As I have all my life, I’m constantly scanning to discover new ways of doing old things. Disruptive developments. Paradigm shifts. Trying to always see things that others don’t and/or are missing. Mentally taking developments from one area and mixing them with those from another. Kind of a mental mashup I guess and from that spring forth new ideas and methods.
During this scanning and consideration process, I archive mentally the possibilities and from that come new stuff. That’s why when I sit with friends, clients or colleagues who are wrestling with business or organizational problems, I’m able to reach inside my mental solutions bag and pull out things that might help them fix them.
This is what I do with what is happening with Web 2.0, mashups and the shift occurring as we all move in to the next phase of the internet as a platform. I came across the logo explosion graphic on Boing Boing that a guy, Ludwig Gatzke, in Germany had put together and thought I’d put up my own, archived list-o’-lists to go along with it.
If you’ve got a couple of spare hours to click around and look at Web 2.0-ish companies (or use this as a reference going forward), have I got some lists for you:
- UPDATE: Just came across this one (via Scoble) at Sacred Cow Dung @ 8:32pm today and it’s now my new favorite list
Myabsolutefavoritelist at eConsultant because it’s categorized
- Emily Chang’s eHub. This is my
secondthird favorite compilation (more robust than my #1 but I like clean, quick, directories like eConsultant’s). Her list is unique since she and her Ideacodes cohorts interview several of the Web 2.0 company leaders and deliver writeups about their respective value propositions
- Dion Hinchcliffe’s fabulous Web 2.0 blog and this list of the best of 2005 and his more great Web 2.0 software page
- Virtual Karma’s The Complete List of Web 2.0 Applications (ahm…complete list? I don’t think so)
- Listable’s Complete List of Web 2.0 Applications (ahm…another one?)
- List of Web 2.0 betas to sign up for and try out
- Business 2.0′s The Next Net 25. 25 Startups that are Reinventing the Web
- ZDNet’s Best of Breed in Web 2.0 applications
- Programmable Web’s List of Mashups
- Are you a developer? Here’s a list of the Web-based API’s to leverage and build your own mashups
- Technorati’s Explore categorization let’s you easily and quickly find blogger’s writing about Web 2.0 and have tagged their post as such
- Web 2.0 is a joke? Here’s a list of parody sites.
After you go through many of these, you’ll have a deeper appreciation for my post called, Too many "Web 2.0" value propositions. How many calendars, social bookmarking, search, tagging and other like offerings does the Web need? How can each get their respective value props even looked at, let alone buzz built?
I’ve noticed that there are a handful of bloggers — the most noticeable being Mike Arrington’s TechCrunch (which ironically is down this morning) — who announce new sites and have become the equivalent of PR for Web 2.0 startups.
One other thing: what if the moniker "Web 2.0" falls completely out of favor? (It’s pretty un-cool now). I’ve renamed my Web 2.0 category FutureWeb since I didn’t like the 2.0 descriptor myself. But nextgen internet is good, Next Net, Joe Schmedlap’s Pretty Good New Web, whatever. The point is that — just like a good startup — it would be good if one of the lists above became THE place to go to see what was new.
UPDATE April 30th: Another new site debuted that is YAACW20 (yet another attempt at categorizing Web 2.0) but is pretty terrific.
Steve’s Social Stuff