Opinion: Dissecting the Web 2.0 collage and categorizing the random sample of Web 2.0 companies therein reveals some interesting trends and business plans.
Have you seen the Web 2.0 logo map? It's an image of about 200 "Web 2.0" company and product logos created by a Flickr user named Stabilo Boss. It appeared on several prominent sites last week, galvanizing that type of fleeting linkfest attention on which the ADD-powered blogosphere thrives.
Of course, everybody loves a good logo. If logos were candy, they'd be labeled "fun size." They're the tasty snack of design.
The companies and products on the logo map were typed out and linked on the Digg Watch Blog[1], and that created an opportunity to analyze exactly what kinds of companies make up Web 2.0. Pretty much everybody agrees that Web 2.0 is an amorphous, ephemeral term. It's like the generation X of software. It has an easily digestible name that sounds cool, but nobody's really sure what it is or if they belong to it.
So as an exercise in contextual assistance, I created a spreadsheet and categorized the companies on the map by type of business. My goal was to understand which type of business/product was most prevalent in a relatively random distribution. (Click the graph image for the data.) I say "relatively" because there doesn't seem to be an easily accessible directory of all Web 2.0 companies from which to cull a truly random sample. Since the logo map was a recognizable and graphic representation, I chose to use that instead.[2]
Before we get to the results, a few explanations, caveats, dislaimers, and qualifications.
1. I didn't include every company on the map. Some of the companies' Web sites no longer work. Some of the companies/products are still in stealth and I have no idea what they do.[3]
2. Mobile applications and technologies are severly underpresented on the logo map and in my derivative graphs.
3. I categorized the companies using my intuition, guided by this post by Dion Hinchcliffe and sometimes by Techcrunch. It's an inexact science. For example, I categorized theadcloud as "social tagging" instead of "advertising network." If you take issue with any categorizations, I invite you to download the Excel data and roll your own (see instructions below). Please let me know if you do, as I'd like to keep track of contributions on the Intermedia blog.
One difficulty when categorizing these companies is that many of them share features (RSS, tagging, bookmarking, etc.), and it's sometime an intuitive guess as to which category to put them. Some of you might be saying, well duh, Web 2.0 is all about fuzzy boundaries, value at the edges, an existential quandary of code that defies the spartan categories of old media. Oh, the the unbearable mashup of being!
But features, as it has oft been noted, are not business plans. And a business plan should be more than a Mendelan crossbreed of preexisting feature alleles. Otherwise, if features are the point, some enterprising code jockey should develop a program that randomly combines features until it evolves, in a Danny Hillis genetic software kind of way, into the penultimate feature mashup. Then we can call that product SkyNet.
No, the applications that will achieve widespread success will speak to a specific need. They must offer one part technology, one part UI, and one part contextual metaphor. The latter quality is that which speaks to a specific target demographic.
Anyway, you can download the Excel file here (registration required). Or, search by tag on numsum for "publishweb20." If you have feedback, leave it on the blog.
Next Page: What does the data tell us?
There's a lot to say about the data, but not enough space and time to say it. If you have additional observations, please leave a comment on the blog.
1. Search engines abound. This is data taken from one man's logo map, and that man may have a search fetish. But I think we can also safely conclude that the Web has a search fetish too, and that "search-ish" products are the most popular.
2. Media sharing (YouTube, AllPeers), Peer Production News (Newsvine, Backfence), Social Bookmarking (del.icio.us, clipmarks), and Photo sites (flickr, ShoZu) are also popular. Like search, these categories speak to the universal need for context and knowledge, while photo sites are appealing because, well, everybody has a digital camera. The former three categories make use of preexisting, distributed information. They're derivative services that add substantial value. Whereas search relies on a critical mass of data, all four of these categories rely on a critical mass of users and contributors.
Media Sharing and Social Bookmarking are very reliant on the method and ease of sharing. I don't see much room for added value beyond the social sharing functions. Products like Clipmarks and Shadows seem to offer ancillary features with diminishing returns to scale. Peer Production News relies on the quality of user-generated content.
3. Collaboration software (Writely, Zimbra) and Calendars (30boxes, CalendarHub) are hot markets. These are very appealing products to the SMB market, which is 72 million businesses strong in the United States alone, according to research firm IDC.
4. Start Pages (Pageflakes, Netvibes) and Storage (Strongspace, allmydata) are simple components of the "Web as platform" idea. The business model for start pages is probably advertising (surprise!) through RSS feeds and such. Goowy's looking good as the most robust of these, and it's a product that's looking forward by betting on rich media future. The others, while efective at what they do, are simply capitalizing on current business conditions.
5. The unknowns annoy me. I kept this category in because it's a great illustration of how a significant component of Web 2.0 is based on hype. The four companies that I put in the unknown category are Flagr, Dabble, Ookles and Squishr. Flagr, Dabble, Ookles and Squishr? It's the phonetic equivalent of Teletubby speak.
6. There are quite a few betas and alphas, though fully-released products dominate. Interestingly enough, I see only one storage site that is in beta. That, to me, is an indication of how the term beta is often used as a crutch. If people need to be able to depend on your product, you'll make sure it's not in beta.
There are many more conclusions to draw from this simple exercise in Web 2.0 categorization. If nothing else, it shold give you a sense of online proprioception, or the knowledge of where your interests are in space.
There are several possibilities for slicing the data: What percentage of these companies have funding? What percentage have been acquired? What's the predominant business plan? What's the precentage of feature overlap?
Finally, what percentage of company names end in the letter "r"?
I invite you to leave comments on the Intermedia blog.
Steve Bryant is the editor of Publish.com and also writes for the Intermedia blog and Googlewatch. He can be reached at stephen_bryant@ziffdavis.com.
[1] The meta concept fascinates me. Here's a blog that tracks developments on a user-generated site, which itself tracks developments on the Web. How many levels of meta are there? It reminds me the infinite regression myth.
[2] Another lesson to be gleaned from this process is that the fledgling Web industry doesn't benefit from the type of rigorous scientific and business analysis that more established industries do. While many online entrepeneurs are capable businessmen and experienced veterans in the software industry, I have the suspicion that when it comes to online business plans, everyboy's still shooting in the dark. Or, in other words, don't use this article as reference when you're presenting a business plan to a VC.
[3] The prevalence of stealth companies alone is a lesson in the hype level of Web 2.0. If your company can be linked on every significant news site that covers Web technologies and you haven't released code bit one, it's either a comment on the power of your idea, the power of your marketing, or the poor news judgement of the sites on which you're mentioned. Probably a combination of all three.
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