Every morning, our RSS newsreader would tell us about a dozen startups that were launched the previous night.
We (bloggers or the early tech adapters) will most often join the mad race to try that "groundbreaking and earth-shattering" product within hours of launch, compare it with existing products and blog that information ASAP with catchy headlines so that our "blog post" gains some visibility in the blogging world.
But can this phenomenon continue for long ? Won't people (our site visitors) get bored of trying new products or migrating from one to another just because the latter has some new features or a better interface?
Some popular veteran bloggers are feeling tired of this massive "Web 2.0 construction boom" - some thoughts:
Steve Rubel is overwhelmed by number of new Web 2.0 companies that spawn each day:
Techcrunch, Scobleizer and Mashable leave me all breathless. It's like watching the cranes of Dubai rise.
Circa 1998, perhaps when many of you were 10, The Globe.com, GeoCities and Tripod were all the rage. They faded from our horizon over time. The same thing will happen to many of today's hot sites...
These days, I am far more interested in what people do with technology rather than on what the latest new "shiny object" is.
Dave Slusher dropped some top blog from his daily radar because "he got so tired of hearing about another slightly different way of doing what we were already doing and why that tiny difference was worth dropping everything and moving over." [hint: Twitter, Pawnce, Jaiku, FaceBook]
People ask me why I’m not on FaceBook since that’s the cool, hot thing. That’s precisely why I am not. I’m not interested in coolness or hotness. I am interested in friends, true friends that matter to me and that miss me when they don’t see me for a long time. I’m uninterested in virtual friends..
Life is short and true friends that will go to the mat for you are scarce. The energy spent in chasing some sort of glorious future from service to service is friction in my life, not any sort of addition.
Jeremy Zawodny has already got off the "Web 2.0 hype treadmill" and feels better after doing so:
I made an conscious decision to drop virtually all "news" sources from my subscription list that felt like breathless hype machines that provided little new insight.
My mental state improved quite a bit after that. I see to many people I know getting caught up in the breathless hype and forgetting to think about whether the latest shiny new thing really matters in the grand scheme of things.
Breaking News - too much sensation but little content
Find this article at: http://labnol.blogspot.com/2007/07/loads-of-people-are-feeling-web-20.html
web: http://www.labnol.org/ email: amit@labnol.org
Reader Comments
What do you think? Especially regarding India specific Web 2.0 startups (say tolmolbol)? I see a lot of activity around me at BITS Pilani.
I remain skeptical, though
Written on 21/7/07 12:51 AM
Funny you should write this post as I delete a number of RSS feeds, would you believe one being the famous Techcrunch.
The reason I just do not have the time to read all their posts, do I really need to know the latest gadget etc etc.
So I have deleted many feeds, and kept just a few outside of my industry. I kept yours because because I like the mix and it isn't over kill.
Need I say more?
Written on 27/7/07 2:48 AM
Well, I've not gotten to the point of cancelling my subscription to Techcrunch yet.... but have just deleted their 10 last messages in a bunch without even scanning them... back from a short break "away from it all", I guess I'd better learn to live without hearing from the coolest sites in the last two weeks!
Looks like learning what to take and what to ignore is one of the most valuable skills online!
Gladys
Written on 31/7/07 12:36 AM