Posted by Jacob Harris
Fri, 06 Jan 2006 04:11:00 GMT
It’s been an excellent week for my geeky self-esteem, with beta invitations to both Ma.gnolia (a new bookmarking site) and Measuremap (a blog statistics tracking program). Both are written in Ruby on Rails and both look pretty awesome. That’s all I’m going to say (not sure how much I can legally say yet), but I will close with the observation that there’s an energy for new projects on the web I haven’t seen in years and that the Ruby on Rails community is one of the nicest and most open I’ve ever seen.
Ah well, two down, approximately 100 to go.
Posted in Web | Tags betas, ma.gnolia, measuremap, rails, ruby, web2.0 | 1 comment
Posted by Jacob Harris
Fri, 07 Oct 2005 20:46:00 GMT
It seems like I’m not the only person thinking about the Web2.0 hype in terms of the previous bubble. There have been two interesting articles posted on the subject, sparked by massive interest in the Web2.0 conference this year (for me, it’s an effect of finding an old exuberant issue of Wired from 1998).
First up, there is a post on the subject from O’Reilly Radar titled If Everyone Thinks It’s a Bubble, It’s Not a Bubble. This quite frankly is an idiotic title. I’m not a VC, but near the end of dot-com boom, even I and everbody knew that things were undervalued and it was a bubble. Still, many people thought they could cash out in time. Anyhow, despite that disappointing start, this article redeems itself with the following insight
Here at Web 2.0, no one believes the mania, at least not yet. No one thinks, as they did in 1999, that we’re looking at new technologies that will, say, wipe away bricks and mortar retailers and leave online businesses in their place. No one believes that old and powerful industries are about to be destroyed en masse by the rise of asynchronous Javascript or data as the Intel inside. These Web 2.0 markers are great developments, and are enabling great applications to get attention and immediately dominate the Web applications they replace. They’ve clearly valuable. As of yet, though, Web 2.0 is a revision of the Web and what has been built on it, not a revision of the world, which was the premise of the last bubble.
Which is very true. As much as we can joke and fret about the Web2.0 hype, it has not been on the level of the hype back in the previous bubble. Where the web was going to annihilate geography, change the way we shop, and connect us all in one happy hive-mind. Expectations are more realistic now on the technical side, but I do wonder if people still believe in Google and Yahoo too much.
From a different perspective, Fred Wilson has answered my silent prayers and given me an example of what a VC thinks about Web2.0 . Fred’s a really smart guy (I am only slightly biased because he’s an investor in Alacra), so I like to think he reflects the thinking among the smart money in the tech sector when he notes:
Last year at this time we were talking about interesting companies like Skype, Flickr, MySpace, etc.
Many of them are gone, gobbled up by the web 1.0 giants or the mainstream media companies.
In their places we are seeing second derivatives. I heard one business described as Google Maps meets delicious, and another described as Skype meets MySpace. When the first derivative hasn’t fully figured its long term business model (other than getting bought), the second derivates are pretty scary.
I am a contrarian at heart. This situation bothers me.
Translation: VCs won’t just fund your mashup because it’s cool. As I was ranting the other day, there has to be more to a business plan than hoping to be be bought by Yahoo or Google, and it’s even sillier to expect fame and riches from doing a mashup. Thankfully, rational voices are prevailing here, so the innovations of Web2.0 won’t be lost in the disappointment of a bubble bursting.
Posted in Web | Tags business, web2.0 | no comments
Posted by Jacob Harris
Wed, 05 Oct 2005 16:06:00 GMT
Back in the day of the first Web boom, it seems like a lot of companies were started on the simple premise of
- Make a web site
- IPO or maybe get bought out
- Cash out with millions!
And so, a boom and bubble was born. The problem here was a lot of VCs and rational investors found themselves swept up in the frenzy back in the day, and placed their bets even though there was no real knowable way to accurately estimate the future profitability or net worth of their investments. Sure, there was a risk of failure, but that wasn’t viewed as negatively as the risk of not getting in early while it was still cheap. Add that to the later shared delusion of being able to cash out before the bubble burst, and the shortsightedness of those days is a lot more understandable. It seems though we’re on the verge of a new way of thinking:
- Make a web site
- Get bought out by Yahoo or Google
- Cash out with millions!
Maybe I’m being a bit pessimistic (and I will freely admit I’m no business expert), but I am slightly concerned about there being a new web bubble that could lead to disillusionment over Web2.0 technology. I like Google, but I think their stock is too overvalued at over $300 a share; thankfully, the company seems interested in correcting
this problem. And Web2.0 has become such a hype word among investors, it’s led to a wave of people trying to define what it is, offering alternative definitions, and mocking the business world for caring
Investors looking for the next big thing are starting to latch onto the Web2.0 excitement and I think some people think Google and Yahoo can do no wrong; I only hope they do their homework first this time.
On the technical side of things, I have a fear of web developers starting companies with the sole goal of being bought by Google or Yahoo in a few years or less. There’s a big difference between planning a business for the long haul and hoping to get snatched up before you burn through all your cash in two years. So, I must admit it was with some dismay today that I read that Yahoo has acquired Upcoming.org, just like it had with Flickr. This is not to begrudge Upcoming their success (it’s a great web app), but I’m just afraid of where the combination of lazy web developers and over-eager investors will take us. We’ve been there before, and I don’t want to see it again.
And of course, the biggest problem with all this is the way in which this weaking leads to the end of the openness and choice out there now. How many options are there really if your choice for web applications is between Yahoo and Google? Will this lead to a segmentation of content and communication? And more importantly, if you think that the Web2.0 is all about the free flow and interchange of data, won’t the growth of Google and Yahoo into all areas of the Internet choke that off?
Posted in Web, Silly | Tags flickr, upcoming, web2.0, yahoo | no comments
Posted by Jacob Harris
Fri, 30 Sep 2005 07:09:00 GMT
Courtesy of Tim O’Reilly’s
Foo Camp (which I am definitely not cool enough to be invited to), there is now a picture to match the exciting flow of ideas and themes coalescing into
Web 2.0. I think this assemblage of bubbles and trends is a great thing to see, especially since it serves as a better executive summary of high-level ideas than gleaning bits and pieces of the big picture from blogs and demo sites across the web.
That said, I think one thing is missing from the picture they provide. Maybe I am a bit preoccupied with the subject, but I think RSS (or Atom here, I’m just using RSS as shorthand for syndication) is really one of the biggest things driving Web2.0 services and adoption these days, but it hasn’t even gotten a mention in the top as an influencing technology (unlike blogs or Gmail). I think blogs were great at establishing RSS as a way of keeping track of changes, but the really influential aspect of Del.icio.us and Flickr is not just tagging, but establishing RSS as a mechanism for tracking any possible view of the system you might want in as light-weight and user-friendly mechanism as possible (as opposed to the awkwardness of SOAP or even REST to the end user).
I think the source of my unease here is that I’m mostly a backend guy. A lot of my work at Alacra has been making sure that all sorts of information flows agilely between processes and servers. Backend stuff. It makes it happen, but if it’s working, you never notice how critical it is to success. Similarly, AJAX and other front-end browser mechanisms are very nice in my mind. But the biggest joys and successes of Web2.0 are all driven by the fluidity and ease of RSS and REST. “Hackability”, “Data as Intel Inside”, “Right to Remix” ... RSS made this a possibility and these are what drives me to take Web2.0 seriously and not just as another wave of web hype. All I’m asking for is a little recognition. Thanks.
Update: The good news is that it seems like I’m not alone in this view. The bad news is my company is Dave Winer.
Posted in Web, Web Services | Tags rss, web2.0 | 1 comment
