May 13, 2009
Game Web 2.Over?
This collage of web 2.0 logos should be pretty familiar to many people by now. It’s been knocking about for a few years, ever since the whole Web 2.0 Koolaid (what’s the British equivalent? Ribena?) started flowing.
During that time, I’ve seen it printed out and stuck up on the walls of companies and individuals, appearing in about a million blogs, and it should almost go without saying that this image gets used endlessly in presentations at events about the social web, or web 2.0 technologies, or the changing face of business in the last few years, or design and UX in the new web.
In that context, it is usually accompanied by sentiments like “Web 2.0 isn’t going anywhere” or “the social web is real and growing” – using the sheer quantity of Web 2.0-type offerings starting up in 2005ish as an indication of how much they were shaking things up and changing the game. Dare I even say shifting the paradigm? ;)
Anyway, having been professionally involved in one of the companies featured on the original logo collage, an avid user of a handful of others and a casual user (OK, I registered a username) for a whole bunch more, I’m as aware that the web 2.0 landscape has changed as you are.
So having recently been confronted with this image in a presentation (used as being indicative of current reality), I thought it was time that it was updated.
I present these updates without reference to or predicting the demise of web 2.0 or social technologies or anything like that. Just to be a bit more accurate.
The image below reflects which of this original set of companies have vanished or ceased trading, via the highly scientific method of searching for their names and clicking about until I could find reliable information about them.
The most reliable method seemed to be to go to the original Techcrunch (or mashable) hyping of the new service in 2005ish, and then follow the link to the company. If the link is kaput, then so is the company.
More than you thought? Or less? Certainly some of the daft names (and business models, and ideas) have dried up, but others remain, and still more have sprung up in their place, no doubt.
It’s also worth noting that there are a handful of others listed as alive on this diagram (or rather, not crossed out) which are, to put it politely, dormant or dwindling if not actually dead.
And this image reveals which (to the best of my knowledge or research) have been successfully bought by other companies, though some, like XDrive, have been terminal in spite (or perhaps because) of being bought by a larger company.
Here are the two bits of updated information together on one image.
(I’m aware that there’s also a longer version of this image featuring a host of additional companies. I’ll try and update the details for the longer list when I get a chance.)
Please let me know if I’ve missed or misclassified any.
Update: Four additional things you should know about this work:
- This image is an update of a well-known earlier work which was created in 2006.
- I have updated the image for the sake of accuracy, and not to call fail on Web 2.0. This is similar to redrawing a map which features Prussia – an interesting historical artefact, but you wouldn’t want to navigate by it.
- The original creator of the web 2.0 logo collage made the decision about which companies to include or exclude, based on his own criteria (which I don’t know, but could be success, buzz, logo design or something else).
- Because of this, it should be completely obvious that this list of companies wasn’t comprehensive at the time (there were many more web 2.0 startups at the time that weren’t featured) and isn’t now (there are hundreds of exciting and successful startups which have launched since 2006 and which aren’t featured). Many things on the internet are subjective and selective. The original collage was one. If your/favourite company isn’t featured above, sorry; this is why.
If anyone would like to make a new collage of startups in this genre for 2009, I’d be very interested to see it – please post the link in the comments. Here’s the collage above, but with all the defunct companies removed:
There are plenty of healthy and exciting companies around these days which could fill those empty spaces. Who’ll take on the task of filling the gaps?
Cripes that must have taken a lot of typing in tech crunch.
What’s the O to X ratio?
didn’t eBay buy Stumble Upon ? I know there’s some info about them going independant or so, but I think they’re still part of eBay. Great work btw !
Zimbra got bought by Yahoo.
JotSpot and Feedburner got bought by Google
Sorry for the second post:
Reddit got bought by Wired or Wired parent company Condans
Zoozio officially launched as Zimbio (which is still around), not sure if that matters or not.
Zimbra was bought out by Yahoo, I believe.
You should have statistics.
22/69 – whatever.
Compare it with the statistics of how many startups survive at all (available at , say younoodle) – these guys are doing well.
And saying that Blogger/Youtube and similar are flipped, when that is not at all obvious when you go their page – it might hjave been started by Go for all I knew, is not, erm, effective.
Newsvine was purchased by MSNBC Interactive News in 2007.
Cool. Nice graphic. :)
Actually, I’m surprised at the number and variety of the survivors!
Thanks for the additions – I’ve updated the graphic to reflect these, plus one other dead company (jots) which I’d forgotten to check.
Ma.gnolia is gone too, unfortunately.
Thanks Adam – updated.
I checked out the magnolia site because I was curious to see if it really had died and they appeared to have died because they lost their data. Really scary if you run any online service.
There is no such thing as “Web 2.0.”
It is just a narrow linguistic invention which tries to pocket evolving business and technology as other than something than the usual evolving business and technology.
There’s actually about a dozen companies on that list that I thought were dead (might as well be). Over a 2 year period of time statistically a full half should be dead so that list actually looks like it’s doing pretty good.
The scary part is most not all,but most of web 2.0 is investing in a bar. It’s a bet that people will hang out at the same pub. It is not a technology play as such, it’s a social play. So if the people stay and new ones are added great, if not then what’s the point. This is the issue with sites like Yelp , is there are not ratings then what good is it.
WebJay was bought by Yahoo! and then killed from there.
