Top Ten Underserved Web 2.0 Markets
Recently I posted a meta-list of Web 2.0 lists. My current favorite list is the eConsultant's Web 2.0 Directory. It has "1007 Web 2.0 sites/services/links in 50+ categories". Sacred Cow Dung's is another easily-scannable catagorized list. As I scrolled through these lists today, I wondered which categories are currently underserved by products/services... We all know there are tons of social networking sites, photo services, online calendars, etc - a new contender in any of those popular categories seems to come into my inbox every second day. Frankly the world probably doesn't need yet another blog search or photo-sharing service.
So what market segments are in need of more products to fill them out? Here are ten I identified from eConsultant's list, but I'm keen to get your feedback on this. Of course I chose ten because that gives me the chance to do a 'top ten' post, a la Guy Kawasaki ;-) In no particular order, here they are:
- Community-building services - overlaps with local; examples: craigslist, backfence, Oodle. There is a lot more that can be done to bring local communities into the 2.0 digital lifestyle.
- Cooperative Distribution Services - e.g. BitTorrent; I'm no expert on P2P, but 3 products listed in eConsultant seems a little light to me.
- Financial Services - has plenty of contenders, but I read/hear hardly any buzz about them in the blogosphere; if you're talking about 'real world' needs, finances is right near the top of the list (as opposed to blogging, organizing photos, etc)
- Game Services - only 9 are listed in eConsultant...
- Grassroots Services - community and charity projects; there are some excellent services already (KatrinaList, OurMedia, etc), but again seems like a lot more could be done. You could also include Non-profit services with this.
- Mobile services - already has plenty of contenders, but I'm including it because mobile is undoubtedly going to be a growth segment as the mobile Internet matures.
- Project Management Services - even though Basecamp has seemingly a lock on this market, I'd like to see more such products from other companies. Indeed I'd like to see more innovative Web Office solutions in general - web-based office apps that really push the envelope. Like Zimbra, JotSpot Tracker, Morfik.
- Publishing Services - publishing as in paper or e-books... now this is really a market I'd like to see others enter; Lulu.com is my current favorite. e.g. how about a service that lets people create their own PDF books or reports and charge for them on a website (a la the 37Signals book)?
- Streaming Services - i.e. Online media/music/video streaming services; this media market looks ripe for growth.
- Wi-Fi Services - only two listed in eConsultant so far.
Those are my initial selections, but interested to hear some feedback about what web 2.0 markets you think are underserved - and perhaps under-hyped (yes there is such a thing).
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I'd put in a vote for "Graphics Generation Services".
Basically, a service that would allow creating professional web graphics online (like simple buttons, banners, logos, etc.). There are a few tools out there, but nothing that is really usable for professional websites.
In fact, the first such feature could be the creation of "Web 2.0" logos for all these new startups.
Posted by: Dharmesh Shah | May 23, 2006 9:50 PM
Personal identity management services (different from Identity 2.0). If Google's results for our names are going to still be there in 5, 10, or 20 years, we've got to start thinking of ways to help people approach this situation. There's 75 million MySpace users that are spreading their identity out online (and will eventually have to think about an employer Googling them) - the market is enormous.
Disclosure - I'm working on a project along these lines.
Posted by: Fred Stutzman | May 23, 2006 10:06 PM
I know it is dorky, but I would add gardening. I would love to have something like LibraryThing where I can document and share bits and pieces of my garden.
Posted by: Lisa | May 23, 2006 11:18 PM
Think about something combined from "community + automation + TV". last two are the main keywords!
Posted by: Rich DG | May 24, 2006 5:45 AM
There probably is something like this, but I haven't located it yet: a book recommendation engine similar to the movie recommendation engines run by Yahoo!Movies and netflix and filmaffinity and even movielens.org. There are book/media cataloguing sites (LibraryThing, lib.rario.us, Listal, etc.) and recommendation sites like whatshouldireadnext.com and storycode.com that give recommendations based on a single book, but I have yet to find a site that aggregates a user's ratings and recommends books based on ALL their ratings, and has a fun and easy to use interface that makes rating and adding to lists easy. Amazon does recommendations like this, but it gets waterlogged by having so many different editions of books (and lib.rario.us and Listal all share this, because they feed from Amazon). It seems like I find a new movie rating/recommendation engine every week or so, and I can't believe someone hasn't done the same thing for books.
Posted by: Jandy | May 24, 2006 7:38 AM
Depending on how you'd like to define 'financial services' there are a couple of accounting solutions out there - Twinfield and Winweb - both offer XML integration. Also ebdex - document exchange (just getting going).
Posted by: Dennis Howlett | May 24, 2006 7:50 AM
If I only could make the time to put some of these ideas/needs into action. When I see a list like this, I just want to drop everything and start planning, designing and building.
Posted by: Geof Harries | May 24, 2006 9:32 AM
Interesting that CRM isn't even listed as a category at eConsultants.
I seem to remember that 37s has a CRM-ish app in development, and could it be that there are no other Web 2.0 alternatives?
Posted by: Patrick Smith | May 24, 2006 10:06 AM
Per the first bullet on the list, please let me know what you think of http://mybloglog.com/buzz It's a bit primitive thusfar, but we're at the beginning of providing smallspaces (per Narendra's great post at: http://www.nosoapradio.org/2006/05/24/content-20-is-the-smallspace/ ) -- community and user services for every site that wants one.
Posted by: Scott Rafer | May 24, 2006 10:39 AM
To see some examples of community building, charitable and nonprofit Web 2.0 services in use check out the Net Squared case studies at http://netsquared.org/casestudy
Posted by: Marshall Kirkpatrick | May 24, 2006 10:55 AM
You mentioned Project Management/Collaboration Apps in your posting. One that I recently reviewed is
www.centraldesktop.com
Certain parts behave similar to basecamp but they have a lot more features without cluttering up the UI.
