Dec
10
2007
Personalization, customization and social networking are slamming together at high speed. Companies like Xobni and Minebox are adding features to e-mail that extract your social network and provide customized news based on email content. Social networking sites like Linked-In are adding personalized news feeds based on both your interests and those of your social network. SMS services like Twitter are creating plug-ins for social networking sites like Facebook. It’s big, it’s crazy, but where’s it all going?
After extensive free use, are users really going to be willing to pay for these services? Is there a sufficient number of users that are interested in paying for “premium services” to support a two tier model? I continue to be wary of start-ups with advertising-only based revenue models. A massive number of pageviews are required to actually make substantial money in this arena. There are only so many eyeballs and a huge number of players competing in what is essentially becoming the same space.
I’ve been using the term “Dot Bubble 2.0″ the last couple of months to express my feelings about the current state of the tech/internet area. Last week ago someone came out with a YouTube video with the same description. It points out some of the crazy valuations that are going on right now (Ford = 16.8 billion vs Facebook = 15.0 billion). (Now granted, Microsoft’s purchase of a chunk of Facebook was probably more about trying to keep Google from picking up Facebook rather than an actual investment, but still it’s crazy.)
What businesses really have legs? In my opinion it is those that have a clear anchor outside the internet world. In particular, applying these technologies to places where there are clear needs (such as healthcare). Although there will no doubt be some survivors in the fray, I just don’t buy the internet for internet’s sake business models.