WEB 2.0 - the Revenge of...the Return...Again

Many of you may not have a damn clue what I'm talking about when I refer to Web 2.0. I was in the same position a few months ago. Since then I have found myself delving into multiple different offerings that Web 2.0 has... to... ummm... offer (fuck my grammar). This community (blogger.com) is itself a part of the latest Internet boom. Web 2.0 is touted as the second coming of the Internet bubble that popped in the late 90's leaving many users and investors up a creek. It wasn't all bad, though. Many of the better offerings from the 90's boom are still around. Sites such as Amazon.com and Ebay.com are a great example of the good that can come out of all of this.

There are so many new services and offerings popping up (seemingly) every day. It's starting to make my head spin. Many of them are free. For most people that's enough to get them hooked. I am one of those people. So, there me was, going to town on this new discovery. Finding all kinds of reasons to need whatever service was being offered, simply because it was free. I've gotten to the point where I'm simply unable to keep up with the sheer volume of accounts and sites. After a few months of floating around all these new and wonderful sites and services, I've come to the conclusion that this bubble, although seemingly more contained and with a much thicker skin than what we saw in the 90's, is not going to be with us much longer.

I can look at the image above and list off at least 20 different accounts that I have for one reason or another. Be it storage or collaboration or social networking or email. My warning to all of you reading this is that your data (whatever it is of yours that exists on any of these sites/services) is not secure. By 'not secure' I'm not telling you that it's going to get hacked or stolen. I'm telling you that you may turn around one day and all the videos that you posted to YouTube or all the images you were storing on flickr will be gone. These companies are not guaranteed to go on forever. These startups are basically just a group of people who got together and thought 'gee, wouldn't it be neat if we could do X-Y-Z?!'. Many have to be just hemorrhaging money just to say afloat. Advertising simply cannot be enough to pay the bandwidth.

My recommendation; Until that small Web 2.0 startup has it's IPO on Wall Street, keep all your important data on your home computer. That is all. Don't leave eveything on the Internet. I'm not telling you not to post or upload anything. Just be sure you keep the original. We are not far off from the type of infrastructure that will allow online storage for everyone's data accessible everywhere, but we're not there yet.

I'm certain that these "Internet bubbles" will continue to ebb and flow for however long the Internet as we know it exists. It is a necessary progression and can be evidenced in every part of world around us. The necessity of Web 2.0 (and the others to follow it, ver. 2.5, 3.0, etc.) is the floodgate of innovation. This is what keeps the Internet "product" fresh and useful. It is the prospect of further innovation that keeps me hopeful for the next round. I s'pose I need to wait for this one to end first, though.