news ticker that loomed large over the neighborhood and, TJ
Eckleburg-like, over the startup scene at large. The day in 2001 when, walking
to work, I saw that sign being dismantled was, for me, the day the dot-com era
died.

------
nir
Collapse of Techcrunch and Valleywag might end the "Web 2.0" hype era. Web 2.0
itself won't end, because it never existed - you can't really find anything
"web 2.0" that isn't just evolution or wider distribution of concepts from
"Web 1.0".

~~~
zandorg
IMHO, IMDB.com qualified as Web 2.0...

------
run4yourlives
Facebook.

When Facebook actually needs to live up to the fact that continuous VC-funding
isn't a viable income stream, the bubble will burst.

You need to make money to be successful, always have and always will. Like the
first time, the ones that can do that will move into the next round, the one's
who can't, won't.

~~~
redrobot5050
Facebook had layoffs this year so that it will be profitable in about two.
Odds are they'll survive. But they won't be as high profile as they used to
be. It was a big deal there was "live news" coverage on Facebook through CNN
in 2008 and 2009 with the election. Soon that'll be seen as a partnership as
stupid as Yahoo! Music with RealNetworks Rhapsody.

My bet is Twitter. Its ubiquitous, and yet: useless. It's userbase is
relatively small, and yet there's no good way to monetize them. Its
provocative enough that people either love it or hate it, but not nearly
useful that people will get an account just to have one (like richer social
networks, where people joined Myspace/Facebook to avoid network isolation).

~~~
run4yourlives
I tend to disagree. I'm not a twitter user, but one thing they do have is a
user base that finds their service essential. This is ripe for income
generation. Charge $5-10 a month and viola, revenue. (I think at the moment
they look to be exploring other options, but that's a viable fall back from my
view.)

I don't think you can say the same for facebook. Very few people will pay for
this thing. I'm willing to bet that their own internal research confirms this.
Facebook's biggest issue with regards to profitability is not so much that
they need to find ways to make money, but that they need to find ways to make
enough money to pay back all the money they've already used. They are
leveraged to a crazy degree, and seem to spend like drunken sailors. They've
got a huge workforce and have innovated little since launching their
"platform", which has been all but abandoned - from a user perspective -
because of abuse.

They've got a leadership problem in my opinion. And that's a hard problem to
solve.

~~~
unalone
Facebook has been approaching profitability for a while. They've got a bunch
of different models, some of them have been working, and they're constantly
refining.

Both Facebook _and_ Twitter would collapse if they charged. Not as many people
would pay for Twitter as you seem to think.

~~~
mechanical_fish
_Not as many people would pay for Twitter as you seem to think._

Where are they going to go? Back to email, IRC, or Blogspot? I doubt it. To
Twitter's cheaper competitors? How are _they_ going to stay in business?

Rather than just die, Twitter will monetize. Though I doubt that they would
monetize by simply charging people to _read_ Tweets. That's much too blunt.
There are more subtle methods of throttling the free-account users and thereby
encouraging them to pay: limit the outgoing tweet rate, limit the rate of
direct messaging, limit the number of followers or followees, lower the number
of allowed characters by five for each successive tweet that you write on a
given day...

Here's an idea: charge for low latency. If you're on the free plan at Twitter
you can make as many tweets as you like and they will be sent to your
followers and posted to the public site... _eventually_. Within, say, 2 hours
(or 4 hours, or 8 hours). But if you want _instant_ Tweeting you've got to buy
a (fairly cheap) subscription.

Any such change will cause an uproar, so Twitter won't do it unless they have
to. But if they have to, I expect they will. They're not just going to fold up
and die.

~~~
unalone
_Where are they going to go? Back to email, IRC, or Blogspot? I doubt it. To
Twitter's cheaper competitors? How are they going to stay in business?_

I actually don't use Twitter at all because for me Tumblr does far more, and
it does it more effectively. (Tumblr actually has a Twitter client now.) There
are a lot of other companies that do what Twitter does. Friendfeed, Jaiku are
the two that come fastest to mind.

I'm certain Twitter won't die, because there _are_ a lot of options open to
them. Monetization directly is not their best option, though. They've been
free for too long for that to easily work.

------
vaksel
Google...because if Google goes down the crapper, that means the crap has
really hit the fan. And Google's demise will take thousands of websites with
it, who rely on adwords, adsense, and getting found in Google search results.

~~~
jskopek
Except google isn't going anywhere; it's one of the pinnacles of advertising
success

~~~
vaksel
Never say never...the internet landscape is filled with corpses of websites
that people never expected to fail

~~~
alecco
_Silicon Valley_ is filled with corpses of _companies_ that people never
expected to fail. The Googleplex rests in a cementery.
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Googleplex#Facilities_and_histo...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Googleplex#Facilities_and_history)

~~~
frisco
Google makes $4 billion in profit on $22 billion in revenue. I'm pretty sure
they're not going anywhere. They're more like Microsoft than an internet
company now.

------
jjames
I'm more curious which Web 3.0 startup's success is going to end the Web 2.0
era. Unfortunately, Web 3.0 might involve semaphore and smoke signals.

~~~
numair
I don't get why this guy was voted down. The truth of the matter is, the old
guard always remains, they just become irrelevant. Facebook won't die, but it
also won't be cool and consume your life -- the same way AIM isn't dead, but
it's not like you sit around and think "they're reading everything I'm
writing! It's only a matter of time before they make billions off of this!"

In fact, to this point -- I remember that, when Friendster first started, the
founder's goal was to sell the company to AOL for something like $100M. This
was why he turned down the Google stock.

~~~
jjames
I assume he was down voted for painting Web 2.0 as an aesthetic-driven
convenience based entirely on an over-indulged consumer nirvana where we can
waste 10 hours rounding our corners while the foundation of our entire
civilization might cease to be.

In the same vein, verything we currently rely on could equally be called out.
This could be the end of Automobile 10.0, Computer 4.0, Internet 3.0,
Electricity 18.0 and Civilized Culture 1.0 (I kid..).

Design has a high purpose for some and the study of usability, ergonomics and
tools to automate your way to market are nothing even remotely new. Web X.0
will work because it serves people better in whatever paradigm they may live,
be it civilized or relatively barbaric. Obviously, limited by the eradication
of the internet entirely. Humane interfaces on a non-existent platform will
never get any eyeballs :)

------
joe_the_user
None!

There is no single entity which could collapse and end web 2.0. Any entity
collapsing would herald more opportunities for other start-ups. The lack of
money for the large would bring in more small players exploiting the missed
possibilities. Web 2.0 is about unlimited flexibility and that will survive
any collapse of the "real economy".

------
herval
that's a very interesting question! Twitter anyone?

------
kingkongrevenge
It will be time to call it quits when we lose zombo.com. The loss of goatse.cx
was bad enough.

------
peregrine
Hmm I'd argue Digg.

~~~
jrockway
This isn't Reddit. If you are going to "argue Digg", you need to actually
write some reasons for that.

~~~
redrobot5050
How about that they have a staff of 80 people, with the majority of them not
working on something directly related to the site (Digg Labs) -- that's
burning up all the site's revenue and profitability?

Reddit, one of their competitors, has a staff that probably numbers less than
10.

~~~
fallentimes
Reddit has 6.5 (one part time guy).

