Not being a dot-bomb 2.0

Tuesday 18 July 2006 — This is 18 years old. Be careful.

Dead2.0 writes anonymous snarky reviews of new web services, full of jabs about how stupid they are, or why they will fail. But his latest post is 11 Suggestions For Not Being a Dot-Bomb 2.0, which is a really good list of success criteria for small companies. Stuff like “Have a revenue model”. OK, so it isn’t all subtle tricky stuff, but the fact is, plenty of sites get launched that seem to have overlooked these basic tenets of running a business. It’s a good list to keep in mind, and in a nice touch, it ends with “Ignore the hype and have fun”.

He also points off to a lot of other interesting pages discussing similar issues. My favorite was Web 2.0 or Star Wars Character?, a quiz to determine if you know the difference between meebo and dooku or django and jango. I scored 35, “As your doctor, I recommend moving out of your parents’ basement.”

Comments

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susan senator 11:40 AM on 18 Jul 2006
Yeah, Ned, I agree: When are we going to move out of your parents' basement?
[gravatar]
sean 1:21 PM on 18 Jul 2006
Heh. Only a score of 35? Lightweight. I scored 41:

41-42: No, really. Go outside or something. Ride a bike. Run barefoot through the grass. Get a pet. Anything.
[gravatar]
Greg Hines 3:02 PM on 18 Jul 2006
As a Star Wars geek, I'm ashamed that I only scored a 41. I filled in every Star Wars race (but the two I missed) and chose Web 2.0 for any blanks. As vast as the canon Star Wars galaxy might be, it pales in comparison to the Web 2.0 fad.
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Joe L. 7:35 PM on 18 Jul 2006
The scoring scale is far too linear for this near-Gaussian distribution, assuming guesses on unrecognized names. Of course, since you can leave questions blank, I'm already making a bad assumption. The probability for falling into each grading based on random selection for all 43 names is:

0-10, Luddite: 0.0003
11-20, zen balance: 0.3801
21-30, Kool-aid: 0.6169
31-40, leave basement:0.0027
41-42, go outside: 1.0755e-10
43, Mike Arrington: 1.1369e-13

So, someone with no knowledge of Star Wars or web 2.0 will be a Kool-aid drinker 2056 times more often than a Luddite if he or she tries to answer all the questions.

Oh yeah, I recognized 7, guessed on the rest, and scored a 30, so I'm either a cheating Luddite or really like Kool-aid.
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Sylvain Galineau 9:02 PM on 18 Jul 2006
"Social networking is done" That's what everyone said about search before Google came out.

The fact is, social networking sites suck. The fact that the hype is so out of proportion with reality could in fact imply it's still up for grabs.
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Ned Batchelder 9:28 PM on 18 Jul 2006
Joe L: Thanks for showing us that there are other ways to be a geek than by knowing your Star Wars characters!
[gravatar]
Zib Redlektab 1:20 PM on 19 Jul 2006
Argh! I only got a 32! And I'm a Star Wars geek! }:O

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