I Gotta Go
Due to a combination of business, the Super Bowl, Mardi Gras, family and women, The Drama 2.0 Show will be broadcasting on an abbreviated schedule over the next week and a half.
Thanks to the fantastic typing skills of my sexretary, I will still manage to dictate wonderful posts that will continue to be broadcast daily at during the week, so be sure to tune in there.
I’ll be back before you know it.
Everybody knows I’m not a huge fan of Facebook. I think the company is extremely overvalued, has scaled far too rapidly and is led by an awkward, underdeveloped adult (he’s 24, not 14) who is increasingly finding himself out of his league. Facebook is the epitome of Bubble 2.0: billions of dollars worth of hype yet nowhere near billions of dollars worth of substance.
As readers of The Drama 2.0 Show know, I usually write detailed analyses that back up the positions I take. My position today is this: Facebook is fucked. In this post, however, I don’t plan to provide any real analysis; I will instead let visual evidence speak for itself because I really feel that nothing more is needed.
What’s With All the Love?
What is with the increasing amount of love I’ve been receiving lately? This sort of shit:
http://www.profy.com/2008/01/28/web-20-didnt-invent-the-wheel/
Are you reading The Drama 2.0 Show? If not, you should be…The Drama 2.0 Show, which I assume most people interested in Web 2.0 are already reading, doesn’t take that tack. Instead, it focuses on debunking much of the Pollyanne-esque commentary that I think every blog about Web 2.0 sees.
http://alisaleonard.blogspot.com/2008/01/drama-2.html
Drama 2.0 is fast becoming one of my favorite blogs…I feel that I kind of love/hate Drama 2.0…like he’s right but would be so fun to bust his balls over stuff…Well done Drama on playing up your pretention just enought to be charming….
I’m Getting Tired of “Community”
After the Crunchies, Michael Arrington at TechCrunch wrote a post entitled Crunchies Wrap Up - A Big Thank You To The Community. It made me realize one of the things I hate most about Web 2.0: “community.”
At the highest level, Web 2.0 is all about community and I don’t have a problem with that. What I am tired of is the fact that Web 2.0 entrepreneurs and companies have taken the concept of “community” too far. They’ve put it on some sort of sacred pedestal that I believe is nothing more than feel-good marketing BS. Everybody in the world of Web 2.0 loves to talk about the importance of community, how community makes Web 2.0 what it is, etc. and while these things are true, the extent to which entrepreneurs and companies parade their appreciation for their communities has, in my opinion, become little more than meaningless pandering and patronizing. And that’s neither endearing to nor respectful of a valued community.
TechStars Accepting Applications from New Crop of Rejects
TechStars, a Colorado-based YCombinator copycat, recently started accepting applications for 2008. What does TechStars offer accepted applicants? To quote TechCrunch:
TechStars offers up to $15,000 in seed funding ($5,000 per founder, max $15,000) to broke entrepreneurs with a good startup idea. Ten winners will be selected, and winners will need to spend most of their time in Boulder over the Northern summer building out their ideas. In return, TechStars takes 5% of the equity in each startup. Winners have full use of TechStar’s offices, access to legal advice, and are able to tap into a strong list of startup mentors to help them build their idea (list here). Non-US companies can apply, although must be able to legally spend most of summer in Colorado.
Web 2.0: A Culture of Frugality?
Erick Schonfeld at TechCrunch wrote a post arguing that the gloomy outlook for corporate IT spending in 2008 is a good thing for Web 2.0 (well, at least the “Enterprise 2.0″ portion of it). I wasn’t really intrigued by the topic of the post (probably because I disagreed with its premise the minute I read it), but Erick did make a comment that jumped out at me:
The culture of frugality that is still worn as a badge of honor at many Web 2.0 startups will serve them well if (when) an IT-spending slowdown hits.
Mark Zuckerberg: I Apologize for Global Warming
In my new parody column, Letters from Mark Zuckerberg, a Fake MZ will apologize for all the trouble he’s causing as he experiments and tries to make the world a better place.
About three years ago, Facebook started trying to help poor people without access to adequate heat by pumping large amounts of methane into the atmosphere. We succeeded in warming the globe but now scientists have agreed that global warming poses a major threat to the human race and it’s clear that we made a mistake by encouraging too much global warming. While I am disappointed with our mistakes, we appreciate all the feedback we have received from the human population. I’d like to discuss what we have learned.
Duncan Riley: I Think We Found Your Brother from Another Mother
Apparently one of the TechCrunch commenters whose asinine comments were featured in my post about the death of “real journalism” fell in love with The Drama 2.0 Show and has subsequently . It might be the most delicious Kool Aid I’ve tasted thus far. In fact, I almost pictured Duncan Riley while reading it and therefore I change my recommendation regarding TechCrunch’s free 23andMe Kit: we need to find out if the author is Duncan Riley’s brother from another mother.
Rupert Murdoch Gets It
I like Rupert Murdoch. You simply can’t argue with success. The way he expanded News Corp. into a global media powerhouse is nothing short of remarkable and even if you don’t agree with his beliefs, I think any reasonable person has to respect what he’s done. Most recently, he’s continued to impress. The expansion of his empire into the digital space has seen a number of shrewd moves, most notably his acquisition of MySpace for $580 million. He went on to ink a $900 million MySpace advertising deal with Google and given that Facebook, which still lags MySpace by a considerable margin in terms of registered users, traffic and revenues, has been raising money at a $15 billion valuation, it’s safe to say that Murdoch scored a coup d’état with MySpace.
Discussion on the Death of “Real Journalism” Filled with Kool Aid
I thought that the geniuses at Davos were supposed to be saving the world, but apparently this includes finding a way to “save” journalism. If you are one of the few people who is reading the newspaper instead of the blogosphere, you never hear the news: “real journalism” is dying and Craigslist and blogs like TechCrunch are to blame.
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Drama 2.0 spikes the Web 2.0 kool aid by providing critical analyses of Web 2.0, its people, its startups and its impact on the world of media. Other topics are explored when Drama 2.0 has been drinking too much 1975 Dom Perignon. Read more about the Internet's version of Keyser Söze here.
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