The Next Bubble
This whole Web2 thing seems to be headed to be the next big bubble. I suspect it //will// burst at some point, but its too early to speculate why or how or when — for that matter, it might never actually burst, or it might just be subsumed by a greater, bigger, deeper Web3.0 thats still mostly in people’s heads.
Anyhow, what //does// bother me that is how quickly people are catching onto the Web2 bandwagon. While this is good, it is useful only if each new entry adds some innovation and value to the whole. However, right now it doesn’t look like that. Many people are coming up with the same ideas, at about the same time and with about the same functionality. Let me give a few examples:
* Calendars: [[http://planzo.com/|planzo]], [[http://kiko.com]]
* Events: [[http://upcoming.org/|Upcoming]], [[http://eventful.com/|Eventful]]
* Web based email (redux): [[http://zimbra.com/|Zimbra]], [[http://roundcube.net|RoundCube]]
* Groupware (redux): [[http://joyent.com|Joyent]], [[http://renkoo.com|Renkoo]]
* Social bookmarks: [[http://furl.net|Furl]], [[http://del.icio.us]], [[http://del.irio.us]]
* Democratized News: [[http://digg.com|Digg]], [[http://reddit.com|Reddit]], [[http://shoutwire.com|Shoutwire]]
And there are many such more (feed readers, todo list managers etc)
Now it would be foolish for me to claim that having choices is bad (infact, quite a few people would abuse me for the rest of my life if I said something like that, because I often use that argument in favor of Linux). It might just be the case that since all this is so new, people are just getting started with the same kinds of things — extensions of applications we already use and love (email, bookmarks, calendars). But somehow I get the feel that while we’re all really excited about the technology, very few people really have a good idea of what its capable of and what kind of **new** and **innovative** applications can come out of it.
Nonetheless, exciting times! Every other day I think about leaving all this and starting my own :-)