They say one year of a man worth seven years in a dog life. I wonder how many years it worth in a Web 2.0 start up life? ten? twenty?
I left my job and went on my start up adventure almost 7 months ago, but for me it looks like a all life time already. All I can say is that I'm happy I had enough friends who already took this journey, so I was actually fully packed and ready for the road.
Jason Calacanis blogged about how people forget that the all social news/search field is quite new, and it will take a few more years until the masses will understand it and adopt it.
The point is actually very relevant to a lot of other Web 2.0 technologies out there.
We that live inside this bubble, the ones who read Techcrunch, Mashable and Engadget every day, tend to forget that most of the people living with us on the planet don't adapt to changes so fast.
Think about the Internet 10 months ago and the Internet today. It's amazing to see how many things has changed in this time. Suddenly video is everywhere, wireless and 3G are again the hot stuff, Kazza is out and free legal TV on the web is on. The old media companies are still "dead" but now also the "old" traditional news sites are yesterday story. If you don't have a MySpace account you probably came from Mars and the best way to correspond with your grandmother is via IM and Flickr.
This is how we, the bubble guys, see the world. And we sometimes forget that most people don't wear the same "reality glasses" we use.
We already decide which are the companies that will survive and which are the ones that will go down, even when the company is just six months old and the market itself is here for less than a year. When the true mass of the population will adapt the new technologies and services, it will be a completely new ball game.
There will be much more room for more competition.
There will be much more room for variation.
Think for example on the all concept of social networking and communities. Today, hot is more. More users. More features. More gadgets. People want to be part of the largest communities. But in order to learn on the future, we must all look into the past. Look at how life and communities evolved in the real world.
Does big is always the best option? Well... sometimes. But other times people are actually looking for just the opposite. They are on the look for a warm, close, small community. Where they can learn to know everyone, where they can feel "at home". People are leaving the big cities with all the commotion and go to the suburbs. To the more quite life.
Are we going to see the same trend also on the web?
Think of it also in economical terms. What do you think is easier to monetize. A huge group of changing, different people or a smaller, more focused group? Where will you get the best CPM?
No. I'm not saying MySpace and Xanga will go down. I'm just saying that we will probably see much more space for more niche sites. As in the real world. We will always have Wall Mart, but we will also have our small grocery store.
Finally, we must all remember that as our world has changed so much in the last year, it can also change again in the next one. We all still got a chance to find our spot in the Web 2.0 world.
