Continuing
my series on international Web apps, today I'll be covering the top products in the
United Kingdom market. In case you missed it, over the past week or so I've reviewed Germany, Holland, Poland and Korea. This week
I've got more great non-Silicon Valley startups for you!
The information for today's post about the UK market is courtesy of Colin Donald of new media consultancy Futurescape. They run a wiki called JigsawUK, which tracks and supports UK-based startups.
I asked Colin to tell me about the UK market. He said firstly that the UK has a "unique Internet environment" and that cloning Silicon Valley apps is more difficult in the UK:
"It’s more challenging to start up a pure Web 2.0 application in the face of direct US competition, without the language barrier that enables someone in Poland to clone US apps and sites."
Colin reckons this makes UK entrepreneurs look for radical and disruptive solutions. He said that sites/apps that are heavily localised or aim for a niche demographic, are more defensible against US incomers (applies to both B2C and B2B).
He noted that talent is hard to come by for UK 2.0 startups - with competition from "well-paid IT jobs in The City", online marketing, Yahoo and Google UK, and even working for Silicon Valley.
The BBC
is also a looming presence in the British market, with its large public funding and even bigger plans (n.b.
some prominent ex-BBC techies have been sniping
about this recently). On the other hand, a lot of Web action has been by major media
companies - especially newspapers pre-empting 2.0 threats to their online readership
(e.g. Guardian).
In terms of startup activity, Colin said that British entrepreneurs with experience from the last bubble "have only got involved in 2.0 start-ups in the last 12 months" - and many of those are just about to launch. As for young British 2.0 entrepreneurs, Peter Cooper and Peter Nixey are good examples (click the links for their stories).
Also there are interesting crossovers in the UK between Internet and mobile. To track this trend, check out Londoner Ajit Jaokar's blog on mobile 2.0.
The top UK web apps are after the jump...
Comments by Colin Donald of JigsawUK.
Major Media
The Telegraph (major conservative newspaper) - RSS everywhere, journalists podcasting and blogging with comments, tag clouds and post to del.icio.us - see examples from fashion and society blogs (esp the fashion tag cloud).
The Guardian (major left/liberal newspaper) - Comment Is Free moved all columnists over to having comments made on their articles (more than a little culture shock involved as columnists were confronted by hostile readers!)
The Sun - Colin calls it "a typically Murdochian response to a commercial rival - check out their Craigslist killer er… Craigslist scraper".
Pure-play 2.0 successes
Last.fm - widely adopted outside the UK, attracted Joi Ito and others, founders slept in tent on roof of the office thanks to the expense of accommodation in London
Yellowikis - has global presence but is now being sued by the UK’s Yellow Pages
Chinwag jobs Good 2.0 jobs site built on success of mailing lists that are about 10 years old
Carson Systems, Bath-based 2.0 workshop organisers, which runs:
Potentially disruptive - could break out of UK
TIOTI - Web2.0 social media hub for TV fans
Trexy - New Search Trails Technology
Majestic-12 - distributed search engine
Localised and defensible
Mobile blogging - I think much of this is still in walled garden mode with individual network operators. For an open version, see MoblogUK
Some social networking services have strong followings in particular demographics, such as Don’t Stay In for clubbing.
Property (ie real estate) services
OnOneMap - Google mashup based
Nestoria - a pure property search engine
Defensible B2B
Omniscope - very good data visualisation tools, London Stock Exchange and Sky Sports are clients (n.b.: see R/WW profile here)
Reevoo - seems to be gaining traction in consumer review space (b2b because funded by retailers)
Second-time around entrepreneurs
Crowdstorm - social shopping, experienced execs
FriendsAbroad - claims to be largest community of language learners
garlik - already got VC funding and run by former execs from the online bank, Egg
Snipperoo - widget management tool from the founders of UK’s first Web design and domain registration companies
Zopa - P2P lending
Listed below are links to blogs that reference this entry: Top UK Web 2.0 Apps.
TrackBack URL for this entry: http://www.readwriteweb.com/cgi-bin/mt/mt-tb.cgi/2709
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Of course, not forgetting www.dealtagger.com, another UK based startup where social bookmarking meets ecommerce.
Posted by: d4rr3ll | August 7, 2006 2:28 AMYou've linked to a rather odd post on my blog, Richard? :) Not complaining though!
FeedDigest has been live for over a year now (and was live as RSS Digest for almost a year before that) so Web 2.0 has been in the UK at least two years on my part at least ;-) Profitable Web 2.0 too!
