The Joel on Software Discussion Group

Russell Beattie hits nail on its head in his recent post where he questions what all these Web 2.0 companies are up to.

http://www.russellbeattie.com/notebook/1008838.html

I completely agree with him, if you see startups featured on TechCrunch ( http://www.techcrunch.com ), you will find that around 99% companies have no business model! I wonder how long this bubble is going to last. My guess: As soon as Google's share price shows downward trend, all this craziness will stop.

This isn't a bubble anymore than blogging is a bubble.  Blogs don't have a business model, does that stop people from bloggin'?  No.  Web 2.0 companies aren't really companies.  They are mostly side projects, and just like Open Source projects or blogs they can go on as long as the person working on them has they energy. 

People are forgetting how big the real bubble was.  There were startups that never turned a profit that went public and had a bigger market cap than Ford.  Bigger than Ford.  Think about that.

http://www.suprglu.com/ Suprglu is one person.  Big difference there.  If suprglu sold for $500 million, yea then we'd have a bubble.

I shout out 'Bubble' mainly because there is a company who employ around 21 people to develop something on top of Firefox. ( http://www.flock.com )

Another example: meebo.com. They recently raised VC. What do they offer? Web based interface for AOL, Yahoo! Messenger etc. for free. Now, why would I need web-based interface when clients for all the IM services are free?

I agree with you that this bubble is no where near the first bubble, but it's bubble none the less.

You mean most businesses are likely to fail? Investors and the market are often irrational?
 
Alert the Internet, this shocking news has to get out! This is the scoop of the century.

Russell Beatie is a stupid whiny baby. Half of his posts are like this: such and such people "don't get it", such and such people's products suck, everything sucks, no one's as smart and important as he is. Here's a good way for him to create some real value: jump off a cliff.

Actually, that would be a cost as someone would have to be paid to clean him up.

Not if it was a good strong tide...

JD -- Meebo's selling point is that you can run all your IM services in one web browser window, in case you can't download the free clients at work.

Still not an actual business model, but it is a novel idea and a useful service.

Baus hit the nail on the head! Myself and 1 biz partner about to start one of these Web 2.0 ISV. What is our product/service going to involve? (1) A website (2) Some weekly columns and articles (3) A message board (4)  2 pay service programs.

These programs are something that my biz partner and I were both doing as a hobby. Now we are going to formalize it and try to make a little money off of it. Personally, I doubt we will turn a profit the 1st year. But, so far I forsee startup costs being less then $1000. And they are only going to eclipse 500, if i join the Empower program.
Even if this takes off, we don't forsee clearing a profit of 10,000.

So get over it! Let people have their fun.

Complaining about the Web 2.0 catchphrase is sooo 2005.

It can't be a Russell Beatie post if he doesn't mention he's sad that no one cares about mobile applications.

> Meebo's selling point is that you can run all your IM services in one web browser window, in case you can't download the free clients at work.

It should only take about 30 secs to realize the mind-boggling stupidity of this.  Any company that would take the trouble to close IM ports will also filter the meebo.com website.

Meebo was already blocked at my work by the time I found out about it, and I am pretty with-it as far as these things go.