Are there any more big “Web 2.0″ things left?
Ahh. Web 2.0. It’s been a long time since a buzzword has gotten so played out. I’m sure we can all agree that looking for the next big “Web 2.0″ thing is an exercise in silliness.
The bubble on this second generation of web development is on the verge of popping big time if this recession continues. Look forward to a lot of those multi-million dollar VC deals drying up, and soon. Why do you think sites that are out there now are all looking to get bought by bigger companies? These companies have a good idea and a lot of users, but generally no strategy for actually MAKING MONEY. So, they hope to get absorbed by some big company who is desperate to seem hip, and survive there hopefully retaining most of the independence of the site, while riding out the economic storm.
So, what’s left? Are we just not going to get any more really good or interesting services? I don’t think that’s true. In fact there’s one genre of service out there that hasn’t quite broken into the mainstream yet, that I think has the potential to rival even MySpace or Facebook in value of use.
What kind of service is that? I’m not really sure what to call it actually. Social Tagging? Social Messaging? Social Status? Basically these are services in the vein of sites like Twitter , Jaiku , and Pownce . Basically these services are an incredibly simple way for people to let each other know what they are doing. You simply type in a short sentence or two, (or add a picture depending on the site), and post up what you’re doing. Your feed collects the messages all of your friends post. Simple as that.
Why would people like this? Simple! The traditional social networks have simply gotten too BUSY. You log in to find lots of fake profiles selling you free iPods, you find out that five friends have bitten or thrown things or turned you into a lawn gnome. It’s all gotten tired. The point of social networking, is to in fact, NETWORK. All the noise on sites like Myspace and Facebook is an affront to that simple principle, and people are looking for a change.
So which of these sites is poised to take the fledgling crown? Well so far, the answer is Twitter:
Twitter thus far (at least among the tech-savvy crowd) has been the site where people have been gathering. As is the norm with socially driven sites, you go where your friends go.
Twitter is by far the simplest of these new Social Messaging sites. It gives you 140 characters to post what your doing. No support for pictures or video. You have the ability to follow people, and people have the ability to follow you. Basically people you follow show up in your feed of posts. Simple as that. But there are a lot of neat clients like Twhirl and Twitterific that do some other neat and interesting things.
I’ll be doing a little article about the competitors of twitter, but in the mean time, If you’re interested in the next big thing. I’d highly suggest checking out Twitter. It’s pretty damn neat when you start to get into it.
Need your first friend? Feel free to follow me! My direct link is : http://www.twitter.com/floodcasso2
Hope to see you there!
April 1st, 2008 at 12:50 am
I just stopped by your blog and thought I would say hello. I like your site design. Looking forward to reading more down the road.
Robert Michel