Friday, October 28, 2005
Russell Beattie Notebook » Where’s The Ambition?:
"All these startups in my feeds lately are killing me! There are tons of them, but none seem to be doing anything particularly special. I mean, it’s nice that there’s a sort of rebirth of small startups, but there’s absolutely no sort of wow factor that I’ve seen. And no, this isn’t an anti-Web 2.0 style backlash: I really believe in the idea of the web as a platform. Amazon and eBay’s web services are perfect examples of platforms which have created huge value for both companies, as well as the developers using their APIs. That’s not the problem. It’s all these Flickr-wannabes, flip-it-quick companies that are bugging me...
My general problem is not really with the effort involved in the above types of apps and companies, I’m sure they’re all working hard as hell in their own way. It’s just both the innovation and the ambition of this stuff is so lacking. They all seem to be aiming at the quick hit. The simple win. Someone said to me today, most of these sites are just sort of features not actual services, and it’s true. It’s so depressing.
It just seems that no one is trying to change the world any more. No one is aiming to create “insanely great” products or do the impossible. Why not? Why are so many people grasping at the low-hanging fruit, when there’s so much more goodness for everyone if they just stretched a little higher?
That’s just on the product functionality side - I haven’t seen anything interesting on the business side either. No one seems to be coming up with the next interesting new business model. I’m not looking for anything wacky, but there’s got to be better ways for your site to make money than waiting for Google to send you an AdSense check every month. Seriously, everyone seems to think the Text Ad Train is just going to keep on rolling forever. It’s not. Where is the new innovation to keep things moving? Remember, Google stumbled upon the way to do it right, but someone came up with the Contextual Advertising concept first and his name was Bill Gross. Where is that type of new innovator?
Actually, where are all the personalities, period? Where is the hubris of Jobs? Where is the unrelenting focus of Gates? Where is the arrogance of Ellison? Come on, let’s get some new budding tech-industry stars out there! I want to see someone’s face on the cover of freakin’ Time soon, you know? It’s been at least a year since Larry and Sergey… Come on! Who’s next?..."
"All these startups in my feeds lately are killing me! There are tons of them, but none seem to be doing anything particularly special. I mean, it’s nice that there’s a sort of rebirth of small startups, but there’s absolutely no sort of wow factor that I’ve seen. And no, this isn’t an anti-Web 2.0 style backlash: I really believe in the idea of the web as a platform. Amazon and eBay’s web services are perfect examples of platforms which have created huge value for both companies, as well as the developers using their APIs. That’s not the problem. It’s all these Flickr-wannabes, flip-it-quick companies that are bugging me...
My general problem is not really with the effort involved in the above types of apps and companies, I’m sure they’re all working hard as hell in their own way. It’s just both the innovation and the ambition of this stuff is so lacking. They all seem to be aiming at the quick hit. The simple win. Someone said to me today, most of these sites are just sort of features not actual services, and it’s true. It’s so depressing.
It just seems that no one is trying to change the world any more. No one is aiming to create “insanely great” products or do the impossible. Why not? Why are so many people grasping at the low-hanging fruit, when there’s so much more goodness for everyone if they just stretched a little higher?
That’s just on the product functionality side - I haven’t seen anything interesting on the business side either. No one seems to be coming up with the next interesting new business model. I’m not looking for anything wacky, but there’s got to be better ways for your site to make money than waiting for Google to send you an AdSense check every month. Seriously, everyone seems to think the Text Ad Train is just going to keep on rolling forever. It’s not. Where is the new innovation to keep things moving? Remember, Google stumbled upon the way to do it right, but someone came up with the Contextual Advertising concept first and his name was Bill Gross. Where is that type of new innovator?
Actually, where are all the personalities, period? Where is the hubris of Jobs? Where is the unrelenting focus of Gates? Where is the arrogance of Ellison? Come on, let’s get some new budding tech-industry stars out there! I want to see someone’s face on the cover of freakin’ Time soon, you know? It’s been at least a year since Larry and Sergey… Come on! Who’s next?..."
Comments:
Post a Comment
