Startup Addict Musings

Opening a Platform continues to define Web 2.0. Continually the biggest driving factor in the second generation of the web is the “wiki” style collaboration from social users. Myspace looks like it will be following suit of Facebook according to VentureBeat from an FT article. Thus allowing prosumers and developers to mashup and add to the Myspace platform. A popular move to catch a second wave of growth for these social networks. These trends are exciting to see and inevitable as the social networking giants blow past critical-mass and are asking the question now what?

The keys to the castle have clearly gone to the users in the present web. Users need to be able to personalize, adapt and make an off the shelf product or service their own. Any startup needs to carefully think about the mutually beneficial relationship being created between product/service and consumer needs. The Platform mentality needs to be thought of in advance rather than an inflexible webservice that will end of getting hacked to suit by user’s anyway. Second life is another exciting example of fast pace growth driven solely by user generated content. Linden Labs created the parameters and playground and let the users go “hog-wild”. This methodology is permeating all forms of Web 2.0 services currently and a trend that is only going to grow larger, more effect and faster paced. If a startup does not pay attention to these new wikinomics (good book by Don Tapscott & Antony D Williams) they will be out of business quickly and classified as a relic of the early Internet.