Startups and Kids

Alexander Muse
October 13th, 2007

Two years ago, Amit Malhotra is working on a Web2.0 startup he called WaterCooler.  Amit and I decided to meet at the play area in the Galleria one evening last week to discuss his new direction in the RSS space.  We brought our kiddos (mine is 4 and his is 1) and they played while we talked.  This got me thinking.  Maybe the nature of the Web2.0 is driven by the fact that the players are all older and are more likely to have kids than they were in the 90s. 

Back in the 90s when we were deep in the first Web1.0 boom we worked long hours, played around on our scooters, bought cool aeron chairs, spent millions of dollars, and generally had a great time.  In 2005 we are a little wiser, a little more established, a little more responsible (I am embarrased to take the scooter down to the bathroom), I sit in an inexpensive chair and I am spending my own money (oh and did I mention that I have a four six year old).   Maybe it would be helpful to define Web1.0 and Web2.0:

Web1.0: The original conception of the web (in this context, labelled Web 1.0) comprised static HTML pages that were updated rarely, if at all. The success of the dot-com era depended on a more dynamic web (sometimes labeled Web 1.5) where content management systems served dynamic HTML web pages created on the fly from an ever-changing content database. In both senses, so-called eyeballing was considered intrinsic to the web experience, thus making page hits and visual aesthetics important factors.

Web2.0: Proponents of the Web 2.0 approach believe that web usage is increasingly oriented toward interaction and rudimentary social networks, which can serve content that exploits network effects with or without creating a visual, interactive web page. In one view, Web 2.0 sites act more as points of presence, or user-dependent web portals, than as traditional websites.

So does the fact that many of us who were active in the first Web boom now have children affect the direction of the web?  Think Flickr for photo sharing (lots of kiddo pics to share), think YouTube for video sharing (lots of little video clips to share), and so on.  Are we doing something different, because we have grown up?  Or maybe I am just crazy.

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