Two good, short, sensible essays on the topic of Web 2.0 businesses

Umair Haque has posted a couple of good, short, sensible essays (hard to find these days ;-) on the topic of Web 2.0.

The Problems With Web 2.0, pt 1: Geeks vs Droids

"I think what smart players will do is look to drive growth through
alliances which demonstrate viscerally to the mass market the very real
power of a 2.0 value prop based on liquidity, plasticity, and networked
users. A textbook example lately is Technorati's Washington
Post deal (which is not strictly marketing, but that's my point). It's
killer. If you put other 2.0 services in this context (Memeorandum,
del.icio.us, Jeteye, Indeed, etc, etc) for a sec, I think you'll see
that there's huge room for 2.0 players to kick off similarly cool
deals."

The Problems With Web 2.0, Pt 2: Geeks (New) vs Geeks (Old)

"All across the Valley, entrepreneurs are setting up shop...with the
hope of getting acquired by Yahoo, Google, eBay, or FIM (in roughly
that order). I think these are kind of the wrong incentives for
entrepreneurs. What made the Valley cool was it's refusal to think
small, and do truly disruptive things. But getting a small change
acquisition to essentially extend a Yahoo/Google/etc product line sets
incentives for incremental, not disruptive, innovations and models."

I look forward to more of Haque's writing on the subject.

(See more of my
Web 2.0
posts or others' at Technorati web 2.0)