Not all of the nominations have made me want to put down my coffee mug and smash my face against the keyboard: there have been some absolute gems in there as well. However, my patience has worn incredibly thin after two days of playing with hopelessly badly-designed websites and reading the drivel that currently passes for business plans. Something that should be enjoyable - investigating innovative online startups - has become an exercise in trying not to cringe so hard that I give myself a headache. Where does the money come from to sustain a business based upon badly copying a theme that has been done so many times before?
Of course, I am not talking about Flickr, Upcoming, Yelp, Last.fm, or Zoho. I'm not citing any of those smart, well-designed, useful services, or their smart, well-designed, useful competitors. What I've been faced with in the last forty-eight hours are their painful copies. The most painful are those that attempt to copy Ning, "allowing users to create their own social networks." I have lost count of how many sites I've seen that want us to create our own social network on their hallowed servers. The only conclusion I can draw is that these companies can't create anything worthwhile, but know enough web development (but only just) to create a platform so that other people can create content for them. While all sites that include user participation stand to profit off the contribution of others, I've been simply astounded at how many of these sites provide virtually nothing other than a way for the public to build up the companies' link profiles and PageRanks.
How they do this is pretty simple. These sites have acquired funding using the hot air that keeps the web 2.0 bubble full and floating. You've seen the words they use; most of us were rolling our eyes at terms like "creating synergy" a long time ago. Now, every second sentence looks like a massive cliché. The latest phrase that makes me want to start drinking whiskey at work is "allows users." Every second nomination has been telling me the incredible things it "allows users" to do. One of them allows users to submit menus! Christ, imagine that! Another is very excited about how it "allows users to define the important information they need, while on the go!" I've probably used the phrase in the past to describe the functions of a website. I'll never use it again. To me, it now reeks of the tired and the overused.
I don't understand how people can create and promote these sites with straight faces. Social news sites - both niche and generic - pile up on top of each other, each "story" sitting dormant with one vote. Social networks boast their "featured profiles," most of which have no picture, no personal information, and whose owners will never visit the site again. Every tagging and bookmarking site is astounded by its own ingenuity, as it studiously does the same things as its peers. Scores of websites want to hear your travel stories, see your videos, and know which music you like to hear. Visiting some of these domains is like looking at the empty main street of a boring town.
We made jokes about rounded corners over a year ago, but it seems that people still believe that if their site looks like an iPod, it will be an unbridled success.
In addition to the fantastic finds and the abysmal failures, I have come across a few sites that have interested me. What is problematic is that most of the "interesting" sites caught my attention for the wrong reasons. FoxiFly, which promised to let me "see which of my friends are online, chat to them through my browser and see where they are browsing around the web at the moment," managed to put the fear of teh internetz into me by making me think that it already knew who I was, let alone which websites my friends were looking at.
How damn web 2.0 is that? FoxiFly looks like it's setting up to ask me out! I always knew the Internet was creepy, but that's quite the application. Half a second later, I re-realised how much I dislike having the name that people pick when they stop to think of "the most generic name I can possibly imagine."
I assume that FoxiFly has a following of some sort and that people actually use the service, but the idea that my friends should know which sites I'm looking at doesn't appeal to me. In regards to their other web-based applications, I already have instant messengers and a telephone. I'm quite sure that I could get in touch with almost everyone I know at any time of the day without this site. FoxiFly promises to let me check multiple email accounts from anywhere on the web... which is exactly the system I already have, using Gmail and Gtalk. As an aside, these sites that promise to let us do things "from anywhere on the web" apparently have not yet discovered that Firefox and Internet Explorer, plus most browsers, now support tabs, whereby we can have our email accounts open while we're out there in the tubes. I already have very efficient versions of most of its other features as well, such as bookmarking, content aggregation, and social browsing.
The site, which is actually pretty great in terms of what I've been looking at, promises to let me spy on my friends' Internet activity, add yet another instant messaging application to list instant messaging applications I've been amassing since 1999, check my emails in more than one window, and have my friends know when I'm snooping the Livejournal page of a girl I knew when I was 18 and no longer like. So basically, it combines redundancy with epic undesirability. This holds true across the board of so many web 2.0 sites: even if they're well-developed, the vast majority of their functions are useless.
