Monday, November 27, 2006

Latest in Entrepreneurship.

There's been a lot of hooplah about Web 2.0 and what the implications are to Venture Capitalists. And now people are even starting to talk about Web 3.0, internet run mostly by artificial intelligences. Lets look at some of the main perspectives on what Bill Gates called " Nothing like the '99-'00 bubble," and what it means for Entrepreneurs.

1. Web 2.0 is full of easy ways to make money.
There's all sorts of money to be had in Web 2.0. Sources Abound pointing at ways to use these newfangled internets to pump out some quick cash, but perhaps the most interesting ways to make money off web 2.0 is the New Media trend. Youtube went from nothing to 1.65 billion in 18 months, in case you've been in a hole for the past... two years? Not that long, it's possible. More interesting for those of us not interested in starting company after company trying to get hit in that crap shoot, Some people have been making obscene amounts of money off of Google Adwords. Hopefully I'll be joining them shortly.
What you need to know is that there's a ton of money floating around waiting to be grasped, and for once if you just provide a useful service online (like digg, weblogs, inc., or techcrunch.)

Please note that every single one of these sites provides a useful, timely service. Trying to duplicate any of their achievements won't gain you much. If you want to learn how to take advantage of the Web 2.0 your best bet is to go the Digg, Youtube, or Del.icio.us route; Learn some basic programming, spend some time researching useful tools online and how people surf the web, and make it easy for the early adopters to make it easy for other people to do it. That's the essence of the Web 2.0 business model, not blogging or online journalism or online video sharing. And that's how an entrepreneur makes money off of web 2.0.

2. Web 2.0 is easy to get into
As mentioned above, the business model of Web 2.0 success stories is simple: Make an online product that motivated other people can use, and make it good. This is easy to get into because all you need is to learn how to program computers. Which is just learning another language.

Actually, you don't even need that. New services abound which use these same web 2.0 principles to allow anyone to make their ideal program without knowing a lot about programming. For example, Ning allows people to use pre-made templates to create their websites. This means that you can also pick apart their templates, pull out parts that you like, and put them on your blog or website. Ning gives handy tutorials on how to do this. I linked one right there two sentences ago.

This new sort of programming is called a Mashup, and it's really the future of entrepreneurship. Just as entrepreneurs in the physical world have two tactics; doing something someone already does better, or making a synthesis of two disciplines which hasn't been done before, entrepreneurs online are gaining access to the second option. Mashups and similar tools are allowing people to make programs faster and better, and this will probably lead into a lengthy period before web 3.0 becomes real. If it does. If you're interested in making the kind of money that digg, youtube, and del.icio.us are, i suggest you check out those mashup links above. I know I am. :)

Tune in over the next couple of days for more on the Web 2.0 climate...

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