Web Blew-point-Oh

Has anyone noticed that one major difference between “Web 1.0″ and “Web 2.0″ (both meaningless constructs) is the shift in who the primary bogeyman is? You know, the person at whom the hype-sters and hucksters so easily toss their stones?

From the worst of the lot, these stones are usually tossed to generate the buzz they’ll need to achieve their goals.

In Web 1.0, when the goal was backing from Wall Street for an endless string of IPOs, the bogeymen were the economists and analysts who insisted that business and economic cycles were exactly that: cyclical. At the time, the hype-sters and hucksters (and those who bought in to their hyping and hucking) gleefully repeated– endlessly and relentlessly– that the Web had changed all that. Those who insisted otherwise simply didn’t get it and were doomed (DOOMED, I say!) to evolve or perish.

For Web 2.0, where the goal is now to sell your Consulting 2.0 services or to be bought out by larger players (since the NASDAQ is in the dumps and the appetite for untested and untried tech IPOs has waned), the targets are media and advertising companies, and the new generation of hype-sters and hucksters are using the same language as before: evolve or die.

(But I’m sure they’re giving us their honest, unsolicited opinion, right, and it’s not just a cynical ploy to sell themselves and their start-ups.)

And who is buying the occasional 2.0-ish company? Why, media and advertising companies of course. How quickly we forget and leap willy-nilly into the unknown based on a song and dance (a tired one at that– you’d think as much singing and dancing as we do, we’d know better).

So as a refresher, how’d the cycle-less Web 1.0 work out, guys? Yeah.

But don’t worry; I’m sure v2.0 will work out much, much better.

2 commentsEmail Article Wednesday, July 12th, 2006 at 09:34pm Mack Simpson

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Technorati Tags: Advertising, Media, Web 2.0, Hype

Paypal Gets Lucky

I talked about Paypal’s new hella-smart “text2buy” feature back in March and then again in April, so I guess it’s time for an update.

Text2Buy will be integrated into the September edition of Lucky Magazine, enabling readers to fast-track the purchase of items they see in the magazine. Texting the code of the item to a Paypal address will purchase the widget and set it to ship to the address on file.

I’m telling you, forget consumer generated content for now. Text2Buy will be a killer marketing ap and the inclusion of a text2buy code in your gorgeous print ad will enable your clients to tell immediately if you walk it like you talk it. And you’d better believe that, once the text2buy idea spreads, your clients will begin demanding it.

Although analysts estimate mobile marketing spending at less than $50 million annually, there is an expectation that the market could grow to nearly $1.5 billion in the next four years.

That’s serious growth.

Tip ‘o the hat to Adverlab for pointing me to the story.

1 commentEmail Article Wednesday, July 12th, 2006 at 05:01pm Mack Simpson

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Technorati Tags: Advertising, Text2Buy, Lucky Magazine, Paypal

A Manly Headbutt of Truth

The She Monkey and I have a disagreement over the whole Zidane headbutting episode; I can understand why he did it, but her? Not so much, and it’s something I’ve written off to a “women are from Venus, men are from Mars” difference in internal psychology (and possibly even biology).

I was going to write out my position here on Adverb and call it my last statement on the whole mess, going into great detail on the whats, whys and wherefores, cutting my beloved wife’s argument into tiny little shreds and tossing them out the window, old school New York ticker tape parade-style.

But in a perfect-pitch piece that perfectly sums up my side of the He Monkey vs. She Monkey argument, Oliver beat me to it.

The good news is now I don’t have to write the post; the bad news is I have to find something productive to do instead.

12 commentsEmail Article Wednesday, July 12th, 2006 at 09:44am Mack Simpson

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Technorati Tags: Zinedine, Zidane, Headbutt, France, Italy, FIFA, World Cup