I've always wanted to pronounce that something has "jumped the shark". And now I'm here to tell you that it is Web2.0 itself.
My proof? The blasé daily reviews of a Web 2.0 blog like Mashable and the 40000+(!) feed readers of TechCrunch give you hints. And perusing Museum of Modern Betas, I felt a shadow and a threat has been growing in my mind. But it took this insanely long list of Web2.0 sites at VentureBlog to really crystalize it.
The fact that categories like "Bookmarking", "Community", "Economy" all have 20+ cutely-named indistinguishable competitors is the sign of the incipient utter doom of any site associated with "Web 2.0".
As soon as some wag coins the equivalent put-down phrase to "dot-bomb" people are gonna be fighting to differentiate themselves as so NOT web 2.0. They are gonna be un-rounding those corners and stripping the CSS of all the green, orange, and light grey faster than you can say: "Post-It notes for web pages"
Mark my words, six months from now, people will be re-positioning like mad to be as far from Web 2.0 as possible. So get ahead of the curve - disassociate yourselves while you still have time!
¶ 4/15/2006
Hehe. I guess I am blasé. :)
On the wider point, I'm not so sure. The statistics of business (ie. an ~80% failure rate) obviously mean that many of these companies will come to nothing. Applications are being built faster than ever before, so perhaps they'll fail faster too. And yes, a small backlash (Bubble 2.0) is already happening.
But overall I think there's a lot of good stuff coming out of this movement - it's a really exciting time. Beneath the din of the hypers and anti-hypers, there are some truly great companies being born.
What I'm talking about is more of a perception / marketing backlash. Since the space is so crowded, and it's easy to glom the good with the bad, serious players are gonna have to differentiate away from the "Bubble 2.0".
Web 2.0 Jumps the Shark in 2005
Web 2.0 is what it is; the next generation of the Web, WHATEVER that turns out to be.
Best,
Dion
Links to this post:
<< Home