Another one it Jotspot, platform is more geared towards developers but very powerful.
Posted by: Tom | May 24, 2006 1:15 PM
"how about a service that lets people create their own PDF books or reports and charge for them on a website (a la the 37Signals book)?"
Yeah, that would be neat - could be a nice way for experts to package and sell their knowledge. Actually, doesn't Lulu already let customers buy a PDF version?
Posted by: Pete Cashmore | May 24, 2006 2:10 PM
You mention you'd like to see more web-based office apps - have you seen Foldera?
http://www.foldera.com
Posted by: Tony | May 24, 2006 2:29 PM
Regarding Foldera, it would be nice if they would actually make it available for general registration. Alas, it's still "pre-beta" with registration limited to those they choose.
Posted by: Anthony Eden | May 24, 2006 2:37 PM
As for online office apps, www.mynoteIT.com has some pretty decent features (Although it's MS OFFICE) and you can even download your notes to MS Word for additional formatting
Posted by: Alex | May 24, 2006 5:01 PM
I have to agree with Fred. We are currently baking some of Dicks sxip stuff into our own app, our early users have been very resposive (postive).
I believe the current round of web hype, while annoying, is largely well founded in that there is a lot of sustainability in the models being launched. Sure, plenty will fail, but thats standard biz survival of the fittest. Nothing like the web 1.0 bubble.
However, while there is lots of territory to claim in the areas mentioned above, at some stage we will likely venture into the irrational exubarance arena.
The saving grace could be ID 2.0, managing the miasma of web app options the average Joe will have a lot of upside for whoever gets it right. Best of luck Fred.
And thanks for the prompt Richard.
Posted by: Dan Walsh | May 24, 2006 6:29 PM
I think there is only one really underserved market is the market for exchanging data in real time between all these web 2.0 applications. I haven't seen any real solution so far (I'm not talking about RSS feeds or JSON) that allows you to grab the list of contacts from your CRM and to put them inside your project management and sync them to your mobile phone (allowing you to apply filters, define field mappings, etc).
If anyone seen something like that -- let me know.
Posted by: Lenkov | May 24, 2006 8:05 PM
I'd love to see something like LinkedIn or Ziki mashed up with industry specific services. For example, in my Profession (Psychology) it would be great if my online profile (and the tags associated with it) was linked to online journal databases and delivered me a weekly email of articles/news items from Psychology sources, matched to my profile.
The web 2.0 service could provide the infrastructure (e.g., building the profile and the email delivery systems) and then each industry organizes what information resources they want included. This makes sense in my head but probably not in writing - lol
Posted by: Gareth | May 24, 2006 8:26 PM
Regarding online office apps, Zoho http://zoho.com provides a set of office productivity applications online, including word processing, spreadsheets and project management, with presentation coming soon. You can play with them without registering.
Thanks,
Sridhar Vembu
Zoho
Posted by: Sridhar Vembu | May 24, 2006 9:25 PM
Yeah, where's the buzz on the financial apps? :-) We (NetworthIQ) have a lot more work to do. But, thanks for pointing out the segment.
Posted by: Ryan Williams | May 24, 2006 11:35 PM
To see some examples of local community building and web 2 , in use check out http://www.citycita.org. In private demo now i can send some invitations to people who ask.
Posted by: jamin | May 25, 2006 2:42 AM
"I haven't seen any real solution so far (I'm not talking about RSS feeds or JSON) that allows you to grab the list of contacts from your CRM and to put them inside your project management and sync them to your mobile phone"
-
Should there be one defined standard for that kind of information exchange, or is the standard created on the moment when the first service comes out.
Thats a question i guess
Posted by: tim | May 25, 2006 9:41 AM
How about education. Web2.0 points to a different type of information environment where content comes from conversation, the reader organizes and recommends reading (rather than the librarian), and people connect to each other through their content.
However, it is difficult to promote new web applications in our classrooms, when our congress seeks to ban online communities (Deleting Online Predators Act).
-- dave --
Posted by: David Warlick | May 29, 2006 6:44 AM
Regarding project management apps, my project Tesly (http://www.tesly.com/) attempts to tackle a smart part of that: test case management.
Posted by: Ben Curtis | June 5, 2006 1:51 PM
The article is the most comprehensive summary of Web 2.0 that I've read so far, although it does take a while to read and same time to check other links is well.With all using that technologies , smart mobs, emergence, convergence wireless Internet access for everyone- social computing making computing more "continuous" with daily life. Thank you very much for all your info. It is really great. when someone would share they info or knowledge with other people.
I am doing now research for my dissertation on E-Commerce for one of my customers, for sure will use some of that information
Posted by: S.Jaison | June 7, 2006 8:03 AM
I think in general Business Services/Applications is often overlooked and underserved. Business services meaning: project management, crm, accounting and financial services, sale force automation, etc.
We believe that this is the next big area of opportunity and investment as enterprises are now interested and aware of all of the great things Web 2.0 has to offer - tagging, social networking, Ruby on Rails, Ajax, better user interfaces and more intuitive applications.
Posted by: Nick | June 8, 2006 5:53 AM
As for CRM, Salesboom.com did a good job introducing Web 2.0 features into the on demand CRM product, starting with AJAX and creating a mash up of web services from google maps, to yahoo stock info, to world clock, to weather information, to skype, etc.
www.salesboom.com
Posted by: CRM Software Expert | June 11, 2006 7:45 PM