Kyle Brady: A Blog

Web 2.0 ala Mainstream

R/WW had an article today about “Web 2.0 Hit the Mainstream”…

So, 37% use a “web application” on a “regular basis”? Hmm… let’s think for a second. What do you imagine this “web application” mainstream users are …using?

Web 2.0
W3 R w3b 2[dot]OH!

The Obvious:

Gmail / Hotmail / Yahoo Mail / [some other email app]
Google Calendar / [some other calendar app]
YouTube
Facebook
Flickr
MySpace
Ebay / PayPal

The Less Obvious:

Google Reader / [some other RSS aggregator]
Box.net / DivShare / [some other file sharing site]
Digg / [other"social news" sites]

Those are things that have useful integration into daily life, or are used by enough people to have become beneficial for use. But what are people not using mainstream?

Potentially Useful, But Not “Big Enough” …Yet

Pownce / Twitter / [any sort of messaging community]
Goodreads / [targeted social networks, mimicking real-life situations like book discussion groups]
Blogs

Not Useful Whatsoever, And Rightly Ignored

SecondLife / Gaia / [any type of online "virtual world"]
[stupid things like "Pirate Poking"]
Ning / Metacafe / Imeem / [all of the sites that claim to be the "next [whatever]” of “[something]“]
Mint / [other sites that you give your bank data]
[anything else that TechCrunch typically loves, but is a copy of something, or has no actual purpose]

Seriously people. When you are thinking of what new project you can start, and hope to be rich off of… you have to think of the end result. Don’t create things that won’t make a dent in the world outside of Silicon Valley or the early adopters crowd. Don’t believe me? Think about the target audience of the successful web-based businesses… what does Amazon do? Or Google? Or AIM?

Stupid Cute
Let’s be smart about this…