Given that I am reviewing sites for a set of awards, there was another thing that occurred to me today: when you're submitting your site for an award, it's not a good move to piss off the person who reviews submissions. Probably aiming to copy a young Facebook, U of Info bills itself as a "free informational website designed for college students." The site asks you to enter your school in order to gain access. Still wielding a university email address, I begin typing the name of my college. Things go well for about ten characters.
I assume that FoxiFly has a following of some sort and that people actually use the service, but the idea that my friends should know which sites I'm looking at doesn't appeal to me. In regards to their other web-based applications, I already have instant messengers and a telephone. I'm quite sure that I could get in touch with almost everyone I know at any time of the day without this site. FoxiFly promises to let me check multiple email accounts from anywhere on the web... which is exactly the system I already have, using Gmail and Gtalk. As an aside, these sites that promise to let us do things "from anywhere on the web" apparently have not yet discovered that Firefox and Internet Explorer, plus most browsers, now support tabs, whereby we can have our email accounts open while we're out there in the tubes. I already have very efficient versions of most of its other features as well, such as bookmarking, content aggregation, and social browsing.
The site, which is actually pretty great in terms of what I've been looking at, promises to let me spy on my friends' Internet activity, add yet another instant messaging application to list instant messaging applications I've been amassing since 1999, check my emails in more than one window, and have my friends know when I'm snooping the Livejournal page of a girl I knew when I was 18 and no longer like. So basically, it combines redundancy with epic undesirability. This holds true across the board of so many web 2.0 sites: even if they're well-developed, the vast majority of their functions are useless.
Given that I am reviewing sites for a set of awards, there was another thing that occurred to me today: when you're submitting your site for an award, it's not a good move to piss off the person who reviews submissions. Probably aiming to copy a young Facebook, U of Info bills itself as a "free informational website designed for college students." The site asks you to enter your school in order to gain access. Still wielding a university email address, I begin typing the name of my college. Things go well for about ten characters.
Then they come to a grinding halt.
As it turns out, the site doesn't work for schools that are in its database, either. Inserting acceptable email addresses brought me to that generic 404 page which handily suggests I may be the owner of the website and have uploaded my site incorrectly.
Two examples of weird, broken, or pointless websites. Reduce the quality and multiple that by one-hundred and fifty and you'll see why I'm having a tough time retaining my composure.
Acknowledging the irony of this next section, I have an announcement to make: The deadline for submitting sites to the 2008 Web 2.0 Awards is this Friday. As I say above, buried within the caffeine-fueled rage, I've come across a couple of really awesome websites during the last two days. I implore you all to add to the "best of" list, rather than create for me some more misery. Once I'm done with the nominations list, I'll be seriously trawling the net for these good sites (as will Danny: I love assigning tasks to the intern). Do let us know which sites you guys think are deserving of recognition!
To end this fun, I present you with a quiz. Below are five descriptions of web 2.0 sites. Four of the options are slight modifications of real websites' descriptions. The modifications simply cut out factors that would identify the site in question. I made up one of the descriptions five minutes ago in an attempt to create a nasty web 2.0 cliché. Please don't cheat. That way, it's more fun for everyone. See if you can pick which one is mine!
Two examples of weird, broken, or pointless websites. Reduce the quality and multiple that by one-hundred and fifty and you'll see why I'm having a tough time retaining my composure.
Acknowledging the irony of this next section, I have an announcement to make: The deadline for submitting sites to the 2008 Web 2.0 Awards is this Friday. As I say above, buried within the caffeine-fueled rage, I've come across a couple of really awesome websites during the last two days. I implore you all to add to the "best of" list, rather than create for me some more misery. Once I'm done with the nominations list, I'll be seriously trawling the net for these good sites (as will Danny: I love assigning tasks to the intern). Do let us know which sites you guys think are deserving of recognition!
To end this fun, I present you with a quiz. Below are five descriptions of web 2.0 sites. Four of the options are slight modifications of real websites' descriptions. The modifications simply cut out factors that would identify the site in question. I made up one of the descriptions five minutes ago in an attempt to create a nasty web 2.0 cliché. Please don't cheat. That way, it's more fun for everyone. See if you can pick which one is mine!
The scary thing is not just how many new sites are springing up to offer services that are already available (and popular) elsewhere, but how many brands want to muddy the pond even further.
