A Personal Blog
My Definition of Web 2.0
During the TechCrunch party I realized why the whole Web 2.0 think bugged me. It’s all so Web 1.0. Yeah, sure, greater interaction, new technologies, VCs with more knowledge, etc.
But something really irked me. In Web 1.0 the single biggest mistake was … businesses with no business plan, no sales path, no income, etc. The perception that if you worked your butt off you’d IPO and everything’d be fine.
To me, 2.0 of a product should fix the issues with 1.0 as well as adding new features. In Web 2.0 we definitely added new features… but did we solve the issues with 1.0?
Here are some of the pitches I heard at the TechCrunch party (more on that later):
“We’re going to revolutionize search by providing geotargetted results”
“We’re going to reinvent search by negating spam”
“We provide the most fully featured photo sharing service ever imagined”
“We’re going to build an Office killer”
Seriously. An Office killer. One guy and his friend. All the best to them, but yeah.
I wish I could redefine Web 2.0. Screw the social stuff. Screw the AJAX. Screw grassroots marketing.
Web 2.0 should be “profitable online businesses”.
Update: To be clear, if a site isn’t a business, that’s fine with me. But if they are a business, then they should… Yeah, be a business. Without customers, income or a product, how exactly are you a “business”?
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| Print article | This entry was posted by Jeremy Wright on August 21, 2006 at 3:59 pm, and is filed under Blogging, Business, IT Thoughts. Follow any responses to this post through RSS 2.0. Both comments and pings are currently closed. |
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about 5 years ago
Profitable businesses?
That is so 20th century.
;-)
about 5 years ago
I’m not clear on why you want to “redefine Web 2.0″ to restrict it to “profitable online businesses”? What’s the motivation?
about 5 years ago
1. If you ran an offline business that never earned any money, no products and had no customers, nobody would let you call it a “business”.
2. Web 2.0 should, at least, fix Web 1.0′s mistakes. Web 2.0 companies should, at the very least, have customers, products and revenue – though profitable would show we’d gone even farther by improving the business models.
about 5 years ago
I should have been clearer. My argument isn’t with ‘profitable’ or ‘online’, it’s with ‘business’. There are plenty of Web 2.0 sites (et al) which aren’t necessarily for-profit businesses. Most blogs, for example. Squidoo also springs to mind. I’m sure there are scores of other examples.
about 5 years ago
Ah, sorry. “Site” is different than “business”, then, right? So my silly rant doesn’t apply to those sites anyways.
I’ll edit my post to include this anyways.
about 5 years ago
But if a site gets VC or Angel funding then it is a business.
As for Squidoo, WTF? didn’t Squidoo take VC? hence it would be a business because it should make a return?
about 5 years ago
Sorry, a cash infusion doesn’t make you a business. It makes the VC’s eager, but without a product, customers or income … you’re just a plan.
about 5 years ago
Hi, Jeremy. I’m daisuke. I teach english in Japan. I read “blog marketing” with my client, who runs a company concerning business blogs. He’s really interested in your book. He wants to know more abot business blogging in the States and, if you’re interested, he will explain to you blogging scene in Japan. I hope we can discuss about the topic fruitfully via e-mail or skype.
ciao!
ps
this is his site. It is written only in Japanese. But anyway better than nothing?
http://andg.net/
about 5 years ago
@Darren: Well, isn’t it obvious that every business must be profitable? Or else, it shouldn’t be called a business at all. Call it a charity or some sort…
Plus, I think the-so-called-web-two-point-oh company DOES have a customer (you know, bloggers and the likes), they just don’t have any other income stream. It’s like bubble 2.0 all over again (wait… did I said again?)
about 5 years ago
Hi Jeremy.
I agree with you that there is no difference between Web 1.0 and Web 2.0 if web companies don’t have cogent business revenue models. It shouldn’t be about technologies (we had “killer” technologies during Web 1.0 too) but about philosophy, about the attitude. All the obfuscation that happened back then shouldn’t be repeated.
about 5 years ago
I’ve thrown in the towel. You simply can’t put a release number on the Web, but it’s done and accepted … nothing we can do about it. When I think of web 2.0 — it means we users are getting more involved in the web — instead of dealing with static pages, pages change based on what we want. For those sites that don’t need to get that elaborate — we have interaction through comments, trackback, wikis and so on.
about 5 years ago
Meryl, I think that is already done to some extent using javascript in the past. Besides, AJAX is just another beautiful implementation of javascript anyway. And even before wiki “business” sprung up everywhere, we already have wikipedia. Do we call it a web two point oh?
about 5 years ago
According to eWeek, it seems, Web 2.0 is all about collaboration and rounded corners. Wikis, Sharepoint, Joomla, AJAX, that’s the stuff of 2.0, at least if you read the rags.
about 5 years ago
Perfect post.
about 5 years ago
Web 2.0 should be “profitable online businesses” – statement of the year, Jeremy.
I can see this trend (once again) happening where revenue (aka basic business) is pushed aside as long as we have the eyeballs. It’s very 1999.
I think with more posts like these it’s time we put the term Web 2.0 to bed and just call it the Internet.
When you hear someone start of with “We’re going to revolutionize …” my eyes start to glaze over ;)
about 5 years ago
Squidoo calls itself a business (well, a “corporation”). From the FAQ:
DOES SQUIDOO MAKE A PROFIT?
Yes, Squidoo is an old-fashioned corporation, with real employees and investors. We’re not legally organized as a co-op; we mean that we’ve structured the organization so that we’re in a partnership with our lensmasters. It’s a co-op in the sense that the more you give, the more you get. All lensmasters with traffic get a pro-rated share in the income that we get from the Google AdSense ads that run on every page, for example. In addition, a rotating slate of lensmasters will be invited to participate in the panel that chooses the charities that get the money from our charity pool.
We divide up the money we receive in a very public way. First, we pay our bills. That’s direct out of pocket expenses like rent and servers and salary and benefits expenses (our CEO doesn’t take a salary, and neither does our board of directors). Then, with no other deductions, we pay 5% of our post-expense revenue directly to the charity pool, 50% directly to our lensmasters and retain the rest to pay off investors and employees. Don’t quit your day job yet, but you should know that as we all grow, our goal as a co-op is to pay as much money as we can to our lensmasters and to charity.
MORE ABOUT MONEY
While this note is a few paragraphs long, it’s not complicated… If you’re interested in how Squidoo deals with money, we hope you’ll invest the 99 seconds it takes to read it.
Our goal is to build a self-sustaining, profitable company that shares a large portion of our income with charities and with our backbone, the lensmasters who build our lenses (that’s you).
about 5 years ago
“profitable online businesses” – probably the best definition i’ve seen yet. take that, tim o’reilly!
about 5 years ago
I’m also confused. Why is everything about making a profit and beeing a business to be web 2.0? Web 2.0 is about leveraging technology to make a more usable web, creating a desktop-like experience, and adding a bit more social (read dialog) elements to the internet.
This is a great step forward… without the primary target “profit” etc…. Business = OK but if everything is about making money of of people using the internet than I think it’s a shame… The people own the internet… not businesses. I don’t believe in the (google) adds etc. that you see on every site. The net is too “open” to give in to that commercial attitude.