I like the alarm:clock guys as you might know. I heard for them it's a hobby, so they can't commit as many resources as similar sites, such as TechCrunch, but I've always thought if they invested more time into developing their blog they could do a lot better in terms of traffic and influence. Same with Tony's media business, AlwaysOn, I'm certain if he did some tweaks in the content and invested in marketing the site he would generate a lot more traffic. Of course, since I'm not involved in AlwaysOn's operations he just ignores the few words I throw out here and there. I think he doesn't care so much about its traffic since he makes a lot of money from his events and sponsorships, and the fact that he serves a very niche audience (tech execs in silicon valley) and does well with it.
Anyway, back to alarm:clock's recent post titled, "Web 2.0 Roll-up":
Our beef with Web 2.0 hype is that so many of the companies that fall in this category (we're not even sure it actually is a category) have limited ambitions and growth-management skills. Features are being launched as if they are companies. There is way too much excitement over $12M acquisitions of modest Web 2.0 start-ups by Yahoo and Google. So why not make a run at creating another portal? After all, it wasn't that long ago that Alta Vista and Infoseek were hot portals - and there will doubtlessly be another big-time portal launched in the next few years.
As I posted here before, I agree that there are too many one feature startups without real business models who probably pray for an acquisition as an exit strategy. In some ways GoingOn Networks can be a home for many of these "feature" companies and more developed Web 2.0 companies. While it's not our primarily focus, nor do we want to be the "Ellis Island" of the Web 2.0 landscape ("Give me your poor, your tired, your huddled masses..."), we have incorporated Marc Canter's vision of a DLA (Digital Lifestyle Aggregator) into our platform. People can integrate their Flickr and del.icio.us like many other platforms, but you'll see a lot more after our beta. We do want to provide a digital hub for people's favorite web services and we won't discriminate, so hopefully we can develop this effectively :)
A Web 2.0 Roll-up might start with Technorati for blog search, Rollyo for personalized search, and add features like Zimbra's calendar, a video search like YouTube or Revver, an IM app like Meebo, a comment tool like Digg, plus other doo-dads that you might find on the TechCrunch Index.
Alarm:clock has a good start above. Rollyo? Maybe. Carl, our CTO, joked that we've become the "search engine whore" hooking up with Endeca, a powerful enterprise search solution, and a few others we'll announce. YouTube? Revver? Maybe. Meebo? Maybe. It will be fun over the next few years to see how we develop our platform. Definitely we do not want to become a portal for Web 2.0 services. Our focus is providing a communications platform for companies, so that's why I would call us 'half a roll' or maybe just a 'handroll'.
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