Back in August, I wrote about what it takes to be successful in "Web 2.0"... but now I'm not so sure that's an admirable goal. Yes, there are lots of really great things about the "second coming", but I think there's a whole lot that makes the pedestal a little bit undeserving. Obviously, this piece is meant to generate a lot of conversation and feedback through a challenge... it doesn't mean that I'm no longer interested in slick, user friendly "web 2.0" apps that make my life easier and have gained great market traction.
So here's my Top 10 Reasons Why Web 2.0 Sucks... Feel free to blog, remix, mash, tag, aggregate, syndicate, disaggregate, digg, sploof, snorg, coagulate, microchunk, gloog, discombobulate, and comment...
1. This is going to be small. Small might be the new big, and that's great when it means lower barriers to adoption, tools which are more lightweight and easier to use... but it also seems like no one is interested in the next "big thing" anymore. The overbuild of calendar and video clip apps is the equivilent of Seinfeld's take how our greatest scientific minds are working on creating seedless watermelons instead of curing cancer. That's why, as flakey as it may be, I admire people like Second Life for trying to create fundamental change in how we interact online, or Meetup for trying to actually effect the way we connect and combine in the real world.
2. The death of teamwork. The fact that it only takes a handful of people, sometimes even just one, to build services, means that there's actually less community creation going on than there was before in the tech world. You're not going to have "del.icio.us alumni" the way you have Microsoft alumni... or you will, but they could all meet by pulling two tables together in a local pizzeria. Plus, so many of these startups are working in virtual teams and never meeting... you're really losing all the teamwork that goes on in larger organizations when people work together in person. That's going to create less loyalty, more turnover, and make it hard for companies to really take on bigger projects that require more employee continuity.
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