The Web 2.0 Sky Is Falling (well, sort of)

Peter Rip has an interesting post up today that talks about the changing landscape of what is generally called Web 2.0:

Much of the "easy" innovation seems to have been wrung out of the Web 2.0 wave. Web 2.0 was cheap - thanks to open source, simple - thanks to RSS/REST, and distinctive - thanks to AJAX and Flash. It helped more than a little the Google has continued to entice us all with the abundant profits in Internet advertising.

Now the hard work begins, again. The next wave of innovation isn’t going to be as easy. The hard problems in the WWW are no longer usability or ease of everyday content creation. These problems are solved. Digital cameras, SixApart, WordPress, and digital video cameras showed us how ease it could be. Now the hard part is moving from Web-as-Digital-Printing-Press to true Web-as-Platform. To make the Web a platform there has to a level of of content and services interoperability that really doesn’t exist today.

Source: EarlyStageVC, “Web 2.0 - Over and Out”

As Peter notes, there has been an interesting dip in the level of activity surrounding the beacons of the Web 2.0 world. More importantly, perhaps, is that a “template” has emerged for the Web 2.0 company:

• Users can share any kind of information from files to photos
• Storage isn’t expensive, so we don’t police it today, yet
• Users can invite their friends; that’s how we get new users
• We launched a few months ago and are doubling every month
• We haven’t quite figured out our revenue model, but we think it is freemium (“Let me explain what that means…”)

If our experiences at Blue Whale Labs are any indication, the level of sophistication is definitely on the rise - and we're pretty excited about that. There are a couple of reasons why this excites us:

First, I never believed the hype that software had devolved into a commodity state. While there are the rare stories like Digg, the reality is that most software projects STILL fail and that they often cost significantly more than a few bucks to get off the ground. If anything, it’s the propagation of the myth that anything can be built for free that’s led to the micro-slicing of verticals we see inside the Internet domain.

Second, we love the challenge. As applications and systems grow more and more complex, the beautiful dance that is application design gets more and more interesting. The ultimate challenge, of course, is leveraging all this new knowledge while bringing forward better usability and simplicity. The user still comes first and that’s not a trend we foresee going anywhere (it never should have gotten away from us quite frankly).

Third, the pace is still hectic but the expectations are getting more realistic. One thing we stress with our clients is releasing “the right set of features” as opposed to simply launching for the sake of launching. This is recently echoed at Ask the Wizard:

The bottom line being that you want to invest pre-launch such that you optimize for innovation post-launch. This is never more true than when it seems like you are racing into a market with multiple competitors and your inclination is to hurry up and launch something! The advantage you have prior to launch is that you don't yet have customer demands. Set yourself up to be in a position to rapidly iterate and innovate post-launch and you will be in the best position to put the first movers back on their heels if they aren't in a position to react to market forces as quickly as you.

Source: Ask the Wizard, “Launch Late to Launch Often”

Great advice for sure.

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