Sorry To Be A Downer

January 7th, 2007

I’m just going to post some depressing technology links to get them out of the way, so my head is clear for Tuesday’s reality distortion field.

TechCrunch: Bubble, Bubble, Bubble: Mike Arrington adds a few more companies to his “deadpool”. He stops short of calling it a bubble bursting, because a few failures are healthy, demonstrating that a Web 2.0 startup isn’t sure thing.

Venture Beat: is certainly more alarmist, although they call these Web 2.0 repositionings more of an “oozing.” They mention the recent layoffs at Jobster, which were strangely documented on the Jobster blog – talk about public humiliation. What next, Survivor: General Motors?

Guy Kawasaki: posted some hard numbers regarding his first year of blogging. Despite high traffic and a built-in brand, he earned barely enough money from Google AdSense for a month’s living expenses in the Bay Area ($3,350).

Many are saying Guy’s low numbers are explainable by bad ad placement, that Google AdSense is lame, or that Guy should have made money elsewhere, but I think the real ten foot furry elephant in the room is that some can’t afford to lose faith in advertising as a business model. It’s the primary revenue stream for many Web 2.0 startups such as digg.

(It’s also quite true that many, many bloggers myself included, aren’t writing blogs for the money. This isn’t just sour grapes either – I still maintain that I’m blogging to write about what I enjoy. The day I start blogging with money as my primary focus [meaning, writing about ring tones and home mortgages to get high-paying ads] means I’ve failed).

But back to Web 2.0: I do think a bit of rough riding is a good thing. As soon as someone claims “easy money,” that’s when the speculators, flippers, and people who only care about getting loaded come in and inflate the bubble just standing around talking about technology. The people that are creating companies because they love technology will still find a way to succeed.

For more coherent thoughts on whether we’re looking at a Web 2.0 boom or a bust in 2007 (I just got back from the dentist and I’m a bit anesthetized), please check out:

Things That Could Obliterate Web 2.0

Web 2.0 Bubble Predictions for 2007

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