Category: Web 2.0

Every third visitor of this humble site used Firefox to access it. Firefox – 34%, Internet Explorer 63%. The rest goes to Netscape, Safari, Opera and others.

This data (from Google Analytics) refers to March 2007. The usage of Firefox grow month over month. is very similar to the data presented by W3Schools which is the first result for “Browser Statistics” using Google (yet again).

Continue reading “Every Third Visitor uses Firefox”

Spotback allows instant rating and tagging for everything. I’ve installed their slider (below) and their sidebar widgets, and it looks quite good. Anyone can tag, rate and see relevant posts from other places.

It is currently in a closed beta. Spotback is in Israeli startup, and they seem to have nice people working for them (at least now when they are still small). More info on their blog, and in TechCrunch.

What do think of it? Is it cool? Is it too Web 2.0-ish? Is this a great way to find related and interesting information? Is it another annoying feature?

If you like rating but Spotback isn’t enough for you, check out TheGorb, where you can rate and view ratings of people by their email addresses. Cruel! At the time of the writing, they are featuring US presidential candidates on their home page.

The guys from the.co.ils are organizing the following event. I quote:

We are organizing an Internet event – TWS2007 , which is aimed at bringing entrepreneurs with great ideas and investors (VCs and angels) together.

The idea is to Identify and present up to 10 small startups with great technology and strong teams, who are seeking for funds and on the other hand, allow all other web entrepreneurs to mingle and approach the VCs and angles with no formal barriers.

This event looks very interesting.

I’m neither an entrepreneur, nor an investor but I’m definitely an Internet enthusiast with lots of ideas in my head. I’m always to lazy to do anything with those ideas, and I just let them fade out. Maybe this event will inspire me to be more serious…

We are seeing the first signs of a bubble in the hi-tech industry, like in early 1999. These signs can be well seen in the vast amount of start up companies and the excellent job market. The over valued stock market of the previous bubble isn’t here yet, but the steam is rising.

The job market is excellent nowadays for software programmers, especially for those with web expertise. I have personally felt it here in Israel in August. The papers are full with stories (Hebrew link) about companies offering very high salaries, and hearing their candidates say that they’ll “think about it”.

Tiny Israel isn’t the only place where the tech job market is hot. In the UK,web developers are in high demand as well. And of course, in the US, especially in Silicon valley (where most of the action takes place), there is enough evidence of a very attractive job market, with excellent predictions for this year.

But the stock markets are relatively solid. So where does the money come from?

Venture Capitals are pushing lots of money into startups, many times for companies who have many competitors in a very small niche. For example, the photo slide show creation field is quite crowded. FilmLoop fired most of their workers in an early stage, but there is still too much fuel out there.

Raising funds via VCs is not only for young start ups. IPOs are harder to make today than in the Bubble 1.0 days. To bypass it, some companies raise a significant cash from VCs. Brightcove got $59.5 million from investors! This kind of money is more typical to IPOs or acquisitions. Brightcove is a video sharing site, like Google’s Youtube, Metacafe, Daily Motion, and approximately 200 others. Brightcove has to be very very special for this sum.

And what about the bigger Web 2.0 companies that are trading? Yahoo, hit by competition and problems in management, has a price to earnings ratio of 35, which is not too high, but shiny Google has a P/E of 62 – overpriced (unless you believe this conspiracy theory).

Michael Arrington’s interesting post on TechCrunch explains why Web 2.0 isn’t a buuble. I see things differently and I do think we are seeing the early signs of it. Todd Dagres has a few more good arguments here.

How will we know when it bursts? Dave Winer says that signal will be the crash of Google’s stock. I disagree with him that Web 2.0 is totally dependent on Google, but I think its a good signal.

When will it happen? Well, prophecy is fools, but nevertheless, I bet that 2007 will see big growth in Web 2.0 activity, and that Bubble 2.0 will burst in the spring of 2008.

(I do hope that I’m wrong…)