Steve Rubel has written a post bemoaning the lack of innovative Web products these days:
"...I miss the days of 2004 when the class that includes Flickr, del.icio.us and others started. They really were about changing the web, not making a quick buck (they did so only because they added value). There are companies still out there like them. Twitter is one I believe takes this approach. Automattic (the company behind Wordpress) appears to be another. Dave Winer also shares this spirt. He creates services like NYTimes River because it's fun and he thinks it will add value to our lives (and he is right).
However, most of the rest of today's net startups are only after the almighty dollar and while that's capitalism, it saddens me because it has done little but breed hubris."
Emphasis ours
It'd be easy to agree with Steve on this. Indeed in my wrapup of the recent Web 2.0 Summit, I said it was 'steady as she goes' and lacking in innovative startups. Other than the semantic apps that presented at the Summit, there was little evidence of disruptive technologies. It was still a well-organized and enjoyable conference, but the cutting edge was absent.
And from a web product perspective, 2007 hasn't seen a lot of innovative startups in comparison to 2004-06. Twitter, which Steve mentioned, is one - albeit it is still extremely niche and no mainstream people I know use it.
But even considering the Web 2.0 Summit and 2007 so far, I'm inclined to disagree with Steve that the Web is being over-run by "the almighty dollar". There is innovation happening - and enjoyment. The Mobile 2.0 Conference I attended recently in San Francisco showed me there's a lot of innovative technology happening in the Mobile Web space. The shift to the Web of many big companies is also exciting (as is the experimentation with desktop technologies by online organizations). Partnerships are happening between web 2.0 startups and big tech companies. Social networks are showing signs of truly opening up (although slowly). Semantic apps are set to go mainstream. Utility computing is coming in a big way. Alternative search engines are nipping at Google's heels. There are opportunities for entrepreneurs in Attention, Intention and VRM businesses. Use of the Web for environmental and non-profit purposes is at an all-time high.
I could go on and on, but my point is that the Web is still changing - despite the seeming lack of new innovative startups (maybe we as bloggers just aren't uncovering enough of them?) and the 'steady as she goes' Web conferences. So I do push back on Steve's post in that respect. There's a lot of change happening on the Web; actually that is what Read/WriteWeb is all about, documenting and covering that change.
But tell us what you think, in the poll below. Are we, collectively as startups, organizations and media, still changing the Web? Also, please use the comments below to list startups or initiatives that you think are changing the Web.
Image: Brouhaha (Jonathan)
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The last 8-12 months have been a little barren for real game changing services, but there is a huge amount of possibility out there ripe for the taking, particularly ref. the area of personalisation, preferences and advertising.
There will also be the move of long form content to online delivery which will render broadcast TV obsolete, although that, perhaps, is 12-24 months off.
Watch this space over the next couple of months. ;)
Posted by: Jack | October 30, 2007 5:41 AMI think you'll find it's a cyclical movement. First innovation, then lots and lots of replication, then people get tired of the status quo and write blog-articles about it, then innovation, then replication, and then the blog-articles again.
Posted by: Vincent van Wylick | October 30, 2007 5:44 AMIts much harder to see innovation now not so much because there are more people trying to do things, but because of the previous successes, people are looking closer for things to happen. It's similar to saying "a watched pot never boils." Except in this case, the bar has been raised as to what one thinks innovation is, and from there everything is judged.
I made a post published in the latest Carnival of the Mobilists that said that (to the effect) that its not innovation that is missing, but relevance. All of the various web/mobile app/services are great, but innovation is something that shakes up the status quo because its relevant. The services mentioned in the posting were innovative not because they did something new, but because they were relevant. If the web/mobile 2.0 would focus more on relevant applications and services, I am sure that innovation would be a lot easier to see, and much easier to measure.
Posted by: Antoine of MMM/Brighthand | October 30, 2007 6:10 AMI think we're going to see a bigger push in the enterprise... innovation has largely been consumer based at this point.
Posted by: Robert | October 30, 2007 7:14 AMMy problem was NEVER innovation but the lack of connections and resources.
I am dying to get my ideas out there but I lack the full capacity to do so.
Apart from this I have a feeling that we will see more innovation from Google in the social network area pretty soon.
