Concept 2.0

While I'm constantly reading about the dozens of web 2.0 social networking sites that launch daily, I rarely hear about them closing down and just generally crashing and burning unless it's major news. But are they are still going? There are so many launched I wouldn't have thought so.

So I think it would be quite interesting to see the failure rates of these sites. I'm almost tempted to set up a site monitoring them to see how long they last.

A new site named Script Mimic has just launched which allows you to put in a request for a script that can mimic the behavior of an existing site. Which basically means if you want to produce a clone of say MySpace or YouTube, you can find it on the site.

It's a good idea. People are producing so many Web 2.0 clones these days that I considered developing an easily deployable social networking site to add to the range of Particle Soft products. Speaking of which, I was quite pleased to find that Particle Wiki had already been listed as a good script to use for a Wikipedia clone.

Every day another million or so social networks launch. Ok, that's not a real figure, I am of course just being sarcastic but it feels like there are loads of new sites launching. That's great but do we really need them all? The obvious answer is no. It's also the right answer. There are way too many social networks launching.

The problem is, Web 2.0 is really good but too many people are looking at it from the wrong perspective. Web 2.0 is basically a new way of looking at things and doing things. It doesn't mean that you have to launch a whole new site for it. Why not just add it to your existing site.

For instance on one of the site's I've just launched, Bring Back My Favorite Show user's have profiles and will eventually be able to have friends, a simple picture and editable information about themselves. It's a nice feature to add on to the site that would have gone ahead anyway if it hadn't occured to someone to put that kind of features in. It doesn't need to be a stand-alone product. Because when you make it one you're all about the social networking and you're new cool tech start-up is just one in a million most of which will be dead fairly soon.

In quick a quickly closed deal, Google has purchased YouTube for $1.65 billion. Google don't seem to be afraid of taking on lawsuits which is a good job in this case given the amount of annoyance YouTube have caused. Since the deal closed Time Warner are already talking about sueing YouTube and given Google has enough money to make it worth sueing don't be suprise if a lot of lawsuits come their way in the near future.

Come on seriously now, there are two many of them. Every activity, media type, religion, etc, etc now has it's own niche social network. How many niche social networks do you use? Probably very few. Why use any more than one? Ideally we probably would if all our friends were on it and all the features. Nobody wants to use more than one.

Yet for some reason they keep getting funding. People are still putting millions of dollars into these new social network start-ups that offer nothing new. How are they planning to make money? They aren't going to get the traffic. If things continue like this, I can see another bubble that's going to burst.

In my August 14 "The widget network is still an open market" I talked about the lack of widget sites on the internet. Well, they are coming. Widgetbox.com has just launched though interestingly has gone for a selling premium widgets over an advertising business model.

Most of the Web 2.0 start-ups are launching widgets for MySpace and other social networks because of the power these networks have to reach a lot of people. But so far it's just companies offering what they already offer in widget form.

So far there isn't much in the way of start-ups designed around the idea of offering a variety of widgets. Is it just me or is that a a major business opportunity?

I can understand why people wouldn't want to base a large business plan around it. After all it's leaching off other businesses. Photobucket and to a lesser extent YouTube do this but then YouTube is very much free standing, more so than it's widgets and Photobucket isn't going to die if the social networking trend does.

It still has a lot of potential though. After all, the  social networking scene isn't likely to go away any time soon. It's changed a lot recently but widgets can easily be transfered across sites as people move around between Friendster, MySpace, Bebo, etc.

And it's not like the whole social networking thing started with Friendster either. It combined it with Web 2.0 perhaps but Yahoo and MSN have long had profiles plus people can always use widgets on personal web pages and blogs.

Last year Google launched their shiny video service Google Video which allowed you to search and watch videos across platforms thanks to it's use of Flash player and even went as far as to let you upload your own videos and expose them to the world.

Around the same time, a new tech start-up named YouTube was getting started. They were focused on the same market as Google Video but that was no real concern, Google were king of doing things, they had a magic touch that allowed them to nail a service (think gMail, Google Maps, these are great services).

But things didn't play out as it would have first seemed it would. YouTube climbed to power putting Google Video in it's place. Simply put, Google got it very wrong and YouTube got it very right. But where did Google go wrong?

Probably the same way most companies go - they become big corporations and get taken out by the small tech start-ups. As much as people like to think of Google as a non-evil corporation, they simply aren't anymore. They've now gone public and are answerable to shareholders, and they do - they put a year long ban on talking to CNet's News.com after they ran the story about privacy concerns.

It fits the situation too. Google brought out their video service and soon after monitorised the service. YouTube however launched the technology first and tried to come up with a business model second. The result was a better focus on the technology and therefore a better service for the end user.

The fact is, YouTube is just a lot better than Google Video. Getting anything on Google Video was an effort, you had to install their uploading software, use that to upload the video, go to the site, fill in details for each video and submit it then wait for it to process which would takes days at best before it finally went live.

YouTube is a much slicker process. You go to the upload page and select the file, fill in a few days and it's processed within minutes and available to the YouTube community. Plus if you want to add it onto your blog all you have to do is is copy and paste a line of code providing for you on the page and you have a free video hosting service. Add to that all the Web 2.0 style features such as tagging, user interaction and comments and you have an excellent service.

So where does Google Video go from here? Well you have the option to embed the video in other web pages using cut and paste code and they are introducing a web based uploader. But it looks like, at least for the moment, Google has become a follower, not a leader.