Slashdot Mirror
The New Brat Pack of Silicon Valley
bart_scriv writes "BusinessWeek looks at the current entrepreneurs of Web 2.0 via the lens of Kevin Rose and Digg. Although the article focuses on the rise and success of Digg, it also looks at the ethos of Web 2.0 and its successful companies, including YouTube, Del.icio.us, Facebook and Xfire. From the article: 'Clearly much has changed since 1999, and Rose and his fellow wealth punks have little in common with the sharp-talking MBAs in crisp khakis and blue button-downs who rushed the Valley as the NASDAQ climbed. In the late 1990s, entrepreneurs were the supplicants, and Sand Hill Road, dotted with venture-capital firms, was the mecca. Dot-commers relied on VCs for the millions needed to buy hardware, rent servers, hire designers, and advertise like crazy to bring in the eyeballs. For their big stakes of, say, $15 million for 20% of a company, venture capitalists received board seats, control of the management levers, and most of the equity. Now, it's more like: Maybe we'll let you throw a few bucks our way -- if you get it. Otherwise, get lost.'"
Meet the new web, same as the old web.
"I'd rather be a lightning rod than a seismometer." -Ken Kesey
"Web 2.0 and its successful companies, including YouTube, Del.icio.us, Facebook and Xfire."
I'm sorry, Xfire?
Am I the only one who hasn't heard of Xfire or/and it's success?
So, the perpetrators of the current web2.0 bubble has little in common with the dot-com bubble?
Let's see...
Fly-by-night operations... check.
Crazed Investors... check.
Funny naming conventions... check.
Non-standard work-places... check.
Failure-to-profit... check.
Oh yeah, SO VERY LITTLE in common.
Well, let's see what they don't have in common...
Different clothes.
Different year.
Umm... Yeah, that's it.
"If you make people think they're thinking, they'll love you; But if you really make them think, they'll hate you." - DM
It appears to be a lesson every of the Web 2.0 CEO must learn: pop up your human side, dress casual and don't show your wealth. And the best of all: make people say poor guy; manipulate people's sympathy (Rose's girlfriend sad story, sleepless etc), it will open all doors
cut this signatures madness. stop reading them now!
Don't forget to give it a stupid name like Slappr or smack.us
Anonymous Coward: "This is slashdot. Accuracy is second class citizen here, unlike King Bias."
Bandwidth nearly free, hardware cheap, software free. All you need is time, skills, devotion and a good idea. Who needs VC? Back in 1999 people where shedding millions just to get a proper DB up and running. Nowadays all it takes is two clicks of a mouse and a 3 minute download. Hell, you can get yourself a new server after working a few extra shifts at Mc Donalds if the need arises. My cheap-ass PDA has more horsepower than my workstation back then. It's the age of Cyberpunk, pure and simple.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
Amen. The biggest thing Digg needs is uber editors. SOme diggers would scream, but they need this because all too often some stupid or inaccurate story gets to the front page. In accurate stories need to be moved off much quicker and retractions put up as well. Digg is what it would be like to see the Slashdot submission queue in my opinion. Slashdot only puts up the quality posts/stories and the fact that most discussions on Slashdot are MUCH better then they are on digg. Digg only goes to two levels of post (won't let you reply to a reply...how stupid is that?) and in so many diggs have I seen a thread degenerate into flame wars MUCH quicker. Digg really needs to investigate:
1. A Editor or uber digger who can immedeately remove a post from the front page that is inaccurate or totally lame. You can't depend on the masses to do this for you.
2. Deeper comment system.
3. Better moderation.
Slashdot has all of those and a bit more. While I think Slashdot should try and be a little more like digg, they should not go whole hog. Let the readers of Slashdot vote on the submission queue, but the ultimate decision of what goes on the front page should still remain on the Slashdot editors. It never ceases to amaze me of the utter crap that gets digged to the digg.com frontpage. You think Slashdot is bad about the dupes? Digg is 10 times worse!
Gorkman