There’s a problem in Web 2.0 land. It’s fabulous that hundreds of startups are coming online trying to disrupt status quo companies, make the inefficient, efficient, and giving us all great services, but too many of them classify themselves as “beta” meaning that they get to work out all their bugs publicly and on our backs.
I’m the only guy I know who has looked at *every* Web 2.0 company once per quarter for the last six quarters. I usually spend only a few minutes at each site, but I’ll take a category and look at each offering to see if something is new, are they articulating their value proposition well, and is this an offering that makes sense for me, my clients, or anyone else for that matter.
There are dozens of Web 2.0 offerings that I love, use, and can see the long term potential of going forward. But deciding on what to try, what to use, how much effort and energy to infuse in one of them is, unfortunately, a crapshoot and THAT is the problem in Web 2.0 land. Most of these are ones I wouldn’t bet my business on nor recommend others do either.
I’ve chosen several offerings over the last couple of years that, for one reason or another, have disappointed my friends, my clients, or myself as they’ve been acquired, had bugs that meant they don’t work all that well, or have gone out of business altogether.
I’ll give you three examples:
Steve’s Social Stuff