Discuss: There are no more Google/Facebook size opportunities on the web.
I feel like all the big 1+ billion online opportunities have already been grabbed, and there's nothing big remaining. Does anyone else feel this way?
There are actually billion dollar opportunities opening up all the time with every new platform. Look at how many companies the Facebook API spawned; Zynga is valued at billions of dollars and is 3 years old. They make dinky flash games for gods sakes. Playdom was acquired for around $800 million by Disney.
iPhone and Android apps have made millionaires out of small teams of developers. The makers of Tap Tap Revenge, a series of iPhone games, were grossing millions in revenue.
There are ALWAYS opportunities. Obviously fewer billion dollar ones, but who cares otherwise.
Specifically, you would create an account on it, and then had access to a rather limited blog mechanism (you could download much better blogging software) and a relatively lame photo gallery (why would I trust this site with my photos? it isn't even good at browsing them). You could then make these things called "groups" in which you could add your friends, assuming they also had an account (and how likely would that be, right?).
The worst part was that he had this "API" by which third parties could write new applications that plugged into this framework... sounds great, but it meant that all the third party apps had to use HTTP requests (dude: slow) to get access to the data. He tried to make it feel better by making all of the queries based on SQL (insecure? seriously: stupid).
OMG was that a stupid idea. ;P
user: sidder
created: 15 minutes ago
Another question : what kind of new technologies have the potential to enhance the web ? telepresence,AI, augmented-reality and 3d-printing are probably just a few. every enhancement could easily open new markets.
In theory the more people fussing around some industry, the more tools they create for it, the more possibilities there are and so more money can be made. That's been true for scientific and technological progress overall, but individual industries stagnate.
I understand the feeling, you're out of ideas or whatever, but there are actually more possibilities now than there were when Googleface was starting out, in theory.
In practice industries stagnate for non-technical, social reasons. Too many people join, create too much fuss, the best people might leave and create a boom elsewhere.
Google proved that wrong.
There are many 1+ billion opportunities. Think of the ideas that started Google / Facebook - Pagerank and a class hand-book. Had these ideas been explained to me as starting successful billion dollar companies, I would have laughed.
Not to say that that all laughable ideas create billion dollar companies. However, I think the laughable part is the interesting bit. Maybe we find these ideas humorous because they force us to look at the world in a different way.
Look at how Microsoft surprised IBM, then Google suprised Microsoft and now Facebook look like they might threaten Google's empire.