Anyway, cool to see all these links in a single place. Keep up the good work.
Posted by: Peter Cooper | August 7, 2006 4:24 AMHi Richard
Posted by: Chang | August 7, 2006 4:55 AMI think Shozu can be a contender here too.
Hi Richard,
Thanks very much for the link (and to you Colin). Starting up in the UK is definitely a challenge although one of our best chaps, Ryan Carson is doing extremely well with Dropsend, Think Vitamin and Hey Amigo - he's outside the London scene but definitely the most profilic starter-upper here so far.
I'll be launching a new app over the next few weeks designed to make developing websites a little easier. Look forward to pinging it your way.
Peter
Posted by: Peter Nixey | August 7, 2006 10:13 AMThis is a nice piece, really gives an idea on the varied and quick growth of this next generation of web apps.
Posted by: Jim Callender | August 7, 2006 11:41 AMVery interesting. I thought you might also be interested to hear about Business IT Online (http://www.businessitonline.com). We launched recently, offering collaborative online business applications for small business owners - please do take a look.
Posted by: David | August 8, 2006 2:36 AMHotxt, a mobile startup (badged the skype of txting) received VC backing from a US Hedge fund a few weeks ago totalling some £3.5m(USD$6.5m). www.hotxt.co.uk
Posted by: Nick | August 8, 2006 4:50 PMGreat to see a post specifically for the UK and remind others that not all the action is in Silicon Valley. For my part, I run a web design studio that has so far released 3 web 2.0 apps:
Simplybill (http://www.simplybill.com), an online invoice management tool built with a UK focus as the International/American ones didn't handle VAT as I wanted!
Moblee (http://www.moblee.co.uk), a website that makes it easy to subscribe to offers sent via SMS, and is a cheap method of distributing offers for businesses. Moblee started off in the UK and is now available in the US.
Audabble (http://www.audabble.net), a website/desktop audio player combination that plays your music, but adds audio news bulletins every 15/30 mins from the RSS feeds of popular websites/blogs.
Would be great to see a regular one of those TechCrunch parties in the UK too!
Posted by: Craig Williams | August 9, 2006 3:45 AMHi Richard,
Thanks for the mention. We've started a closed trial now, and we'll be taking the feedback from that and getting the public beta up to scratch. We found an office last week as anyone who's been reading the blog will know, and that's going to be a great help as Ivan and can finally sit opposite each other shouting about what's the most important feature to finish next.
We'll be attending BarCampLondon and doing a presentation on Snipperoo, the widgetised web and what it all means.
Posted by: Jay Gooby | August 9, 2006 4:21 AMHi Richard,
Great post.
We have also recently launched a vertical property search engine in the UK. Currently in beta covering London at www.zoomf.com and would love to hear your thoughts.
Posted by: Ivailo Jordanov | August 9, 2006 7:20 AMHey Richard,
Thanks for the mention! Much appreciated. We're about to launch our 2nd web app Amigo which matches newsletter owners with advertisers.
All the best,
Posted by: Ryan Carson | August 9, 2006 8:30 AMRyan Carson
Thanks!
Great list. It would be interesting to see which of these apps are privately funded and which have VC.
Gill
Posted by: Gillian Carson | August 9, 2006 8:44 AMI love last.fm! I wanna work for them
Posted by: Alan Garcia | August 9, 2006 11:33 AMGreat list,
Another UK guy working on a startup here. I'm working on That's Progress, a community driven fitness site (more info on my blog) which I hope to have finished within the next few days!
I will be moving to London shortly, and am looking forward to meeting up with the others there.
Posted by: Richard Livsey | August 9, 2006 11:55 AMThanks for supporting the UK with this post - we're a bit behind but trying to catch up!
Appreciate the mention of Crowdstorm too - we really think we've hit the nail on the head with this one when it comes to social shopping and tapping into product recommendations and the buzz around these products.
Time will tell but it is great to be in a community of so much innovation and determination - again!
Posted by: Philip Wilkinson | August 9, 2006 1:35 PMHi, great post, it's nice to read about other UK based start-ups. We've been working on my50.co.uk/my50.com for about 5 years now in our sparetime and have other projects in the pipeline, just not enought time to work on them.
Posted by: Chris Dunst | August 10, 2006 12:26 AMWe are also in the uk!!! :D
Posted by: Jeremy Baines | August 10, 2006 7:56 AMA good round-up. Is there anything typical about UK 2.0?
