web attention deficit disorder
Union Square Ventures (via Marco):
Two things will need to happen if the recent pace of innovation on the web is going to be sustained over the next few years. The next generation of services will need to have an impact on the real world and the real economy, not just an attention economy driven by self expression and discovery online. These new services will also need to reach real people, many of who use few if any web services today.
We can post and comment and tweet and tag and follow all we want in cyberspace; but if it ultimately doesn’t change anything in real space, we haven’t really accomplished anything.
July 23rd, 2008 at
I totally agree
July 23rd, 2008 at
Yes, we all need to realize that the internet is nothing to take for granted.
One day….it may just disappear
…yes, I’m going three for three today on video postings.
July 23rd, 2008 at
whoops, copy and paste hates me right now, wrong video
Corrected Link –> Here
July 24th, 2008 at
I don’t agree. The internet, for all its ephemeral nature, which it shares with all the print media, unless you are wrapping fish in the day old papers, has had a tremendous influence on society. Politicians can no longer tell one story in one part of the country and another elsewhere. Their feet are held to the fire by the internet. Also, fewer things can be done in government secretly because of the eyes and ears of the internet. Those are real services that the internet performs for society and it changes things in real space.
Economically, the internet is also an increasingly valuable tool. Companies are making an increasing amount of money selling on the internet, and with the economic downturn, fewer people will be willing to drive all over the place to buy things, and will use the internet.
Just last night I spend an hour watching Hank Williams and Eddie Arnold perform. That was certainly valuable, and free.
July 24th, 2008 at
Interesting that this is coming from a venture capital firm whose portfolio is composed of ephemeral web products like delicious, twitter, tumblr, etc.. They do have some very useful products like feedburner for RSS syndication, indeed for job search, etc.. I guess he’s suggesting that they will be focusing more on those products going forward.
The idea web services don’t impact the “real economy” is absurd. Web services have always been about the real economy from day one. The Internet is the biggest fucking store the world has ever seen. Those with their heads so far up the web 2.0 sphincter may have difficulty seeing this.
July 25th, 2008 at
Got to say, I think this is total Bull Shit-
Maybe the types of internet innovations will change, but I don’t think the amount of them are going to fall off. Folks create these applications in the hopes of making money off of them or filling a need they feel exists. Usually this is not exclusive to one or the other.
Also, personally I feel that the folks at Union Square Venture can go fuck themselves for asserting that the people who are currently using new web innovations are not “real people” and also that all of this web stuff has no effect on the “real world” or the “real economy.”
First off I’d like to point out that the internet is part of the ‘real world.’ Real people use it and spend real dollars, it effects the real economy, just ask Jeff Bezos ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeff_Bezos ).
If applications like Facebook and Twitter have such a minimal impact on the ‘real world,’ how come Union Square Venture has a Facebook page ( http://www.facebook.com/pages/Union-Square-Ventures/6342949079 ) and Hasbro has a multi-million dollar lawsuit in place against the creator of a Facebook application ( http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2008/07/24/financial/f115107D30.DTL&tsp=1 )?
July 25th, 2008 at
Matt: I totally agree. They wrote this gibberish because they are pushing Meetup, which seems like a cool company, but the ephemeral-seeming web has been bringing real people together in real life since it started.