In the last months I've had several times a dejavu feeling. All this web2.0 noise is starting to sound more and more like the .com thing nine years ago.
On one side, it is a little bit deceiving: am I so old to tell yarns and anecdotes about how insanely money was made and lost those days?. But looking at the past is also a good way to reflect on what is going on, and question whether past lessons have been learned...
All these thoughts come because I've just read an article on the Lessons from the Las Bubble, and I found some of the ideas really interesting.
One of the best points is when the authors talk about network externalities and exponential growth. They rightly point out that the fact that you have an internet based business model does not imply that you are going to have network effects. Network externalities are not about the technology you use to build your service, but about the way users use it and value the social network that is build on top. And that was one of the mistakes repeated over and over again in the .com era. There are no network externalities to draw from in a internet based retail store, as there are no network externalities in setting up a brick and mortar retail store.
But that should not be a problem for Web2.0, isn't it?. Since Web2.0 is all about social networking, that mistake will not happen again: we are definitely going to have network externalities and, consequently, exponential growth. Wrong!!!
The fact that some of the technologies collected under the Web2.0 name enable the formation (I should say the facilitation) of social networks does not mean that any venture in the Web2.0 world is going to build one. It is not about social networks, it is about the value of they provide to users.
There have been lots of serious studies on how social networks are formed, used, and, at the end, valued by people. Social networking is a natural human activity, not something that was invented a couple of years ago by MySpace or Flickr. The fact that these two business (and a few others) have been very successful at using the human tendency to interact with other people to extract an economic profit does not mean that any venture that talks about network externalities in its business plan is going to be as successful and profitable.
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2 comments:
you wrote "On one side, it is a little bit deceiving...".
I think you meant "a bit disappointing", didn't you?
watch out the false friends! ;)
[deceiving/deceive/deception means or is related to lying, or not telling the truth with obscure purposes.]
hope it helps,
cheers!
Thanks for the semantic point.
My Spanish background sometimes shows up when I'm writing in English. Just when I've finally learned to say opposite instead of in front, I have something else to remember: the difference between deceiving and disappointing...
However, when I read the post again, I see that, although the correct word in that particular point would have been disappointing, there was also a lot of deception in the .com bubble, and there is probably, at least, some deception going on in the all the web2.0 noise....
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