Fads come and go, and between the buzz of whether we’ll be switching to electric powered cars anytime soon, or if the $100 notebook will catch on, there’s the buzzing question of whether or not we’re in another dot-com bubble. With the recent hype of Web 2.0 ideologies such as tagging, blogging, and mash-ups, its easy to get overwhelmed and even – dare I say it – scared of this whole thing blowing up in our faces. But the truth of the matter is that there is an underlying difference between the dot-com bubble of the late 90’s and what we’re seeing happen in the web industry today.
With the “dot-coms” we saw a continuously familiar trend: an idea is born, a proposal is written, a prototype is built (sometimes) and then sold to a large company or VC. This resulted in over-speculation of stock prices and the risk of building a company with a loss in profits in the hopes of recouping the losses once the mysterious product or service is launched. Unfortunately, most of these ideas never saw the light of day, or only did so momentarily. Regardless of the fact, investors were so eager to invest in these “radically new” ideas that they were willing to hedge risks in the hopes of beating out their competitors.
Fast forward to the present and the advance of Web 2.0. The increasing popularity of personalizing information and collaboration are the fundamental principles on which Web 2.0 ideologies are founded. And with hardware & broadband prices dropping every day, content delivery becomes more and more painless. The bottom line here is that while the “dot-coms” mostly sold an intangible idea or product to consumers and corporations, today’s development companies are focused on delivering content and increasing collaboration… and aren’t necessarily looking to sell out.
Granted, while design trends like gradients, large fonts, and high contrast graphics may fade, the idea of simplifying information and accessibility is here to stay.
Max Zabramny