Clunky Flow

This is a great post by Peter Rip: Web 2.0 - Over and out.

When a discussion starts off hitting the sweet spot like this you know you’ll want to read on…

 Many of us in the VC community have been quietly wondering about the state of Web 2.0 innovation. We aren’t seeing much. Startup activity remains strong, but the consumer web landscape seems to be populated with the same bodies with different skins

 

 

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I started to write this post at 23.30 on Saturday the 31st of March GMT and posted it just after midnight to notice that the date had changed to the 1st of April.  I was caught out good and proper (even though I’d like to claim that the time difference left me a little unprepared!).  Thanks Mike.  That was a beauty! 

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The news that Techcrunch is to transform itself into a ‘FuckedCompany.com’ for Web2.0 is as shocking as it is sudden. Techcrunch, much loved as for its editorial policy of championing and cheerleading Web 2.0 startups has decided to turn that policy on its head in order to a focus on the negative news coming out of start ups instead.  Why? Mike Arrington has calculated that there’s more cash in negative sensationalist press and now is a good time to cash in on a potential cyclical downturn for startups from the past year or so.     

Earlier this week I wrote a tongue-in-cheek piece noting the Mike had employed a new ceo for Techcrunch from Fox Interactive Media, remarking on the possible corrupting influence of an exec from a media business that primarily profits from aiming for the lowest common denominator. 

Tommorrow, Mike will announce that Techcrunch is to adopt a new negative sensationalist and abrasive style like that used by FuckedCompany.com because there is more advertising dollars in this approach.

Say it ain’t so Mike.  Say it ain’t so.

 

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We’ve known the future has been coming for a while but we never really expected it to come so soon.  Recently, we saw traffic to Bebo overtake traffic to Google in Ireland.  Now, we have this report from EContent matter-of-factly presenting a compliation of expert opinion stating that social networking sites ‘are replacing search as the interface to content’.

Just as search has become the de facto interface to content on the web, so have social networks become the entry-point to a much greater and richer internet experience. The Hitwise study revealed the impact that social sites have had in driving traffic to other destinations on the web. Shopping and classified sites, for instance, received 2.4% of their visits directly from MySpace in September 2006—an 83% increase since March.

Against this backdrop, social networking has become a significant force on the web and a part of users’ daily lives, observes Outsell’s Doctor. “The sites are replacing search as the interface to content.”

And, 

Despite the variety of [user generated content] flourishing on the internet, the range of business models and strategies is limited by a lack of imagination and vision.

The basic concept and architecture behind online social networks like bebo, myspace, facebook etc are indistinguishable  from one another and fundamentally indistinguishable from the originals like sixdegrees and friendster.  Some have said that if sixdegrees and friendster were the invention of the automobile, then myspace et al. would be equivalent to the model-T ford.   

All of this leads one to suggest that there remains a lot of opportunity for the innovative in this space. 

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At etech 2006, danah boyd gave what Kathy Sierra called an astonishing talk.  It ended with this definition of an intriguing problem.  

Is anyone aware of any solutions to this problem going public in the last year or even in the near future?

 

Provide the cultural environment where people can accidentally connect with strangers over meaningful things without being forced to face everyone on the system. Let users privatize or wall off access to only certain people for their own needs. Let users see the values of being public. Of course, balancing privacy needs with public possibilities with the lack of interest in dealing with the *whole* public is quite tricky. Anyone who can solve this design challenge with a robust system will win the hearts of users and investors.

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Valleywag treats us to a neat summation of how Rupert Murdoch got it right while many fine commentators thought he had got it so wrong when he purchased MySpace

When Rupert Murdoch acquired Myspace in 2005, the skeptics wondered why he would pay so much for an anarchic community which was only generating about $30m a year in revenue. That’s how much the self-styled place for friends is now making per month, largely from advertising, according to an analyst for Pali Research — and that should more than double over the next 12 months. Let’s stipulate that the affection for social networks, from advertisers such as the movie studios, can’t last. Still, as one News Corporation exec says: “You know, it may turn out that social networks have been, not overhyped, but underhyped.”

