Technology Pool Talent

I read an article the other day about someone’s frustration with the saturated “social media expert” talent pool.  I love what social media has brought to the Internet but the self proclaimed social media experts seem to be everywhere and it has become very overwhelming.  I thought I could represent this situation with a diagram so this is what I came up with.

internet talent pool

Web 2.0 in a downturn economy

I was at techset las vegas about 3 weeks ago and while doing an interview with Miiko of future works I was asked “with the current state of the economy how do you think web 2.0 will fend?”

I was happy with my response, however, as the economy fell on it’s face over the last 2 weeks I found myself thinking more and more about the survivor-ability of web 2.0.

A lot has happened in the last two weeks, Iceland claimed bankruptcy, Obama and McCain completed their final debate and web 2.0 companies seemed to get their first taste of the cutbacks. I read about companies like Jive software, mahalo and jaxtr who have cut large portions of their team.

On the other hand there were the slew of companies that closed their doors for good. In fact I actually saw it very closely. Last week my company hosted an open wine-bar event for the San Diego tech scene of which most attendees were from either SuggestionBox or Eyespot. Both companies closed down completely.

Despite the influx of bad news I don’t think web 2.0 companies should worry, at least not the innovators and the uniques and especially not the value add companies. The copy cats, “wheel decorators”(companies that are re-inventing a product but making it prettier) and useless social apps (the let’s make our slightly useful app into a social network) should beware. Additionally the non revenue stream startups should look out too because the good old story of “go viral and make millions from aftertising” is struggling and somewhat flawed.

I think what we are seeing is the result of a bloated and saturated sector fused with a poor economy. Let’s face it there are hundreds of new web 2.0 apps launching each month and some of them are just plain worthless. Perhaps we will see a more legitimate product offering during the recession, where entrepreneurs, a very flexible term these days, begin to actually consider the usefullness of what their building.

Even though web 2.0 as a whole will feel the pain of the currently horrendous economy, I believe that fundamentally the valuable part of web 2.0 will thrive. As mainstream companies begin to feel the squeeze of the economy the big “where can we make cuts” question will loom over many shoulders. Some companies will make cuts whereas others will seek more efficient and productive solutions in order to increase the capabilities of their workforce, or they will find alternative cheaper solutions to stretch their services further for less. The latter two scenarios should sound familiar because they describe the core benefits of web 2.0: fast, easy, adoptable, efficient, cheap, agile, scalable and valuable software.

Ultimately valuable web 2.0 services may become the Plan B for struggling traditional companies. To save money they may need to explore VOIP instead of ATT or Verizon and they may need to do web-based phone conferences to limit travel costs. They may need to centralize file sharing and collaboration efforts to make their employees more efficient and they may need to test the waters with social networking tools to compliment a more limited business networking event schedule.

Damien
@DamienH

web 2.0 – disrupting traditionally accepted business practices

It seems as though terribly inefficient business practices are so ingrained in todays society that it is hard for some people and even some companies to consider better approaches to their common day activities. Perhaps that is why the internet, particularly web 2.0 will forever have its place. By all means it may become web 2.1 or web 3.0 but the current day internet and all of its services will remain. There are a few reasons why I feel this way. First the web provides a constant stream of disruptive services that are good at uprooting the traditionally accepted approach. Secondly the web is very consistent at providing more efficient, cheaper and more adoptable products. Lastly developers are able to benefit from the successes of other web services so as the web becomes more intricate and more deeply entwined development can progress more rapidly and with more precision.

There are also the more obvious reasons for the existence and rapid growth of web 2.0 companies such as cheap go-to-market costs, cheap market exposure costs, extremely thorough target audience data and short deployment and exit durations. Simply put its very easy to go-to-market, test the product, market to a specific audience and exit if it all doesn’t work. Additionally most services are just piggy-backing existing infrastructure whereas traditional technology business had to develop and finance a lot of the infrastructure.

Consider today’s telecom companies, in particular the telephone portion of their businesses. To start a phone service 50 years ago their was infrastructure, research, labor, construction and a lot of overhead. Today, look at a company like Vonage that provides a cheaper and much more feature rich service. Vonage utilizes VOIP (yes I understand that is based on another telecom infrastructure, the internet) and completely cut out the need for construction and infrastructure. Of course, they do have servers and networks but that can all be centralized which is much easier than putting phone lines under half of America’s front yard.

In a slightly similar sector of business is conference calling. In fact this is what my post was intended to discuss. Conference calling, as it is commonly utilized by most of the people I know, is very inefficient, non-integrated and consistently a pain to use. Conference call attendees spend sometimes upwards of 15 minutes waiting for other attendees to join. When someone forgets to call in they have to be tracked down by one of the current callers who has to use another phone to locate them, that is if they even have their phone number. Essentially attendees could be lost from an activity that is supposed to bring people together. For the most part traditional conference calls exist at one point in time and even if it’s recorded, accessing that recording is a cumbersome process or just not common knowledge. I think the most frustrating portion of traditional phone conferencing is user interface, a 10 digit menu that is as limiting as it is engaging. Overall the “accepted” means of conference calling is flawed and I think that its time for a web 2.0 application to step up and cover the void.

Damien
@DamienH