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
...a bitter and angry Rob Malda told reports looking for a quote to "Get the hell off my lawn".
Not entirely. You would probably only here of Xfire if you are a gamer. It's a Game tracking/IM type service. That's the jist of what it is. They have recently been bought by Viacom however. (Why on earth Viacom wants such a service is beyond me).
The economy in a downfall, interest rates lower than the inflation, people with money trying hard to find a place for investment. That's what we have today.
On the other hand, not too many people want to go down the dangerous road of self employment in the IT sector after the dot.com bubble burst. More so since if you have experience, are a good coder, know your stuff and don't quote "web design" as the core feature of your CV, you have no troubles finding a moderately to well paying job. Those would be the people to go for self employment, though, because without any experience (and connections) in the market, self employment is suicide.
In other words, there's a lot of investment money and not many people daring to pick it up. It kinda feels like dot.com all over again.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
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
1992 called. They want their inflated ego back
Open Source Drum Kit, LPLC deve board - mjhdesigns.com
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!
Silicon Valley to Business Week: Get a grip!
Ok, so there are a number of "Web 2.0" entrepreneurs who aren't in it soley for the money. (Or equally likely, IMO, some entrepreneurs are now standing pat in the hopes of a bigger payday later... but that's another issue).
So what? Back in the "Web 1.0" days there were also a good number of folks who didn't immediately go off the deep end when VC money became available. I was personally involved with two startups just before the dotbomb burst, and both had offers that they turned down because they wanted to keep control. This is nothing new, despite the ridiculous article. (Another hint to BW: don't try for "hip"--you just come off as lame)
And the folks in the story are still definitely a minority, as far as I can tell. There are still lots of folks out there who are trying the old scam of trying to get VCs to give them money based on a business plan and a Flash demo. It's just that now instead of "we'll give it away at a loss, but make it up on volume" there's the "we'll create a 'community' and sell advertising" theme.
Nothing to see here. Move along.
Interested in a Flash-based MAME front end? Visit mame.danzbb.com
I really wish people would stop using version numbers where they don't belong...
There really should be some sort of service that lets you order someone to smack those people upside the head, preferably with a nice AJAX interface.
...the more they get the lame. And nothing is lamer than Digg and Kevin.
OK, in all fairness here's where I stand on Digg vs. Slashdot:
-Sort through the massive amount of crap on Digg for the latest news bits that might be worthwhile. On Digg it'a all about quantity, not quality. Or to put it another way, "How do we do it? VOLUME"!!!
-Hit Slashdot and find that some of the stories you found interesting on Digg are featured here and there is a better quality of discussion (amazingly) than there is on Digg. So this is where you get social. Digg is just an unsorted pile of crap.
-Yeah, I'm aware that the stories are "voted" to the front page by the readers. That's fine as long as your readers aren't idiots. The more popular Digg gets, the more idiots they collect. Therefore the quality of the front page represents what the idiots want to see. Not what actual, thinking readers are interested in.
Now, what I can also thank Digg for is the effect it's had on Slashdot. Not so much internally, but externally. I don't give a rat's ass if Taco and crew are scrambling to try and compete with Digg. That's not the effect I'm talking about. I'm talking about the somewhat homeopathic effect they've had on Slashdot. By becoming more popular, they've lured away most of the idiots. I've noticed that the level of discussion on Slashdot has improved since Digg 3.0 was unleashed. I think that a lot of the morons who annoyed the piss out of me after Slashdot became popular (I've been here since 1997 when I used to be CaptEno) couldn't resist that suction of stupid that Digg presented. The only negative effect I've seen is much slower story submission. Whereas the stories used to tick by quickly, now we're lucky if we see five new stories in a day.
-"...bad old ideas look confusingly fresh when they are packaged as technology" - Jaron Lanier (Digital Maoism on Edge.o
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
Techdirt puts this article into nice perspective.
Yeah he's got several million dollars and you've got a free t-shirt.
Wow, he sure is lame.