Everyone loves sensational news. Declare this or that as dead and the readers come in hordes to pay their last visit. In sensational journalism, my goal is to reach a level where I would declare anything or everything dead on arrival. My ploy is to ‘earn respect’ (read fear) in the minds of brand owners and marketing folks. They should dread to see their brand featured on my website. It is in this modest endeavor today I started my research on the mighty Yahoo! There was no panic on the street when someone from the respected Wired declared as “the web” dead. I followed through on this story. Along the way stuff like “delicious” made it to the epitaph bookmark! My extra smart analytical engine sensed vulnerability in Yahoo’s Castle and to build my story I called a friend who covers Microsoft.
On the condition of complete anonymity my source was willing to give me spoof on Google. He said people are not interested in knowing if Yahoo is dead, they are only waiting for biopsy report! I was a bit disappointed in arriving so late on the crime scene. The spoof on Google was encouraging; I learned that Microsoft was clandestinely working on a project which will put Google in its algorithmically defined place. “Perhaps an api_call to find stuff while people spend time on their favorite MSN websites”, I suggested, “Bingo!” he said. You will have to keep that one off the record, he suggested!
What about Microsoft? Shit, they surprised the market with this Kinectthingy and people are not complaining about Windows7 anymore. Hmmm what about cloud computing. Everyone seems to riding on the Cloud Hype, can I declare that as dead create fears in the minds of investors. Well I don’t have enough data on the Cloud. Let me not confuse my audience and stick to the story on Google. Everyone knows that the Wave is dead; corollary to this can we assume HTML5is dead? Someone on HTML5 speculated that Google will eventually give-up Flash support in favour of its VP8 video codes. What would that mean for Adobe? If VP8 fails to gain ground what would that do to Chrome?
The collaborative spirit of Web 2.0 seems to be lost. The RSS feeds from Facebook or Twitter are not openly available on Feedburner. The pictures from Picassa cannot be easily shared on the Facebook. The popular platforms control the conversations on the web, open API’s are its business transactions. In the cruel world of business, Web 2.0 is dead. I am placing all my bets on Zynga, for churning out pure unconditional addictive entertainment.
What are your views, where do you think we are heading?
Disclaimer: The views expressed in this blog are not of the author. The companies listed must consider hiring the author to get to the bottom of this!
