A Perspective on Location Services, Mobile Entrepreneurship & Startup Life

The Advertising

Perhaps most dangerously, Web 2.0 still had only one business model, advertising, and the Valley was refusing to admit that only one company (Google) with only one of its products (search advertising) had proved that the model really worked. The older internet firms, Yahoo! and AOL, were doing their best to grab a piece of the action. But the “next big things” were selling negligible advertising, often on one another’s sites. Not one of them has become an advertising success in its own right.

& The Valley

And so, as this correspondent prepares to leave, the Valley again finds itself in a curious position. It has been a boon to the world, helping people keep abreast of acquaintances on their social networks, wherever they go, and record and share much more of their own lives. But the Valley stands on ground that is as unstable, seismically and metaphorically, as it was in the earlier bust. Another bubble—this time, not of the Valley’s making—has burst. The world economy is in crisis, advertising is collapsing and start-ups are once again vanishing into thin air. Silicon Valley may be entering another nuclear winter.

[via Six years in the Valley - economist.com]