I'm interested to hear your argument on this, mostly because I've found the real world to be nothing like high school. When it comes to "Web 2.0" startups right now, sure, today's "hotness" might be nothing tomorrow, but the companies that rely on sheer high school-like popularity will fail sooner or later, just like those types of people eventually failed following high school.
In cases of direct correlation, I at least see it working both ways. Yes, there will be edge cases; certain people seem to be able to make a living online without actually providing anything of real worth, but this is hardly confined to the Web; tabloids have been doing it for decades.
Popularity matters, self-promotion matters, etc. It matters a ton. That's how distribution happens. As a startup, that's the most important thing out there. We get stuck in 'if you build it they will come' mode when we build our startups, but it's just not true.
Spend a few minutes looking at quantcast/compete/alexa's top 1000 and it's clear that the web is high school. From my high horse, it's filled with non-enjoyable, valueless, spammy, low-brow cruft. But my high horse doesn't mean a damn -- the only thing that matters is $$$ =)
I'm interested to hear your argument on this, mostly because I've found the real world to be nothing like high school. When it comes to "Web 2.0" startups right now, sure, today's "hotness" might be nothing tomorrow, but the companies that rely on sheer high school-like popularity will fail sooner or later, just like those types of people eventually failed following high school.
In cases of direct correlation, I at least see it working both ways. Yes, there will be edge cases; certain people seem to be able to make a living online without actually providing anything of real worth, but this is hardly confined to the Web; tabloids have been doing it for decades.