It only seems like yesterday, when the first dot com boom was here – that carnival of crazy ideas that beckoned cowboys, used car salesmen, media moguls’ offspring and PHP-primed pre-twenty-something start-up upstarts to come up with the next big thing. The information super-hype-way was here to stay. Fortunately for us weary web wanderers the bubble burst, sending a million big ideas and a few billion dollars down the drain.
It wasn’t the ideas fault. It was the Internet. Too soon. Too young. Fast forward to now – mega-broadband, mega-infrastructure, a burgeoning netizenry – perhaps it’s time for a new, burst-resistant bubble. All those great ideas might just get enough eyeballs and click-throughs to reap the intended ROI.
Here begins virtual gold-rush part II:
What better way to enhance your narcissistic lifestyle than chalking up a few dares and bets with your peers? www.bragster.com throws down the gauntlet to the entire world. Fun and frivolous (I dare xXxSaRaHxXx to Wash her face with mushy peas.") to philanthropic (I dare Simon Cowell to do something for charity before he dies), this addictive point scoring portal is destined to be bigger than Google within weeks… uh, maybe...
Q. What is French for Entrepreneur? A. Löic LeMeur. A serial ideas homme, LeMeur has blogged himself filthy rich so many times, he’s addicted to it. Look out for Seesmic – www.seesmic.com an evolving video “conversation”. $6 million of venture capital says it’s an awesome idea. Only time will tell if this frog-spawn will grow legs.
In the music business those on the cutting edge never make it big. It’s only when Madonna drops into your back-alley night club and steals all your ideas that ‘vogueing” becomes a household word. Ditto perhaps with web ideas. www.revver.com pioneered paying video-bloggers a slice of the ad revenue, but never quite got the traction to take off. A $5 million sale of the site after $12.5 million of investment is nothing to write home about. Let’s hope the new owners can get Revver revived and revved up again.
Notice anything about the latest dot com ventures? They all have silly names. Domain name scarcity forces dumb spelling, lame puns and made-up words to worm their way into our vernacular. Case in point, www.pownce.com Nice idea, though. “Send stuff to your friends” is the concept. Incubated out of the Digg hatchery and with similar genetic code, it is simple, powerful, flexible and cool.
I know – how about a new social networking site! As if your mailboxes aren’t full enough with your FaceBook, MySpace and YouTube notifications. www.tangodiva.com is for wanderlust affected females. All you need now is a site that manages all the sites you’ve joined – a multiple social networking site management site – complete with its own social network site management networking tools. Sheesh! I’m going to go and watch TV for a while…
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