No Such Thing As Web 2.0: Marc Andreessen

Netscape and Ning co-founder Marc Andreessen has recently joined the blogosphere. (Welcome, Marc!) In only his sixth post, he hits it hard against '2.0':

Before the "Web 2.0 space", you had the "dot com space", the "intranet space", the "B2B space", the "B2C space", the "security space", the "mobile space" (still going strong!)... and before that, the "pen computing" space, the "CD-ROM multimedia space", the "artificial intelligence" space, the "mini-supercomputer space", and going way back, the "personal computer space". And many others.

But there is no such thing as a "space".

There is such a thing as a market -- that's a group of people who will directly or indirectly pay money for something.

There is such a thing as a product -- that's an offering of a new kind of good or service that is brought to a market.

There is such a thing as a company -- that's an organized business entity that brings a product to a market.

But there is no such thing as a "space".

And, as far as startups are concerned, there is no such thing as Web 2.0.

He goes on to say:

It frankly doesn't really matter which trends, or design patterns, you incorporate into your product.

If the product is compelling to the market, it will succeed.

If the product is not compelling to the market, it will fail.

It's not much more complicated than that.

No, it's not.

Via Crunchnotes.

Comments

[Tracy Sheridan]

Oh, I see the space: both physical and otherwise! There certainly is such a thing as Web 2.0, however one wishes to cite, or define it. (Marc does reference O'Reilly's definition, yet wishes it was more 'crisp').

The sentiment I agree with, however, is the latter: you do need a product that is compelling to the market in order to succeed.

[Nate Westheimer]

No such thing as a "space"? Well, sure, unless it's a physical space. Enter the "cafeBricolage" project, or whatever you want to call it, and now you see the "space". When there's a space for a market, that means its a ecosystem from which the market grows and interacts.

In that case, there is a "web 2.0" space, and that's the ecosystem of products which relate to each other, all of which are "web 2.0" classified companies (take O'Reilly's definition, for example).