The Death of Kiko
Rich White, a fellow programmer geek and new found friend I met at Scoble's "Off The Grid", has a good write-up about the death of Kiko, an online calendar.
Is this the start of the Web 2.0 bust like everyone is saying? Well, I'm certainly not an expert, but I see some pretty significant differences between "Bust 1.0" and "Bust 2.0"
- "Bust 1.0" was about a lot of people, VC's and individuals, losing A LOT of money. We're talking about billions of dollars.
- "Bust 2.0" doesn't have the same level of personal financial investment so a bust won't have a snowballs chance in hell of affecting the economy. The VC's can still get screwed, but no one really cares about them :-)
- "Bust 1.0" caused a significant number of employees to lose their jobs. Unemployment in the the Mecca of Tech skyrocketed.
- "Bust 2.0" will cause people who are running their sites mostly as a second job or a hobby to become unemployed. There will not be 10's of thousands of people laid off because there aren't 10's of thousands of people actually working on Web 2.0 sites. Sure there are many, many people contributing to Web 2.0 sites, but the number of people behind the scenes is nowhere near the same ratio as it was in Web 1.0.
Those points aside, is "Bust 2.0" a bad thing or a good thing? It doesn't matter. Content is the only thing that matters ;-)

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