Though Backfence.com is pretending to be around, it’s gone, too:
http://www.paidcontent.org/entry/419-local-community-network-backfence-closing-down-all-sites/
eBay bought StumbleUpon a couple of years back, but we have bought ourselves back earlier this year. Huzzah for independence again.
Did something special happen with truveo– you have a pink circle for it. Flipped and died?
Truveo has a pink circle right now, it should have a green circle.
Vimeo was bought by IAC as a part of the CollegeHumor transaction.
TailRank is dead.
fotolog was acquired for over 100M i believe.
Vizu is still around actually.
http://www.vizu.com/index.htm
The main product is now a brand measurement tool that competes with Dynamic Logic. However, they still maintain their free poll widget which would be smack in Web 2.0 territory.
I’d like to see a list of restaurants that have failed since 2005, not to predict the demise of eating out or the food service industry or anything like that, just for the sake of a good visualization. Restaura-Not?
Thanks for all the suggestions – now updated with your help (and I’ve changed the Truveo circle to green – no sure what happened there).
Jim – a list of failed restaurants would certainly be interesting and probably quite revealing, but we’d need to have something to compare it against – did anyone make a chart of restaurant logos in 2005 which has subsequently been used in presentations and the like to signify the coming dining revolution?
If so, I’d love to see it.
[...] Game Web 2.0 Over? – Picture Credits: Meg Pickard & Stabilo Boss [via] [...]
[...] have been acquired and many have shut down for one reason or another. London-based Meg Pickard has put together a new version (seen below) of the chart which combines companies that have been acquired in green circles and [...]
where is popurls.com ? it’s been around since 06 and still striving.
Fred – I didn’t make the original collage, so you’d have to ask the creator (linked in the first para, above). Obviously, many more services have launched since then, and lots which were around at the time weren’t included for whatever reason.
But yay for Popurls.
[...] través de Amit me encontré con una imagen muy fuerte (qué él obtuvo de Meish dot org): qué pasó con las empresas 2.0 de moda en 2006… Y es impresionante. Las cruces son [...]
[...] personal blog. The first time I saw this site was this morning, when someone linked to her post where she updated the classic chart of web 2.0 company logos with markings to show which companies had failed and which had been bought. Interested by the [...]
[...] the rest here: Game Web 2.Over? – meish dot org: life, unfolding Bookmark [...]
I don’t think this is too much different than the plethora of “1.0″ companies that were launched and subsequently failed. Creative destruction at work:)
Kind of interesting that Flickr is in the green…they still have a very healthy audience of 20 million+
[...] a blog post about the image, entitled “Game Web 2.Over?”, Pickard’s stance appears at times [...]
Something like 60% of all companies fail in the first three years, so the Web 2.0 strike rate doesn’t seem too awful.
I’d like to see a listing of the companies that got acquired and a ranking of their relative exit values… Is that data around anywhere?
Ian – absolutely. Of course, plenty of other companies have started up since, and done very well, too – like Twitter.
[...] think I just heard the Web 2.0 bubble burst. Someone posted an analysis of the survival and exit rate of 2005’s Web 2.0 startups. Someone else just posted that a cat has a half million Twitter [...]
you should check out BlogTalkRadio @ http://www.blogtalkradio.com. Web 2.0 platform alive and well.
Alan
[...] a blog post about the image, entitled “Game Web 2.Over?”, Pickard’s stance appears at times skeptical of [...]
Wink.com was acquired by Reunion.com – I’m actually struck by the number of firms that are still going. Common wisdom says 50% of all new businesses fail in the first year. Odds look pretty good for these guys. Would like to see techcrunch do this with their dbase of startups.
[...] Game Web 2.Over? – meish dot org: life, unfolding [...]
Wow… only 50% failed? That’s really GOOD!!! Well above the average failure rate of a company.
[...] This post was Twitted by theschnack – Real-url.org [...]
[...] This post was Twitted by peteyoung – Real-url.org [...]
Let this be a warning to all tech startups: Do not name your company some stupid baby name if you don’t offer some amazing product or service (i.e. twitter, digg, etc.)
I’m actually amazed that even half of those Playskool-type company names are still around.
Yedda was aquired by AOL..
To be fair I always got the feeling this image was more a collection of pretty logos than a prediction of the next big things.
I recall posts on techcrunch back in early 2006 where people were calling bubble, recommending sensible investment, and pretty much everybody agreed we shouldn’t get carried away like in the early 90′s. But then the VC money being waved around made everybody forget themselves and went along for the ride…
[...] within the startup space, we saw an explosion of startups appear in this second wave of the web, yet this graphic shows that many are going extinct, and a few were acquired by other organisms. What caused this explosion? At least two factors: [...]
You don’t have the facebook logo on either of your pictures… At purpose?
Sophie
1. Facebook is there – it’s in the middle, three lines up from the bottom edge.
2. It wasn’t my decision which companies and logos were featured in the images. My image (above) is an UPDATE of a classic image made by someone else in early 2006: http://www.flickr.com/photos/stabilo-boss/93136022/
OK! It’s so tiny I hadn’t seen it!
Fun post but to be honest there is not much here we didn’t know already. Web 2.0 companies were often designed to be built fast and scale fast. If they didn’t, sure, they died or were sold off. It doesn’t mean to say they weren’t worth trying in the first place. But I applaud your effort to set the record straight. Too many presentations just use the image without updating it. I use a similar image of European startups but I believe they are all still going! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B3_Wj2hzF_I