Web 2.0 and the Wild West
More than anything else, I think that Web 2.0 encapsulates the dawning realization that there is still money in the Internet. During the first dot com boom, the Internet was fun because suddenly everyone and their uncle could make money online. It was sort of a wild west meets low-capital capitalism, and this is happening again. Google has proved that web based advertising is big business, Million Dollar Homepage spawned a million copycats, and everyone wants to make the next del.icio.us.
However, and this is part of what makes Web 2.0 exciting, due to the low-capital nature of creating a web company, it is very difficult to stay on top. Without a true technological advantage, or a physical product, it seems like anyone can simply form a startup with two friends in their garage and displace giants. Granted, this almost certainly isn’t true, but this perception leads to the rise of 20 copycat sites for every successful business. Likewise, for every good idea, there are 10 different renditions of it coming out in beta every week. Only one or two of those are actually going to succeed. It’s crazy, capitalistic, scheming, wild west fun, and it seems to be back. But for how long?