Yesterday I received an email from Paul Freet, founder and CEO of BigContacts. Since it was a generic "I thought you’d be interested in this since you have written about stuff like this before" email, I was going to instantly delete it. Instead, I wrote him back a hopefully productive email explaining why I thought generic ones like his didn’t work and, in fact, usually backfired with bloggers.

That got us into an email dialogue about the challenges in getting noticed and I share his pain with my clients as well as my bride’s business. As more and more people are connected via the ‘net, the noise has already become deafening and getting noticed is harder than ever.

I’m probably the only person I know that’s gone to every Web 2.0 company (see Lists of Web 2.0 Lists here) at least once per quarter for the last five quarters. I’ve learned how Web 2.0 companies should tell a value proposition story in 15 seconds (the time it takes to absorb it on the home page); who has updated their offering adding more value or starting to charge for it; the offerings that are features…not companies; which ones have failed (they’re offline though still in the directories); and how much incredible value is just laying there waiting to be discovered.

Paul’s offering is very robust and is something you should go take a peek at right now. There is a fully populated demo so you can try it.

Part of our dialogue included a statement on how bummed I am that there is so much incredible value in Web 2.0-land and almost no one that I talk to — especially with great needs that could be solved by Paul’s solution and dozens of others in many categories — has any clue they even exist!

The answer isn’t Techcrunch since "buyers" don’t go there (and especially in light of this post by Mike). I’ve been noodling over what is needed to match demand (since users don’t even know stuff exists) with the solutions providers. If you’ve seen any nouveau sales or distribution model out there for Web 2.0 companies, I’m really interested.