We have a question that we occasionally ask clients who come to us with an idea:
When the 3rd brand of the week comes in asking us to build them a social network for stamp-collectors (for example) when there are already plenty of great forums/blogs/etc.. for the stamp buffs, we have to push them to work on finding way to help these communities rather than trying to start one from scratch.
Build it & they will come? Probably not, actually; it's often much better to enable an existing conversation, rather than trying to start a new one.
PS - one thing about the stamp collectors is that it would lend itself to the ultimate cliched Web 2.0 name:
pHlatlist (beta), or maybe PnnyBlk
I think its a repeat of 2000 in terms of online companies and soon, VCs and entrepreneurs alike will start focusing back on having a business model.
"...have made me want to put down my coffee mug and smash my face against the keyboard...makes me want to start drinking whiskey at work..."
Ouch! not pulling any punches are we?
Does it feel that sometimes "2.blow" sites have been created using generators?
Lets see now - all I need to create a 2.0 site is rounded corners, a funky 2.0 name and a template with loud colours.
Then I need to consider which functionality I can easily script, put it all together and come up with a marketing statement:
"{insert name here} allows users to interact with their peers and strangers while on the move, submerged in the sea, in the sky or 6 foot under, on a platform that has been built on semantic web principles in mind, making full use of the benefits of AJAX and revolutionary open source systems."
Lol. Jokes aside, there are some really great developments though – for example I love blinksale and Zoho.
What we must remember that amongst all this dirt, diamonds do have a tendency to surface – the more people will create, the more creative they will be forced to be.
(edits for formating)
Totally - I've thought that for a while now and was going to say that exact thing. I've felt that for a while now...it's like this huge bandwagon everyone gets on. No need for though, concept, business plan, etc. There are some great web 2.0 spoof sites that mock the whole thing, like bullshitr, etc.
Great article Jane. SO true.
I'm both horrified and proud of how well this rant is written, Jane. Honestly, it should be on top of Hacker News - the poor sods creating this mass of Web 2-dot-flybynights should have this as required reading :)
Haven't you heard of 6 hour startups in local Seattle area?
It falls in the same category ....
RAND!
no more hacker news talk - in public
- it has been hiding away for a while now not contaminated with trolls, lets keep it that way
That's all I need: to be informed of which exotic sorts of porn my friends are looking at when they forget to log out of FoxiFly (assuming they actually can log out of FoxiFly).
I won't say that was the first thing to cross my mind, but I'd be lying if I said it was the last.
There is another very common feature of Web 2.0 companies - Online advertising (or Google Adsense) is their business model.
Lot of companies want to make billions of dollars based on $1 CPM :-)
Oh well !!!
Rajat
It's the "Three A's" business plan - AJAX, Adsense and Acquisition (or Arrogance, if you prefer)
The parallels to the first dotcom bubble are quite clear. Last time round the generic business plan was "...... on the internet!" Today's catchphrases are "social network", "AJAX", "mash-up", etc.
It's going to be interesting to see whether the myriad knock-on effects of the worldwide credit crunch impact the VC market sooner or later.
I've been researching some social networks for a project of my own, and have been amazed to find things like 43things.com, which are so abstract that you spend hours on them before you figure out that nothing happened. I don't mean that you didn't accompish anything tangible, but that you actually made no forward progress in any way whatsoever. That site is essentially one big tag cloud that you can endlessly use to link to profiles of people consisting of other tag clouds that you can use to link to yet more lists of tag clouds.
My project is actually intended to help people accomplish something, so of course it will be wildly unpopular and will fail miserably :)
I've seen some of these sites that look like somebody grabbed a template and spent 3 hours tweaking it and called it good enough. They then went off and started on the next one and didn't go back to fix bugs or make improvements.
I've actually been thinking about some Web 2.0 ideas because I'm not happy with what's available in a niche I'm interested in. Just doing a knock off of one of the popular sites but focused on the niche doesn't seem like something I could be proud of though.
Since this post is now well below the fold, I thought I'd let you all know which sickeningly bad web 2.0 description was fake. Most of you (79 at last count) guessed that it was the fourth one. That was a good guess, since the description included such choice phrases as "real-time dashboard on collective thinking" and "ajax, community involvement and a unique building-block model."
Unfortunately, that piece of rubbish is real. The fifth description (which came in a respectable second place) is made up. Your clue was the "intuitive tagging" which made no sense whatsoever.