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Brendan Lally ( Lally logic. What does an Irishman know? lallylogic.startitup.net.) sent me a link to this classic post by Guy Kawasaki.  Guy’s always a great read, but what with everyone talking about the Framework 7 Programme right now and looking out for potential academic research partners, there couldn’t be a better time to revisit this post.  Thanks Brendan.

Concise and to the point Guy identifies 3 commonly held beliefs that don’t translate well from research organisations to entities focused on commercialisation…

There are three key flaws in most attempts to commercialize technology via a startup. First, organizations think that starting a successful company is easy and that the hard part—that is, the research—is already done. The truth is that it’s not easy to productize technology and to start a company; if it were, these organizations would do it themselves.

Second, [organizations think that] patents are worth a lot of money. Patents are nice—in particular, they impress parents—but they don’t make customers buy a product. They could valuable if your company is successful and has enough time and money to litigate against infringers, but no startup’s mantra should be “patent, sue, collect.�

Third, [organizations think that] the value of technology is directly related to the number of man-years (not to be sexist) it took to develop it. What’s more likely is that the longer it took to make something that hasn’t been turned into a product, the less it’s worth. It’s debatable whether technology developed in a cost-plus environment by cost-plus scientists can thrive in a market-driven market.

 

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Well, maybe not this afternoon for everyone.  But it has definitley a whole lot easier for anyone to enter this business.

Steve Poland writes for Techcrunch about this small but beautiful change to the twitter api allowing anyone leverage twitter as a command line to the web service they might provide

Currently, it costs a lot of money to launch a start-up in the SMS/mobile space — you have to license a shortcode monthly ($500-$1000/mo), pay a SMS gateway provider, and then pay anywhere from $0.03 - $0.05 per inbound or outbound text message. It adds up. But now, if a start-up chooses to use Twitter as a command line to their web service, it’s free (until Twitter starts charging for it).

 

And Pat Phelan at roam4free estimates a tiny daily cash burn rate at twitter

it we were to take rough figures of 80/20 USA/Europe it suggest a tiny daily cash burn, SMS are free in the USA if you use an email gateway which I presume twitter are using, for example if you want to text me you can do so @ 5622564007@t-mobile.com. There is a zero cost in this, in fact the user in the USA is paying for inbound test messages. My estimation is that is that Twitter is sending between 12-15000 paid for text messages a day @ around 5c so around $750 a day, $25,000 a month.

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On Tuesday Om Malik remarks that Web 2.0 might just have jumped the shark. 

And yesterday Techcrunch published this much maligned beginners guide to creating web apps.

 

 

To borrow from the Simpson’s Kent Brockman, here’s my two cents on that article. 

 

 

Whatever else is said, there is no doubt that this article jars with the tone and insight a regular Techcrunch reader has come to expect. 

 

Has their been a sudden shift in editorial policy? 

 

If so, is Techcrunch still aimed at its traditional readership or is it angling for a new readership base?

 

 

The above article says that a promoter should ask questions like “Who is it aimed at?” and “Why will they use it?” when assesing its products potential in its target market. 

 

We know Mike applies these basic principles in his sleep. 

 

That said, Digg and Rojo readers love these kinda titles and the above post is likely to be widely read.  I do hope this article fits into the  category of cheap and cheeky publicity stunt. 

 

I do hope it is not a sign of a reversal of editorial policy on quality.

 

 

One wonders if this has anything to do with the recent arrival of Heather Harde ex-Fox Interactive Media as new ceo of techcrunch?  Nah. Hardly. 

 

But one wonders if anyone or anything once exposed to the profitability of Fox can then possibly resist the siren call to dumb down?

 

Are we witnessing a temporary glitch or a permanent change?
If its a permanent change, let me the first to say.

 

“I, For One, Welcome Our New Foxy Overlords…  ”

 

 

 

 

 

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What a week for Techcrunch!  Mike announces hiring Fox Interactive Media executive talent so that he can get back to blogging.  Decreasing Techcrunch readership (according to Alexa) is cited as sign of the end of Web 2.0.  And this “Building successful web apps for dummies” type article gets horribly flamed in the comments.

 

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