May 12th, 2006

The Solipsism of Web 2.0

by Scott Karp

I long since gave up banging my head against the wall of Web 2.0’s solipsism. My argument has always been that Web 2.0 AJAX developers don’t think about the needs of AVERAGE PEOPLE.

Now Josh Kopelman has sharpened the argument:

Too many companies are targeting an audience of 53,651. That’s how many people subscribe to Michael Arrington’s TechCrunch blog feed.

Web 2.0 entrepreneurs who read TechCrunch daily (and who power-use multiple sites with “tagging” and who subscribe to 100+ tech RSS feeds) need to occasionally turn off the PC, put on some clothes, and head down to the local Walmart to spend some time hanging out with the mainstream.

Too many Web 2.0 start-ups — nothwistanding the success of MySpace, Flickr and a few other mainstream apps — are living in a bubble.

Pop.

Topics: Web 2.0

  • You're wrong, and you're right. Building for that same collection 53K people is of course absurd - how many ajax calender companies can one pool that small support? We're about to find out. On the other hand, finding different niche groups may be sustainable. I see no reason to assume that Wal-Mart and TechCrunch are the only two options, because lots of industries & niches love to see bespoke software just for them: web chat for realtors, scheduling for architects, social bookmarking for intelligence analysts, blogs for professors, etc. The early end of the adopter curve points in many different directions.

  • The bubble business model seems, crucially, to be based on selling hopes and dreams to the frustrated, rather than providing real value to real people. So from that perspective, hyping to a small cult is far more profitable than trying to actually build a company which delivers a service useful to the average person.

  • soooo true. and the stuff that makes arrington excited is frequently just worthless crap. remember him going crazy about chat on a blog post? geez.

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