What's Missing: A Web 2.0 Critique

I have been barraged by new Web 2.0 apps over the past several months, several new companies a week: and sometimes more. They, at times, start to blur together, and I have a hard time differentiating one from the other: witness the score I got recently on this test conflating Star Wars characters from Web 2.0 companies.

But even though there is a seemingly endless stream of new startups, I am surprised at how tightly clustered they seem to be: after all, how many bookmarking or social search tools do we need? So I thought I would touch on some areas where there seems to be less action, or in some cases none at all, and try to steer new entrants into those areas, some of which might be more productive than another photo sharing app. And, in true Web 2.0 fashion, I am looking at my world, my business, and my life, for inspiration and ideas about what's missing, for me.

• The Selling Of Things -- Although 37signals has announced the upcoming Sunrise, and maybe scared away a lot of competitors, I am astonished that there seems to be so little competition in the CRM area. Isn't there some 21st century insight just waiting to be exploited? Or is sales somehow immune to the web revolution going on in media, politics, and ecommerce? A few years ago, it seemed that social networking solutions, like LinkedIn and OpenBC, might revamp conventional selling, but that seems to not have happened.

  I personally dropped out of the social networks last year, because there was too much spam. But I still need to track the process of discussions about potential advisory engagements. I need to create proposals, and track possible cash flow. Right now, I manage this with a variety of tools that don't interoperate well. I track status of discussions mostly in email, or, when they become relatively advanced, I create a Basecamp project. I draft proposals in Writely -- I like the UI better that Basecamp's Writeboards, based on Textile -- and share them with clients.

  But I would like to see the end of a proposal -- start of an engagement -- dovetail (a business mashup?) with invoicing and accounting, project management, and collaboration tools. Are we ever going to see the maturation of Web 2.0 architecture so that such things will be commonplace?
  

• The Buying Of Things -- I have long maintained that "in the future, all ecommerce will be socialized." But there is really not enough innovation going on. With the exception of new offerings like MyPickList (disclosure: an advisory clients in which I hold a financial interest) and Edgeio, very little is going on that advances the way that bloggers or MySpacers recommend products. Affiliate links are ok, but is that all there is?

  People traveling to the Bay Area would do well to follow my recommendations for a great lunch spot near Market (The Slanted Door or the 21st Ammendment), or a cheap but central hotel in Palo Alto (The Cardinal), but there is not real way for me to play and get paid for such advice.

  And even if I could, why are these transactions taking place out of context? Where the reader changes context to an Expedia page or the like. Can't we figure out how to use Ajax goodness to have the reservation for lunch be captured right in the blog post about the Slanted Door?
  

• Crazy Busy -- The core of my life is the 'crazy busy' swirl, and there is no application that really helps me keep organized. I find that some apps play a role -- like Basecamp -- but there is no one place where I can really keep the various elements organized. I have already written about the biggest flaw in Basecamp: the lack of federation that leads to me having four or five login ids, since many of my clients are using Basecamp too, and for each project someone has to be the host.

  Calendars are too limited (its not just about time, although time plays a role in everything), and to do's are too concrete feeling for many things when they first come onto my viewscreen.

  What I'd like is more like a free form database, where snippets can be saved, ideas and emails tossed in, and everything can be tagged, and searched. Hierarchical project models -- like Basecamp or Foldera -- are based on an exclusionary model: something is in a project, and therefore not in any other project. eSnips seems to have some of the features I am talking about, although it is based on a folder model, so that will have to wait for a fuller examination, later this week.

  In my dream app, date and time is just another kind of tag, and could lead to snippets being associated with a calendar-style view of the information being managed. Or a contact style view for things tagged 'contact'. Or a to-do view for things tagged 'to-do'. And so on. And of course, I would like the tool to support a rich collaboration model, so that I could share my snippets with others, and vice versa.

  So this last area is more of a wishlist for an app that would replace various inadequate personal information management tools. There are dozens of not-quite-good-enough tools in this area, and I may seem to be running counter to my original argument of trying to get new innovators to look in new corners, but this area is one at the heart of the mess in my life. And in yours, too, I bet.

What this comes down to is a call for true invention: new and innovative ideas, not just a slightly different riff on meme tracking, or yet another email app, or just a different interface for photo sharing.

People have real needs, real bottlenecks in their personal and business lives, real work needs to get done. Can't we get to it? I have real hopes that technology can actually make things better, and many of the apps I use everyday do that. But there is so much left to do.

tags: web+2.0, basecamp, esnips, crazy+busy, web+2.0+critique

Comments

[Paul Gladen]

Sign me up for the "Crazy Busy" app. I've also come up short hunting for something that can integrate different components of my business activities.

Perhaps as well as enabling people to collaborate someone should focus on getting all these Web 2.0 apps to collaborate! Most of the functionality I need seems to be out there it's just not connected.

[Bill Seitz]

I think a big point of Web2.0 is not to look for one app that "does it all", but to have separate apps with InterOp.

Seems like you need some wiki spaces for note-taking, perhaps migrating some notes from a personal space to a shared space...

[Fred Stutzman]

You're absolutely right about unmet information needs - there are a lot of applications left to be built that would answer information needs and integrate seamlessly into our lives. I've been looking for a RSS clearinghouse of information...something I wrote about here.

[Natalie Ferguson]

What about accounting? Will we have almost our entire organisations online then have to revert back to a semi-online/completely offline dinosaur of an accounting package? :)
Paul, I htink you're right, each comapny should focus on their little bit of the puzzle. Companies like Netvibes are already working towards integrating all these apps together

[Michael Sampson]

Stowe, you raise some great points that I will take into consideration with respect to Foldera going forward. Thanks.

Paul, perhaps Foldera should try a new tag line: "For Calming that Crazy Busy Swirl". This is what I found attractive about Foldera's ideas, and why I joined. I need it myself ... good to hear I'm not alone.

Bill, I hear what you say about the intent of Web 2.0 being separate applications with interoperability, but there are often commercial and business reasons why Web 2.0 companies don't pursue such things. From the individual's perspective, whilst techno-geeks may delight in the crafting of a collection of tools, there is a real cost in terms of increased complexity, higher coordination effort, lost cohesiveness, etc, in having stuff in lots of different places. At least, that's my conclusion on the collaboration side of the equation, and is what we're working on at Foldera.

Thanks for listening.

Best,
Michael Sampson
Global VP of Word-of-Mouth Marketing
Foldera, Inc.

[Charles Jolley]

When we started Sproutit (http://www.sproutit.com), we considered building a Web 2.0-ish CRM app to begin with. We eventually decided against it because after talking to a lot of small businesses, we found that most people don't really understand CRM. They needed to do all the tasks CRM can help with, but the whole package (and even the term itself) was too confusing to be used by many people.

Instead, we decided to attack the problem piece by piece. We started with the problem people said they had the biggest problem (incoming sales and support [and fan] mail) and then we will move on to others as we introduce new products in the coming year.

So, some people are working in this area. Sproutit Mailroom is one of them, of course. 37signals, JadedPixel, Blinksale and DabbleDB are tackling parts of this problem.

[Jim]

@"Crazy Busy": You need Evernote. It is that app. And the collaboration part is on the way. You need Evernote.