MediaVidea

Looking for the next big Web 2.0 thing?

The Observer does a gushing piece on Web 2.0; how easy it is today to start a business; and so forth. It goes on to predict the winners of tomorrow, but I would rather guess that this is at best a good PR piece for the companies touted as the future.

They have picked promising startups from the usual fields - Video, Music, Search, Classifieds, Social Networking.

Blue Dot: The new MySpace
Where you click on a blue dot on their screen when you find something you like on the web, storing it and sharing it with your friends.

A lot like StumbleUpon.

Loopt: The new YouTube
The big idea is being able to see where everyone is by looking down at a phone. Phone owners can share this information with friends' phones or computers for $2.99 per month in the US.

Huh? Why would I want that?


Pandora: The new iTunes
You type in a favorite song or artist, then find songs with a 'genetic match' and play them like a radio station. The free service is supported by advertising, and has four million listeners.

This can be good. Let’s see who buys this one.

Powerset: The new Google?
A Semantic Web idea based on pursuing the Holy Grail: 'natural language' search engine. They haven’t even launched the search engine but already is being compared to Google. That is unfortunate. Hype can kill.

It will have to be careful and come up with the goods, otherwise….

Yelp: The new Craigslist
Volunteer reviewers, or Yelpers, write about their local restaurants, shops, doctors - anything worth reviewing.

Let’s see how it scales up, like Craigslist has.

posted by Pramit Singh @ 12:44 PM