Going through the European Startup 2.0 list one has to say that we Europeans come up with crazier Web 2.0 names than our fellows across the pond. Whether that is through necessity as names become scarce or something else I am not sure.
Even so I liked the looks of anywr.com, QuestionForm, Tupalo and Properazzi.
Startup 2.0 does seem to be missing out on the startups in Ireland however.
A fascinating brief to the news print industry by Oliver Reichenstein:
News organisations cannot continue to ignore the global shift from institutionally controlled media to user controlled media. They have to redefine their processes and face the obvious question: Do we still need old media for news?
There are concepts in there but also pragmatic instructions on what to do.
Letters to the editor is often the most successful section of a newspaper. Why is that? Because web 2.0 is a new fashion that will disappear soon? Or because the curiosity in what real people think is human, all too human?
So true. Web 2.0 is the humanising of the web and the pulling down of the old guard’s walls. Not to destroy them but to include them in our global conversation.
1. Reduce number of banners per page to one.
2. Increase banner size.
3. Distinguish clearly between ads and content.
4. Kill all pop up windows.
5. Forbid animated and amateurish banners.
Funnily enough as much as I think the New York Times Reader is a failure (being a desktop-bound, closed app.) I do think their advertising is excellent. One per page, quality, non-intrusive.
Truth is: We need paper for books, yet we don’t absolutely need paper for news – it is just a nice to have option.
I don’t disagree with this but I think “digital paper” or ePaper can be added to the arguement. Static paper will disappear. Dynamic, reloadable ePaper will replace it (it has already been said ePaper will become cheaper than tree-paper.)
It isn’t that newspapers must go online and dump the physicality of paper. Rather that newspapers become true media two-way channels and allow any device to read their content. ePaper, laptops, mobile phones, TVs, desktop computers, billboards, train station walls and the side of blimps. These are display surfaces on which the news of the world can be read.
That’s true of every successful web 2.0 business: it puts its customer first.
O’Reilly Radar > Web 2.0 Goes Mainstream
Google (Gmail, Calendar, Reader), Flickr, SmugMug, del.icio.us etc.
I feel like a dirty sales type as I just put my WebTwoZero.com domain up for sale on eBay. My sales pitch needs work 
At that price I’ll see if anyone bites. If not I’ll go back to my original plan of actually developing something on it.
It would seem from Read/Write Web’s wrap-up of the Web 2.0 Summit (previously the Web 2.0 Conference) that $3000 and a few days of your time is not worth it. Apparently the Web 2.0 Expo will be more of a technological show case but I have to wonder if any conference, expo or summit is going to tell you anything that subscribing to TechCrunch, Read/Write Web and other sites don’t already tell you. Plus they do it a lot faster and are more responsive.
If you want to network, strike deals or idolise some smart people then by all means keep on attending conferences. And if you speak at them, keep it up, but otherwise are technological conferences outdated in favour of the realtime web?
I’ve been sitting on WebTwoZero.com for too long and want to sell it. Has anyone had any luck with eBay or a site like Sedo? I reckon it is worth a few bob.
I had some plans for it but my day time job is going so well I don’t really need to be hassling with side projects.
The YCombinator seeded and Rails-based Kiko is up for sale on ebay…
So far it’s at 0 bids with a starting bid of $49,999.99…
There’s 8 days 23 hours left to the auction. I have my prediction.
As Jason says, let’s see. My prediction is that 49k is too much for anyone but the likes of Google and Yahoo! to consider. Is there any value in the code for one of the big guys? Doubt it. What about a sizeable corporate looking to roll its own from a good starting point for internal use? Maybe.
The eBay format also prevents anyone from getting a look at the source they are buying.
All in all it doesn’t look great to me even though Kiko is a decent system.
I’ve never really got Ning but Nat over at O’Reilly Radar comes closest to explaining it to us “Apache configuring MySQL-worshipping junkies with Rails up both forearms” types (i.e. techies):
If you want a photo site, you go to someone’s photo site and hit the “ah gotta git me wunna thayem!” button. Boom, you have a photo site. If you want a new feature, you hit “edit my app” and add it.
and then the kicker:
a Ning photo app is like a “group” on Flickr
So you can take any Ning app, clone it (much better than “Get Your Own” IMO, but then I am an ACMR) and modify it to your group’s needs.
The bit that still makes me shy away from Ning is that you can’t then say “take all the cloned photo apps and aggregate the photo data.” But that is apparently being worked on. That will make Ning work for me.
Couple other good points:
Premium features are things like … putting it in your own domain (instead of foo.ning.com)
and
what if I write a great app and Yahoo! wants to buy me? Their answer: go for it. Your app is your app. You can take [it] off their site.
Though in the later case it isn’t that easy as you then loose Ning’s “storage, tagging, and authentication modules” and have to write your own. I’d like to see Ning support S3 and other storage options through a Ning Storage Abstraction Layer.
Still, Ning is clearer in my mind thanks to that article and with a bit of that cloned-app-aggregation magic I think it could be something amazing.
So he’s kind of like a Jeremy Clarkson of Web2.0 ?
This was said by Walter Higgin’s wife about Michael Arrington of TechCrunch. I laughed so hard.
So. Spot. On.
A pity our friends over the pond won’t get the reference. They’d do well to watch a few Top Gear episodes.
Chris Shipley makes a good point about the current Web 2.0 revenue state:
The software industry, however, in large measure has become afraid to ask people to pay. Ultimately, this devalues not only the application, but also the industry.
He goes on to say:
I believe consumers will pay for value and that it is fundamentally wrong not to ask to be compensated for the value you deliver to the market.
We are afraid but maybe we shouldn’t be. I think what many of us are afraid of is launching and not getting a tidal wave of sign-ups (and blogosphere attention.) When we launch we want to be on TechCrunch, Slashdot, Digg and Reditt. Don’t we?
Which is better; a site launches, asks for a fiver a month and “only” gets a few thousand sign-ups vs. a site that launches, asks for nothing and gets ten thousand sign-ups (along with an attention-storm that leaves you as quickly as it hit and with nothing more than wrecked servers and a few stragglers.)
Before you answer that consider what else Chris said:
In the context of Google, when we are actually looking for something, a paid ad link in context might be very useful. But when we are doing any of a number of things that fee sites enable, the ads are much less valuable…
Back to the question; if you have a site that can naturally incorporate contextual ads then go for the attention-storm. Get those eyeballs, get those clicks (though clicks depend on your targeted user-base too. Don’t expect tech-savvy users to click through, they generally don’t. Try and get the moms and pops for click-throughs.) and reap the numbers.
But if you have a web-app then fitting ads into it probably won’t work. As Chris points out you are using up screen real estate, diluting your functions and the user is not in the ad-click-through frame of mind. They want to pay a bill, upload a photo or store a link, not click on an advert. They aren’t looking for products, they have a task to do.
In that case ask for a fiver and don’t be hassled if you are not the coolest Web 2.0 site of the moment. If your product is good you should get more through a hundred fivers than you will get through a thousand click-throughs.
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