It looks like there are very few "me-too" plays in the UK, a theme which has characterised your 'other nations' series. We seem to be going for real niches. Obviously, as "two nations divided by a common language", we can't really do that in the way that a lot of countries can.
Worth noting that bebo.com is in many respects a UK creation, too, to anyone looking for a massive smash hit in the list.
Posted by: Ian Delaney | August 10, 2006 10:28 AMI reckon the hardest thing about the UK scene is the lack of a supportive and large enough community, that creates buzz, helps to get the word out, and self fulfils - I think that is what the US has a lot of, and is evident in the number of startups (and of course the US has a much larger population so we're looking at pure demographics as well).
Another thing that may be keeping city types in their comfy city jobs is the lack of VC's interested in the UK web 2.0 scene - if there was funding going on, and startups were making noises, then I think more of those folks would be coming out of the woodwork...
Anyways - thanks for the post ;-)
Posted by: oneafrikan | August 11, 2006 8:26 AMI'd like to see a breakdown of where web innovation is being driven from in the UK. I moved down to London from Birmingham because of the lack of tech companies in the Midlands. So i would like to see if London really is setting the standards for innovation within the UK??
Posted by: Matthew Ogston | September 5, 2006 4:00 PMI just chatted to the Yellowikis author (Paul Youlten) and the legal issues have been resolved with Yell.com -- but there are some technical issues apparently holding it up right now.
Posted by: Julian | December 16, 2006 2:22 PMI have also launched a UK specific community-based social networking site. My Neighbourhoods allows you to get in touch with your neighbours, buy and sell online through classified listings and find out more about your area.
It'd be interesting to hear from other UK startups.
Posted by: Danny Bull | December 27, 2006 10:52 AMWeb Adorable has been going for a little while now.
Posted by: Harry Mantheakis | January 10, 2007 8:29 AMHi Richard,
A interesting post as Web 2.0 seems to be an area people don't like to jump into.
We have also recently launched a web 2.0 press release submission site in the UK. Currently in beta at www.newdesignworld.com/press/ and would love to hear your thoughts.
Posted by: Mike | January 23, 2007 5:12 AMA very interesting read, indeed.
A Web 2.0 application is a Web 2.0 application, whether it is based in US, UK, Australia or elsewhere. Why, then characterize anything as a Web2.0 "UK" application? Not trying to imply anything here - just trying to understand - what is the fundamental difference between say an US Web 2.0 and an UK Web 2.0 app, besides there country of origin?
Posted by: Gozee | February 13, 2007 7:22 PMI like www.mytripz.com
Its cool as hell. its web 2.0
Go Camden!!
Posted by: Cesar | February 17, 2007 6:51 PMThanks a ton for putting and rating Web 2.0 Web Apps. It's really gives an idea what's the latest development using future technologies.
Posted by: Nick Human | February 23, 2007 11:50 AMWhat is a Web 2.0 ?
basil is a new UK-based web app and it doesn't have any fancy AJAX stuff but still a Web 2.0 app. It re-defines stats into a Web 2.0 paradigm.
Posted by: Charlie | March 8, 2007 6:36 AM
Posted by: Vintage Clothing 50's Fashion | March 19, 2007 11:19 AMVery much already irrelevant information.
That's an interesting post. I am still thinking that isn't developing web 2.0 applications the same as any other web application... or what?.. if developing for web 2.0 has a different approach than please provide me with a link so I can read about it.. I don't want to buy that book... I like the books of wrox, it's just that I want to save money.
Posted by: development web | April 27, 2007 2:17 AMany suggestions?
hi, another just recently launched UK web 2.0 site is Domegos.com. Vacation rental owners can list their vacation home for free. Uses Google Maps mashup and AJAX ...
Posted by: frank | May 12, 2007 4:22 AMPity not to be included on this list (...we were the first worlds first global mobile social network) but hey, I'm not hurt ... I best go and have a cup of tea to recover ;-)
I guess being stuck up in Cambridge in "Silicon Fen" (!) doesnt help. But hey Hotxt didnt get a mention in the main list either, and they're just down the road ;-)
Posted by: Andrew Scott | May 25, 2007 2:31 AMobviously, I'm biased, but you could add to the property section www.fuzzbo.com - the brighter way to sell your home!
Posted by: David Horn | July 2, 2007 2:51 PMHi Richard,
Noce post.
We have a website directory www.urlwebdirectory.com. We are in process of converting the site as a Web 2.0 Apps.
Posted by: Kaps | August 2, 2007 11:02 PM