Dominiek.com

ReadWriteWeb has just posted their Web predictions for 2007 [1]. I think it’s nice that they omitted ‘2.0’ in that title. Just like in the first bubble, the Web has two types of trends, the potential and the hype. This has several consequences for 2007.

Andreas Kluth writes that the Web 2.0 hype will die down in 2007 [2]. Thanks to private equity, this bubble burst will be fairly discrete compared to the 2000 burst [3]. I think this will happen too, especially since US’ economy is becoming less optimistic. The first ones to go are probably some of the 400 social-networking alternatives or rounded-cornered BullshitR websites. However, this is just the ‘hype’ part of Web 2.0, not the potential/abstract part.

‘Don’t bet against the Internet’ is what Eric Schmidt advices. In his article in ‘the Economist’ he states: “The past few years have taught us that business models based on controlling consumers or content don’t work. Betting against the net is foolish because you’re betting against human ingenuity and creativity“ [4]. Indeed we have seen profound results of social-content websites like Wikipedia [5], another example can be found in the defeat of portals by search [6]. I think this is the ‘potential’ part of the new web, which can be summarized by a set of ground principles:

• clouds rather than trees
• simple rather than complex (KISS, Keep It Simple Stupid [7])
• loose rather than tight
• open rather than closed

references:

• [1] http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/biggest_web_trend_2007.php
• [2] “When the hype dies down”, The Economist, 21st edition, page 26
• [3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dot-com_bubble
• [4] “Don’t bet against the internet”, The Economist, 21st edition, page 124
• [5] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Size_of_Wikipedia
• [6] “The Search: How Google and Its Rivals Rewrote the Rules of Business and Transformed Our Culture”, John Battelle
• [7] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KISS_principle