Web 2.0 is Dead, Long Live Openness

An interesting post from Tom Foremski, who, even if he doesn't always grok the underlying dynamics of open source and its offshoots, is certainly plugged into the right people in Silicon Valley, and is very sharp about spotting trends there:

Whenever I meet with VCs I've noticed that there is a growing distaste for Web 2.0 startups. The "Web 2.0" term, in connection with a startup, and as a collection of concepts, is very tired in this community.

I think this is good news. Although I've used "Web 2.0" as a shorthand for a group of sites/services/technologies, what is much more important are the driving forces behind them. And those, quite simply, are openness, sharing and the Net-based, distributed methodology pioneered by open source. The more we concentrate on those core currents underneath, and the less on the trendy froth on top, the better.

Big Blue's Cunning Ploy

Clever:

IBM, the world's largest computer company, has a successful venture capital group operating in the heart of Silicon Valley, yet it makes no investments in startup companies. Instead, it tells VC firms what types of startups it might want to acquire and waits for the Silicon Valley innovation machine to do the rest.

Google at 500

I don't get very excited over share prices. I've never owned shares, and as a journalist I don't think I should. But the news that Google's share price has hit the $500 dollar mark, although utterly arbitrary, is as good a moment as any to pause for a little reflection.

There's a nice roundup of fun things to know on Silicon Valley Watcher, which pulls out some interesting graphical and numerical nuggets from other postings, and saves you and me the trouble.

But there's one thing to bear in mind against the background of all this euphoria. Google has become such a bellwether for the Web 2.0 generation, that once its share price falls steeply and significantly, it will take the entire market with it. Don't believe me? Just take a look at what happened when the share price of Microsoft, the Web 1.0 equivalent of Google, crashed half a decade ago: pop!