Congratulations to the forty of you who guessed correctly. In true web 2.0 style, you get nothing for this grand achievement.
Why you would imagine that making no sense whatsoever would have any effect on a journalist, I cannot imagine.
=;¬)
I always assume "intuitive" to be used by intelligent people... hmm food for thought.
Ok, I recently joined this community where you can share books you've read, write reviews of them, see what your friends have read (and what they recommend), etc. Great idea. As I tend to do, though, unless a site / community really catches my attention, I participate for a little while and then kind of forget about it. Well, as it turns out, this site TELLS ON ME when I haven't been there for a period of time. It sends emails to the friends I've listed and alerts them that I haven't been participating. ?? Pretty soon they're going to be using the "I'm not touching you" method of recruiting users...
What?! That's hilarious and ridiculous. Which ad wizard thought up that one?
That might be an instance of another phenomenon you sometimes see: sites implementing awful features simly for the sake of having features no one else has. It doesn't matter that the feature is terrible; it's unique, and that's good enough.
Good point. I bet nobody else is promoting the tattletale feature! It's so annoying that it is kind of hilarious. Something a little more encouraging or enticing would probably get me to go back. Like an email saying, "you'll never BELIEVE what your sister just read!" The curiosity alone would make me log in just to see if I could make fun of her for something. :)
Re: FoxiFly
That's pretty creepy. Can you imagine if they asked "Hey Jane, how's the weather in Sydney today?"! Shudder....:)
Nice column though. Can I call it a column?
Personally, I'm getting a bit tired of emails from business associates that I haven't talked to in three years, asking for my "Trust".
I'm suspicious of anyone that asks for my trust - no less someone I haven't talked to in three years.
It's like they're trying to piss all over my highly evolved, carefully crafted social graph which I've categorized with varying interdependencies of values, visions and ideas. Ya know?
awww.. so if I ask for you "trust (fund)" I have no chance?
@Jane "And I was 16 in 2000, not 7 :)" What a way to give out your age... lol - does that make you 23?
Since you could find that on my profile, I hardly think it's a secret.
lol... just kidding you know...
For you Rishi? Let me simply say - "Check's in the mail?" ;)
As for Polly Pockets, I have a three year old daughter that plays with her and the only reason I still allow it is that I'm hoping the 1 year old Maltese I have that still refuses to be house broken, might accidentally choke on one of the 500 or so little pieces that comes with every $20 set. Somehow I think the VP Product Marketing for Polly Pockets used to work for a jigsaw puzzle company.
On the other hand, this rockin' pink Barbie Doll electric guitar with the whammy bar and plug-in iPOD slot (no kidding), is pretty bad ass!
Please - no responses from the PETA crowd. It was just a joke. Micky is doing just fine. :)
!!! I bet your daughter is cute [I love kids], do you have a photo?
Ann,
Don't you know how dangerous it is to ask a proud dad if he has pictures of his kids?!
As a matter of fact, I do happen to have one off hand. :)
One word: awesome! I won't say anything else [here] just because I am afraid that will change the post subject...
Polly Pockets rule! You can step on the little shoes and not poke a hole in your foot!
Try that with a Megazord....
-OT
This actually a great problem for me. While being a self-educated in tech issues I can't be an expert but most of web design and website development companies I have partnered with have no clue about seo, promotion and usability. Most often those companies and I speak different languages which results in lower product quality and more time spent on it. So often I end up learning about tech issues after the project is launched.
Ann,
I think that the quote you refer to expresses something like this:
"hey, we're really awesome at programming, let's build a web x.0 company and get rich" when it should be more like this: "hey we found a way to create value and make people's lives a lot better, let's find some really smart programmers to implement it."
Clearly you were still playing with the Kiwi version of Polly Pocket (:-) during the last web boom, because this lot of me-too sites was entirely predictable when Facebook became worth a quadrazabillion dollars.
And the really kreppy broken UI, Infrastructure, and Business Models is because the *good* and *experienced* talent is already working somewhere and the VC fueled companies are paying college leavers from second rate Uni's $150K to come work in a "cool environment."
I blame Google, personally, because they've been flooding the tech market wtih money like the Spanish did to Europe in the 15th century with silver.
