To Web 2.0 Companies: Invisible or Dead, Pick One

Two things stood out listening the latest Om and Niall PodSession (VOIP and Mobile Integration):

  1. Om’s hammer is telecom.
  2. All the companies here are features, not products

This is why mash-up directories are so valuable – they tie a collection features together in a useful way (what applications are supposed to do).

On one hand, perhaps this is good – small teams focused on polishing their one or two features, continually re-factoring, strengthening, etc. On the other hand, 18 different online calendaring sites (not to mention all the existing calendaring apps that have been adopted to date) to choose from?

This is an interoperability problem and there are two ways out – become invisible or die.

Unlike a few years ago, it doesn’t matter if I’m writing this on a Mac or a Windows box. You’ll be able to read it either way. I don’t remember the last time I needed to open a Microsoft Word document – most of my text correspondence is handled via email.

Doesn’t matter though, cause I’ve got at least 4 other applications that will read and write Word format. The recipient doesn’t care which one I use – as long as they can read and write back. Word has become invisible.

Better than the alternative I suspect.

Stowe Boyd talks the same problem within a specific application:

“I would, of course, rather manage projects that I am involved with in my own Basecamp instance, while the others have the same perspective. But what happens, quickly, is that I have a bunch of memberships in other Basecamp projects, which do not collate into a coherent single view.”

If all these 18 calendaring sites persist indefinitely as independent, competing silos, then it’s not a matter of when the meeting is, it’s a matter of where the meeting is. Which calendar was it entered into?

It shouldn’t matter if I’m using my local iCal and someone else is using HipCal, Eventful, 30boxes, Kiko, or Outlook. Today it does.

No one of those systems can read & write to the other.

I’m all for each of these sites focusing on finding a niche, building an audience, creating exclusive features sets, and blah-diddy-blah. Their most basic offering needs to be transparent read/write to other systems.

Otherwise, there is no tomorrow.