Web 2.0 debacle… why some websites are unsuccesful…

Posted on February 28, 2007
Filed Under web 2.0 news |

I have been reading a lot about Web 2.0 and all those applications that were supposed to be great… my idea is that 80% web traffic is concentrated in 20% of the websites… if you want to find out what mistakes web 2.0 websites make let me tell you about: Eefoof
If you don’t know what this website is about just read the following lines:

When you upload a piece of media for submission to eefoof, your first hit immediately starts generating income. Each month, we measure the amount of individual page views for each item you submit, and then calculate the percentage of hits it accounted for its media type. We then use this number to figure out your share of the site’s profit. Once your account exceeds $25, we will send you a Paypal transfer to the email specified at account creation.

On their website they recently stated:

We recently issued payments for our 2nd month of operation, August, and have issued notices of money due for our 3rd month, September. Our top users are pulling in over $100 / month for simply sharing their videos, pictures, audio and flash with their friends. The most popular way these users are getting hits is by linking their media in their blogs and MySpace profiles.

The mistakes that I have identified are the following:

1. they expected to get much more traffic –> basically you can’t build such a website without at least 300000 hits a week… it’s hard to build a reasonable enough business model in this case…

2. they thought that viral videos and pictures are more viral than the actually are –> what I mean is that you can’t expect people the whole day uploading single files for few cents a day…

3. graphics is very poor… –> I can hardly imagine such a design on Youtube or Google Video… Web 2.0 is very focused on graphics… you can’t do without it…

4. the amount of money you can earn is not precisely defined –> people prefer to know how much they can make from the beginning… what users require is: simple and clear conditions of service from day one…

5. those guys entered a very competitive an fierce market –> you really need to be creative to compete with well established companies…

Our opinion is that if you want to be successful you really need to make up sth new… be creative and innovative… that’s the right way…