-OT
They were doing this before Facebook was valued as highly as it is now. I remember these sites begin around long before the eleventy-twelve-dillion-dollar price tag was assigned to the company.
And I was 16 in 2000, not 7 :)
My daughter and our 20 yo babysitter still strew the room with Polly Pocket. Just like my son and I still enjoy a good Mechano session.
Not that there is anything wrong with that. :-)
And, yes, they were here, but Facebook/MySpace/Whatever have been distorting VC values for at least 30 months.
Co-incidentally this is the median gestation period for a do-nothing site when it is created by people who mistake useful for cool.
Next up: sites start to fold and the bankruptcy guys sell our demographics off to telemarketers. Wailing and gnashing to follow.
-OT
Yeah but you looked 7.....
I still remember some of the pitches from the first boom, and standing at booths at tradeshows nodding my head while thinking "Holy crap, are you a moron."
The biggest difference is that the idiotic sites that do nothing in 2008 were a lot cheaper to build than the ones in 1998, so at least we've got less far to fall.
Showing my lack of age once more: What are some examples of the awful pitches you heard during the first boom?
I remember a lot of online video and things having to do with pets (but not actually selling anything). I vaguely remember a company that would help you pick out paint colors that made pets happy or something like that. I could be misremembering. I blocked a lot of it out because of the trauma.
When I retire, I'm going to open up a pet/owner workout center with treadmills for dogs and cats and a juice bar that sells overpriced catnip drinks and gourmet dog pizzas.
Check out the book eBoys for examples of the mad money that was floating around
My biggest frustration is the point where a good social network site becomes violated by commercial intent. Instantly the site becomes a turn off to its intended target market and the site is never the same again. Boo :-(
I assume you don't expect them all to live on ifs & buts?
;)
I guess what I would add is commercialising a network is not in itself a bad thing, it's when it's done in such a way as to alienate the audience.
So, MySpace, despite what everyone has said, seems to have kep it's audience despite increased commercialisation; Facebook on the other hand seems to have annoyed large chunks of theirs.
It's like "were getting 10,000 unique visitors per day, now how do we get paid" ads and adsense don't even pay the rent for many site owners.
Jane, Web 2.0 and Social Networking sites are just "communities". They started in email and progressed to the web via discussion boards then came the technological advancement that enabled (is that better than allows?) the Networks we see now. IMO, I have expected this to go niche as that is seemingly the natural progression judging by the history of "communities" I've observed. Personally, though it's probably seen as heracy to admit it... but... I'm likely the only Canadian not on Facebook. I am a member of LinkedIn only because I don't see it as a place layabouts go to kill the boredom that is their life! So good luck personally if you have to do this they should pay you double it must be brutal work evaluating these sites!
Seems Web 2.0 sites aren't appealing unless everyone else is using them too. With only 2 members currently using FoxiFly right now and over a 3 million Alexa ranking...I'll pass.
Why is a 2008 awards list closing now, or in a matter of days?
There is still more than 98% of 2008 that hasn't yet happened.
Haha, good point! We call them the 2008 awards because that's when they'll be announced, although they are primarily focused on nominations received in the previous year.
Is it possible to find out who all are nominees for this award?
There are over 300 so far, so we'll only release the finalists and the winners.
You're my new favorite person, Jane! I also abhor the word "synergy".
This is capitalism at its best! Thousands of new sites popping up, the crap ones get flushed out by the market, while the best--the ones that provide real value--rise to the top and stick around until something better comes along.
I don't care if there's a thousand junk sites out there as long as I get a few that make my life better.
You're right - my frustration is simlpy because I've been dealing with those that haven't yet been flushed!
Without wishing to get into an indepth debate on the merits of unfettered capitalism, I'd have to strongly disagree with your statement.
As the first dotcom bubble showed, this isn't something that happens in isolation. Ridiculous valuations lead investors to pump money into companies with no future.
Now this might not be such a problem if the money they were investing were their own - the problem lies in the fact that much of it will be from pension funds; so when those companies crash, the funds suddenly realise that they can't actually pay the pensions they were set up to fund.
Whilst it may seem like a long time ago now the effects of the first bubble, and its crash, lived on for quite some time and had a much wider impact than your comment suggests.
I'll happily admit that the impetus to understand what will & won't work should lie with the investors, but having so many crappy "me 2.0" sites doesn't help matters.