Web 2.0 is about harnessing the potential of the Internet in a more collaborative and peer-to-peer manner with emphasis on social interaction.

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December 12, 2006

Dimensions of differentiation in Web 2.0 business models

The influx of Web 2.0 based startups has raised interesting questions on their survival and business models. In some sorts there is a de ja vu of the events which occured 6-7 years back during the dot com boom and burst. Web 2.0 based business models are attempting to differentiate themselves along the following dimensions: 

  1. Differentiated User Interfaces
    • E.g. Netvibes
  2. Differentiated peer-to-peer interactions and collaboration mechanisms
    • E.g. Blogger, Google Docs and Spreadsheets
  3. Differentiated Network participation
    • E.g. del.icio.us
  4. Differentiated collective intelligence creation
    • E.g. Flickr, Digg, Craigslist
  5. Differentiated aggregation mechanisms
    • E.g. Housingmaps

 These dimensions of differentiation are essentially data/information based, technology based or network/scale based. It would be interesting to see the combination of models which are able to generate sustainable competitive advantage.   

 

 

 

 

Posted by Dr. Jai Ganesh at 04:03 AM | | Comments (4) | TrackBacks (0)

December 05, 2006

Search engines vs. Wikipedia

This thought came up after a discussion with my colleague Srinivas Padmanabhuni. Information sources such as Wikipedia could pose a real threat to search engines such as Google. In most searches, Wikipedia anyway comes in the first 5 hits or at the most the first search result page. So why should users go through a search engine which is anyway directing them to Wikipedia.

 

Moreover Wikipedia is based on Folksonomy (user generated content and tags) which in some ways ensures some bit of credibility. It is in some ways a throwback on the initial search model of Yahoo wherein they employed a dedicated bunch of people to create taxonomies to enable quick searches. But those were the times when the Internet content was limited. Now since we have the massive user base which is able to collaboratively create taxonomies, this parallel model gains in importance.

 

The alternative school of thought is of collaborative existence wherein the search engines would leverage the user generated tags in Wikipedia.

 

 

 

 

Posted by Dr. Jai Ganesh at 09:43 AM | | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)