17 February 2006
Web 7.0
Jeff Zeldman says what a lot of us have been thinking for the last year or so in A List Apart. My favorite quote:
What myself and thousands of other people who lived through the first "bubble" know is that the problem wasn't ever lack of talent. It was lack of wisdom. Wisdom about sustainable business models, wisdom about staffing, wisdom about branding, marketing, usability, customer service and wisdom about due diligencence. When some of the newer startups started getting real traction a couple years ago I thought, "Great, people proving that web businesses can be small, efficient and useful!" Sadly, in a process eerily similar to 1998-era times a bunch of people who don't know anything about the web, useful software and the intersection of the two exclaim, "Holy shit! Myspace sold for $580 million. I gotta call up my broker and tell him to get me some of that web 2.0 action and quick!". And the people who came out of the last bust with some name recognition, credibility and extra stacks of dubloons realized that the real money isn't in having a startup, it's in taking other people's money to fund them.
Tim O'Reily has a company that has a deserved reputation for high-quality technical books. He also runs a venture capital fund. He also hypes the entire "Web 2.0" phenomenon more than just about anybody. Much like stock analysts became media figures in the late 90s, the "tech veterans" of today with their fingers and investment dollars in innumerable pies are the ones who get called up for quotes.
Is this a vast conspiracy? No, it's some dorks trying to crash the usual Wall Street fratboy circlejerk. We'll just have to see who ends up eating the soggy cookie this time around.
Steven, a young web wiz, has just celebrated his bar mitzvah. He received a dozen gifts and must write a dozen thank-you notes. Being webbish, he creates an on-line "Thank-You Note Generator." Steven shows the site to his friends, who show it to their friends, and soon the site is getting traffic from recipients of all sorts of gifts, not just bar mitzvah stuff.
If Steven created the site with CGI and Perl and used tables for layout, this is the story of a boy who made a website for his own amusement, perhaps gaining social points in the process. He might even contribute to a SXSW Interactive panel.
But if Steven used AJAX and Ruby on Rails, Yahoo will pay millions and Tim O'’Reilly will beg him to keynote.
What myself and thousands of other people who lived through the first "bubble" know is that the problem wasn't ever lack of talent. It was lack of wisdom. Wisdom about sustainable business models, wisdom about staffing, wisdom about branding, marketing, usability, customer service and wisdom about due diligencence. When some of the newer startups started getting real traction a couple years ago I thought, "Great, people proving that web businesses can be small, efficient and useful!" Sadly, in a process eerily similar to 1998-era times a bunch of people who don't know anything about the web, useful software and the intersection of the two exclaim, "Holy shit! Myspace sold for $580 million. I gotta call up my broker and tell him to get me some of that web 2.0 action and quick!". And the people who came out of the last bust with some name recognition, credibility and extra stacks of dubloons realized that the real money isn't in having a startup, it's in taking other people's money to fund them.
Tim O'Reily has a company that has a deserved reputation for high-quality technical books. He also runs a venture capital fund. He also hypes the entire "Web 2.0" phenomenon more than just about anybody. Much like stock analysts became media figures in the late 90s, the "tech veterans" of today with their fingers and investment dollars in innumerable pies are the ones who get called up for quotes.
Is this a vast conspiracy? No, it's some dorks trying to crash the usual Wall Street fratboy circlejerk. We'll just have to see who ends up eating the soggy cookie this time around.