Posted by: Rune | October 30, 2007 8:35 AMI think the hubris might be that these big changes have to some out of some conference at all. The world of press releases, funding, and conferences can get pretty myopic, everybody's reporting on the same things every day.
Anyway, I'm sure Steve is just blissfully unaware of the crass necessity of money, good for him.
Posted by: Morgan | October 30, 2007 8:37 AMAs a side note, I'd say Prosper and services like that are far more 'disruptive' than Delicious. Not in a technical sense, but in terms of things that actually change businesses and lives and investment.
Anyway, there are always pessimists or naysayers, and in the meantime there are always people who don't have time to listen to them, because they are making it.
Posted by: Morgan | October 30, 2007 8:42 AMeveryone need more advice to improve & this points will make them change..
Posted by: Steps To Success | October 30, 2007 8:43 AMRichard,
I vote for others because I think that web innovation has its cycle. When we just passed a mountain, there is a valley. But we cannot say that there are no more mountains in the front.
The Web continuously evolves. Some innovations are easy to be viewed by the public; others are not. So it does not matter whether or not at present we have more innovations than before. In a long-term period, we can always see that web innovations never stop, and we always change the Web.
-- Yihong
Posted by: Yihong Ding | October 30, 2007 8:57 AMI see a lot of innovation happening at the edge of the web. The core seems to be going through a consolidation phase, but there are a lot of areas connecting to the web for the first time.
The new area of manufacturing as a service is starting to gain traction. The integration of networked processing, personalization, and physical production opens up entirely new possibilities in physical goods.
Integration with physical location is another area seeing explosive potential as technology catches up with the vision.
While the core may seem a bit frothy, there are vital new spaces around it composed of companies that are just as much built on the web, but vastly expanding it's reach.
Posted by: Justin | October 30, 2007 10:43 AMA while back I was reading a post about a new storage service launch. Numerous folks who claimed to be entrepreneurs commented "I'd never trust my data to a startup! I'm sticking with Amazon."
There's innovation out there, but it's getting harder for startups to communicate.
Posted by: Bert Armijo | October 30, 2007 11:22 AMMorgan above said: "there are always pessimists or naysayers... and there are always people who don't have time to listen to them, because they are making it."
Amen to that.
Posted by: RBA | October 30, 2007 4:39 PMAgree with Justin's comment above...I think at the moment and for a little while (especially outside the States) the innovation that is happening around the Web and particularly Web 2.0 is not so much applications but the way companies, society and business is innovating in order to use what is available (and as yet only used by a small minority). I think there is still a lot of innovation needed to give companies a fuller perspective on the potential the Web still has.
Posted by: Caroline | October 30, 2007 5:17 PMI also disagree with Steve about "chasing after the almighty dollar". I think its wrong to assume that some how everything can be 'free' in a monetary sense on the web. Where else on the planet is everything free?
We are using the web to solve 'non-web' problems in a product called Poll Everywhere (http://www.polleverywhere.com/). Yes, we charge for people to use our service because otherwise we would be losing money (Business 101!); however, I will say that our solution challenges the traditional hardware voting vendors and their multi-thousand dollar systems in a sensical, economical way. While not innovative in the same sense as Google, Flickr, or Delicious; it is certainly an innovative approach to the Audience Response System market and brings down the cost of audience participation.
I think Steve is trying to get out the rush of clones that hit the web after something mildly successful comes out. Look at YouTube and all of the clones that spawned!
I feel like part of the web will start looking like today's small, niche ISV's like Panic. Software development will move from the factories back to the craftsman!
Posted by: Brad Gessler | October 31, 2007 9:19 AMYes, the clones are out there, but they've always been there. Was etoys or furniture.com really new? Of course not, they were simply taking advantage of cheap VC money to copy Amazon.
And this is an important point because clones make it more difficult for real innovators. Any new market or audience is immediately fragmented by the presence of clones and thus it's harder to get to sustainability as a company.
Perhaps that's why we see a rush to cash out?
Posted by: Bert Armijo | October 31, 2007 4:29 PMYou should do a proper real-time poll of the world on ask500.com
I'm interested to see what the non-geek community has to say about this...
Posted by: Joe Philipson | November 5, 2007 3:28 PM