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October 7, 2004
Initial thoughts on Web 2.0
Have been at Web 2.0 for the last couple of days. Lots of very interesting people here and great ideas being thrown around. I won't try to summarize all the announcements and significant events as they are all around the net and blogsphere (check out the MyStack results below).
Here is what I think are the most important ideas coming out of this so far:
1. The web as a platform. This is the basic contention of web 2.0. If web 1.0 was about making the web safe for people, web 2.0 is about making it safe for computers. The next generation of web applications will leverage the shared infrastructure of the web 1.0 companies like EBay, Paypal, Google, Amazon, and Yahoo, not just the "bare bones transit" infrastructure that was there when we started all those companies in the late 90s (UUNet, Exodus, doubleclick,, etc.). This fact is fundamental to the next generation of entrepreneurs thinking about companies today.
2. Search is going to see major innovation over the next 12 months. Just when you thought Google had it all tied up, here comes the next generation. Some are calling it personalization, some local search, whatever you call it, you can think about it like this: The mass of web links was tamed and organized into a card catalog by Yahoo but it was still too hard to find relevant stuff, so Google reduced the process to one box with superior results. Having simplified the massively complex web to one box, we are not aching for more control, more customization, etc. Next generation search will go away from simplification into personalization and user control of the search results. Check out the relaunched Snap.com and the "official" A9.
3. China is the most important country in the internet's future. Mary Meeker summarized what is going on in china in 12 minutes. Very impressive feat. Basically if you are not paying attention to the China internet market you are not watching the future of the internet.
4. There are many people ready and willing to run up the hill again. After the meltdown of 2000-2003, I had some serious concerns about who would be stupid enough to run up the innovation hill again after such a bloodbath. Luckilly, the spirit of entrepreneurship is very resilient and the successful are coming back (as well as a new crop). There is no lack of entrepreneurs in the halls wanting to pitch me on their idea to capitalize on web 2.0. Very good sign.
Posted by Martin at October 7, 2004 8:23 AM
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» Martin Tobias' 50,000 foot view of the Web 2.0 conference from Troy Angrignon - Adventure Capitalist
Here is Martin's brief overview of the most important themes that are coming out at the Web 2.0 conference.... [Read More]
Tracked on October 7, 2004 9:08 AM
» Web 2.0 Definition and Tagging from Read/Write Web
I'm trying to figure out what 'Web 2.0' means to people. So in this post I provide some definitions and analyze two popular articles about The Web as Platform, by looking at what tags people stored them under in del.icio.us.
[Read More]Tracked on February 1, 2005 2:31 AM
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