KonzeptioNerd

Everything’s so social

Sid Yadav’s rev(olution)2 Blog (rev2.org on Web 2.0 has a list of the top 10 most successful Web 2.0 startups (10 Most Successful Web 2.0 Startups) (posted April 14, 418 diggs the last time I looked).

The list might not be conclusive - and will probably look different for different countries. Looking from Germany, for example, I kind of miss Xing / Open BC. Apartently / judging form the comments, the list is not meant too be a “real” top 10″, either. Yadav deliberately excludes a number of social networks in order not to have this category dominate the list.

Interestingly, 3 out of 10 mentions are still social networks (MySpace, Facebook and Bebo) and two more are social somethings (bookmarking, as in Del.ici.ous and content/bookmarking/voting, as in Digg).

Come to think of it, most of the other mentions are social, too. Let’s see:

The term social structure, used in a general sense, refers to entities or groups in definite relation to each other, to relatively enduring patterns of behaviour and relationship within social systems, or to social institutions and norms becoming embedded into social systems in such a way that they shape the behaviour of actors within those social systems.” (Wikipedia on social structures

Going from there, 3 more sites mentioned in the list may qualify as social networks: YouTube, Wikipedia itself, and Flickr all rely on their user’s accessing and enhancing (e.g. by rating) other users’ content. YouTube, Wikepedia and Flickr have a tangible user-group and rely on interaction of their users to develop their full spin. This personal interaction (as opposed to users interacting solely with content provided by the owner of a services) should suffice to constitute the “definite relation to each other” that is the prerequisite of a social structure.

The last two mentions (Netvibes and Meebo) are AJAX-based tools.

Yadav chose his picks under two simple criteria: they had to be recent start-ups and they had to be considered web 2.0 in the first place. So, what we have here is more or less a relatively good, though small, random pick. And judging from this pick, the definition of web 2.0 service is either “relying on social structures” or/and “AJAX-based core features”.

It’s a pity that Yadav did not put more time into developing criteria for successful. Which, I admit, is hard enough as those companies are not too forthcoming with data. Yaday uses

• approximate users
• approximate pageviews
• acquisition/valuation.

but, sadly, only quotes some of his sources.

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