Hans Across The Interwebs

It occurs to me that there are so many start-ups these days, that ’starting up’ is pretty much a commodity in itself. I’ve seen two coders and a good application framework build stuff in a few weeks that back in ‘the day’ when I was working as a full time web consultant would have taken us a year and ‘millions’.

I suppose this seems principally good for customers and consumers. More start-ups means more choices, more competition. Capitalist theory dictates after all that more competition means better services. Theory, but still.

It remains to be seen, however, what dozens of ‘me too’ entrepreneurs without a business plan can do to improve MY situation.

One sad fact we should all be aware of is that these startups generally want to be bought. At the FOWA Conference the general consensus was that if you don’t want to be bought you’re not a start-up, you’re just a regular business (not very cool).

So what are start-ups actually selling? Well: they are building a userbase. They are building traffic. Then they sell the userbase (first) and the traffic (second) and the application (last) to the highest bidder. These people are not interested in building long term viable businesses, and thus relationships with customers.

We in the web business should first understand that this start-up concept is not too new. Look at other media: how many people have started music labels, publishing houses? How many big ones are there left? Not many. Buying and selling of start-ups is a normal market trend.

You’ll sell out without even knowing it
There is at least one major difference when it comes to web start-ups, though, and it’s where capitalist theory starts to fail. Because when a web start-up gets sold, it’s taking all my and your profile information with it. Quite a difference from, say, Z-pappy’s record label or Mike and Pete’s Honest IceCream Brand.

Other start-ups may go belly up: what happens to my information in those databases? I’m pretty sure it gets sold to the highest bidder. It’ll probably be auctioned off along with the real estate and office supplies. The Lawyers and the Creditors will make sure it gets milked for everything it’s worth. They have to get paid right?

Hell, I’ll still sign up for every service I think is cool. That’s the way it goes. I’m just hoping that OpenSocial or OpenSocial 2.0 will truly and drastically put me in charge of my own information. Then you can retract a service’s rights to access your info.

I’m hoping there will be better start-ups. That are actually here for the long run. That want strong and long-term relationships with customers. Because no-one can sell my information. Only me.

$200.
(seriously, whatever you want to know).

What do you think? Will open social rescue us all?