Convergence

Web 2.0 and the Future of Pervasive Computing

Wednesday, January 25, 2006

Correction on Previous Post

On one of my earlier posts, I mistakenly put up a screenshot of an excel table that had listed the Skype acquisition as occuring in 2003. Clearly that is not the case. I think I made a formatting error on the dates when I was writing up the list. Cursed Excel. Anyhoo...I will fix it ASAP and repost that data. Cheers!

Chuck Norris Rocks Web 2.0

Ok, not really...but this is funny as hell and I cannot in good faith not share this with my fellow geeks online. Enjoy!



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Friday, January 20, 2006

20 Web 2.0 Company Acquisitions and 10 Acquisitions to Watch Out For in 2006

Hola fanboys. I apologize for my somewhat extended hiatus from the blog-o-sphere. Our little stealth-mode project at Clearspring is growing fast and we have been navigating our way through a slew of investor requests in order to find the right partner. Thankfully, we are almost done because I am one tired Hoo. More on that later. But for now, on with the show!

I was recently asked if I had a list of Web 2.0-related acquisitions. As I did not, I took it upon myself to do a bit of exploring and come up with a list of 20 Web 2.0 Acquisitions that I decided might be fun to check out for some of you web-heads out there.



















I also compiled a list of 10 Web 2.0 Companies that are rumored to be hot acquisition targets in 2006. Let me know your thoughts. That's all for this web-slinger. Back to work.
  1. YouTube
  2. Technorati
  3. Facebook
  4. Riya
  5. Feedster
  6. Digg
  7. Feedburner
  8. Pandora
  9. Last.fm
  10. 37 Signals
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Wednesday, January 04, 2006

Why MySpace?

Once upon a time, the world was buzzing about social networks. Ironically, this was back in my graduate school days where I was conducting research at Carnegie Mellon in the area. Entrepreneurs and VCs rushed to introduce a flurry of "social network" services with promises to connect people around the world. Names like Friendster and Tribe were touted as holding the keys to the future of the web. Many services seemed to grow substantial user bases overnight. The online community was excited. Things looked good.

However, like most new things, the novelty soon wore off. People grew tired of trying to maintain 3-4 different networks. "Connecting for the sake of connecting" was no longer good enough and public interest seemed to fade as copy-cat services ran rampant on the web. Many services just could not cross the proverbial "chasm."

One service, however, has seemed to stand apart from the rest. This social network service not only has managed to capture the spotlight, but also has managed to accomplish the unthinkable-capture the consistent attention of users. What service is this do you ask? MySpace. Founded by Chris DeWolfe and Tom Anderson, this service has quickly become one of the hottest properties on the web. In case you were on another planet for the last couple months, MySpace was acquired to the tune of $580M by Rupert Murdoch's media monster, News Corp. Where did this service succeed where others did not?

Like other services in this category, MySpace allowed users to publish personal profiles and connect to friends. Unlike other services facilitating the creation of social networks, however, MySpace transformed the social network into an actionable mechanism to facilitate communication. Once you found new friends, you could instantly see if they were online and start to communicate using an instant messaging service right away. Thus, the network provided people with a mechanism not only to find people, but also a novel mechanism to enhance communication. This subtle differentiator, coupled with their ability to cater to up and coming musicians proved to be an absolutely magical formula. Teens and young adults alike soon found themselves spending hours "stalking" people on MySpace.

The lesson here is that the key to success in any social service is to make the network actionable. Leveraging a social network to enhance existing services such as communication, finding new music, and sharing files can be extremely powerful. However, creating a network for the sake of having a network will probably leave you with what some other folks are now stuck trying to figure out what to do with - a whole bunch of nothing.

The idea of social networking software has evolved significantly over the years. Although there has been tremendous progress in this space, we have only begun to scratch the surface of the power of social software. As I had mentioned on David Hornik's Ventureblog, social networks in their present incarnation are anything but "social." Contact information is fragmented and trapped within the bounds and context of a particular service. There is not consistent social network across services. Hopefully, you will see some progress on this front soon.

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