So who is the customer for Web 2.0 then?

I was asked that by a more traditional industry friend of mine the other day, and as I engaged brain into gear, about to flow into an answer I had to stop....all those calendars and geeky widgets....actually, it’s a damn good question.

Reading Liz Gannes' article on the Web 2.0 conference sparked this in my memory....she notes that:

When we were in Los Angeles a couple weeks ago, there was tangible excitement about the new age of digital media. The Hollywood types were bursting to talk about this revolutionary age of amateur talent ushered in by YouTube. This week, web 2.0 crowd treated the YouTube acquisition simply as a huge transaction, with the only interesting aftermath being lawsuits. Here, we’re so far ahead of the curve, it’s a race to see who can be cynical first.

The thing is, those "media" ones - YouTube and Skype and Flickr and MySpace etc - are clearly heavy duty consumer plays, but quite a large number of Web 2.0 plays seem to me to be early adopter only, for geeks by geeks. And so many are doing the same thing - how many calendars, desktops et al can we really use?

Over at Christian Mayaud's All Things Web 2.0 there is a log of c 2,200 Web 2.0 apps sorted into about 130 categories. (Christian used an Open Directory so the user does the metadata...interesting in itself).

OK, I'm sure its not a definitive guide - though its not a bad start - but its interesting paging through them and mentally ticking off those that are aimed at big consumer markets, and those that are more geek fodder.

B2B is very thin on the ground right now.

In her article Liz comments on a session at Web 2.0, the "startup launch pad", of 13 hot companies chosen from 200, which she notes:

" ....failed to dazzle; heavy on the PowerPoint and not on the impressive technology, and far too many of the companies part of the insular crowd, or often the investment portfolios, of the judges."

Hmmm...groupthink, and worse still, geek groupthink? The point about the 13 companies being tied to the judges is concerning too.

Its hard to see beyond many of these companies beta sites (though a few look like me-toos following after early sector leaders), so here is a summary from the independently minded Richard McManus who was there. Overall he was underwhelmed (it seems to me) citing just 3 for further interest. And if that was the Top 13, I wonder what the other 187 were like then?

And in my view a lot of these companies are not companies at all, just applications - these are not self sustaining businesses.

So, back to the Question: who are these guys really trying to sell to - their customers or their potential buyer?

(Postsript - a short video of the launchpad is shown here)