After a break from posting over the New Year, I decided to jot down a list of companies and online services that crossed my desk last year. Most of them are private companies (i.e. typically startups) since I figured everyone knows the offerings of Yahoo, Google and MSN anyways, although I included some of their recent aquisitions. As a VC, I have the privilege to spend a lot of my work hours looking for cool and innovative new apps and services on the Internet, and people often ask me:”So what new things are there on the web?”. Here you go…
And yes, it includes portfolio companies of the VC firm I work at and entries are not ranked in order of importance either. Sorry it’s such a long list - I played around with an expandable javascript menu, but it didn’t play nice with all browsers so I reverted to the simplistic approach…
Search and Discovery
Community and User-Generated Content
Tools and Productivity
Which ones did I miss - I would love to get some comments so I can add companies accordingly!
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Thanks, a very useful list.
Ironically, given your comment about RSS, your menus didn’t seem to work in Firefox/OSX (until I click on the ‘comments’ link), whereas they were rendered very effectively where I first saw them, in Bloglines…
Thanks…I just realized the same thing - I took out the menus for simplicity for now, maybe I can play a bit more with them and put them back. I have to work on my javascript skills… Please let me know if you still have trouble viewing it and thanks for the feedback!
Thank you for the mention of 4INFO Mobile Search! But, our site is located at http://www.4INFO.net (not .com). And yes, for the New Year, I’ve asked that someone figure out how to get the owner of 4INFO.com to communicate with us. Arggghhh!
Definitely a very good summary of the latest trendsetters for Internet 2.0
We’ve had some localised success with a online cityguide for Singapore www.hotspots.com/afterdark and we’ve been beta testing a social networking onw www.hotspotters.com
I’ve been tinkering with the idea of combining as a social networking site + travel kind of like judysbook but with a focus on lifestyle n travel in key destination cities. I’m wondering if you know of any companies or individuals that can partner with me on this?
180 News isn’t actually “user contributed” as much as user filtered. In this case the site gathers all the Big M news media stories and users choose which ones are actually important vs what we’re fed. It then links said stories off to technorati for what users care enough about to blog on that story. It’s a great signal from noise generator, both from “N”ews and “n”ews.
Another one of mine is ituneslove.com It’s really just a project, but one I really love. Users suggest their favorite songs/artists with links directly to iTunes samples. I wanted to start a music club of sorts to bring back some of the lost social environment of going to record store are peering over people’s shoulders to see what they’re buying and finding something I’d likely wouldn’t have found on my own. It also introduces “good randomnesses” which is missing from “listeners also bought” lists which tend to be monocultered.
great list, christian. Looks like a lot of work and great fun. Question: you have many competitors in the lists, where you have seen both business plans. Can you share some highlights without disclosing any confidential informations? Best wishes, Lars
Bob, thanks for the correction of the 4info link - I apologize for the mistake and it should be fixed now.
Steve, thanks for the comments - I wish I had a better classification for the different news sites, just wanted to point out the two approaches that seem to dominate today. However, I could see those categories blending together much as you describe more and more often as people use a combination of algorithmic and user-generated data for ranking.
Peter, just dropped you an email…
Lars, if you are looking for a general discussion of current business models on the web, and how we see them evolving etc. that could be something I could write about without disclosing anything proprietary of the companies I talk to….is that what you’d be inetrested in? That would mean I should put together a new post on that topic..:-)
yes, would be a cool topic. The entrepreneur allways sees his side, the VC sees in a competitive field 2-3 companies aiming at the same goal. I would like to get some of your insights in general.
Good way to get lots of Web 2.0 entrepreneurs to look at your weblog :). Link to them
Kevin
Thank you for including Simplybill in your list. You were right to question whether we were live as we’ve been in beta test for some time - but we’re now fully live! Thanks!
Hmmmm. Interesting…o
very interesting, but I don’t agree with you
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