disclaimer: Jacob (JTV Chief Designer) and I (Intermediate Mechanic and Amateur xkcd Fan) attended Tech Crunch's press viewing of Iron Man and got to see the movie before you did. So, HA HA! (BTW, thank you Tech Crunch!) In case you found this off some random google search, I have Idiopathic Polyneuropathy (DRINK!). I'm restricted to a wheelchair, meaning I couldn't avoid being nearly knocked over at this press screening by some douche bag inept moronic halfwit Second Life elf charging through the crowd and throwing his barbaric Big Foot sized feet into my legs. He blamed us for being in his way. I didn't pay attention to this part at the time, because I was busy screaming and crying. This was the accident I've been dreading each time I've left my apartment since January, so it made quite an impression. Besides giving me five bruises, this incident also added gasoline to my simmering resentment towards SOME of the web 2.0 community. Not ALL. 
My web 2.0 expertise: I use at least 50% of google's services, I have 'internet fans', and I can embed an image successfully into my blog.
<--Exhibit A
In other words, I'm a perfectly average internet user. I have no special knowledge about anything in e-commerce or iEntertainment. Perhaps this is why I do not understand the internet start up industry, or perhaps the start up industry defies all sense of practical logic and reasoning.
I'm making no assumptions
Expectations of 70 hour work weeks, half hearted business plans, and non-existent monetization plans make me itch. On top of these conundrums are the monstrous investments being thrown at unproven companies. Multi-million dollar rounds of funding and purchase prices for businesses that can't bring in enough money to cover rent bother me.
(I know that this isn't a new argument. Jacob tells me that 37signals frequents this same topic of discussion, and since they were part of a featured broadcast on Justin.tv that I watched, they are infallible.)
I witnessed someone at this Tech Crunch screening who introduced themselves as a co-founder of an image storage site currently in beta testing. Just to recap, this means photoshop express, flickr, photobucket, skitch, image shack, picoodle, imagevenue, tinypic, villagephotos, uploadit, walagata, thefreesite, myotherdrive, shutterfly, google images, yahoo images, or dropbox didn't quite encompass the field of image storage.
That man likes his competition insurmountable with a twist of hopelessness.
In my anti-expert opinion, the field of web development has two basic problems. First, there is a low threshold for starting these companies. Everyone in San Francisco is either a VC, related to a VC, neighbors to a VC, friends with a VC, pet of a VC, frequently comments the blag of a VC, or works for a golf buddy of a VC. If you have a pulse, an idea and programming ability, you can start working out of your apartment and be able to write off your laptop, cable and coffee expenses. The only problem is this was your idea.
The second problem is, to put it lightly, engineering folk tend to have inert social skills. In other words, they are nerds.
*cough* ... *cricket chirp*
I get the impression that web 2.0 companies catered towards the general public rarely have the ability to search for solutions from the perspective of the average end user. In fact, I sense the only interaction the 'founders' engage in with representatives of their site's user is tinged with more than a hint of elitism. Or, in my case, I got the full bodied flavor of %&$#ness via a bruised Tibia served on top of searing neuropathy. I'm not bitter though! Nope! *loads gun*
Here is my anthropological/sociological attempt at describing this: The common side symptoms of an ability found in a specialized individual become magnified in a group dynamic (old guy mechanics have grease on their cloths and smell of orange pumice hand cleaner or shallow trophy wives get plastic surgery, for example). In other words, if you typically only work with people like yourself, who behave as you do in a quest for ridiculous sums of money paid for a pointless, useless, boring website, you will probably turn into the sort of person who will step on a girl in a wheelchair and not apologize.
False sense of entitlement is the second most dangerous threat, just behind... BEARS!
Lets further explore the ridiculous sums of money. Youtube sold for $1.65 billion dollars, and the earliest return for just Google's purchase money won't happen until 2010. Add to that the nearly $1 million dollars per day in bandwidth costs, plus typical business carrying costs (equipment, staff, utilities, services, parties, advertising, lawyers, etc), I'm left with just one question... why Google, WHY?!!?
Story time! I worked on reviewing home appraisals for "a big bank" for several years. People in Southern California two years ago and web 2.0 people today are to me essentially the same; awkward to talk to and impossible to reason with. They live in an enclosed environment with people who act, look, and think like them, and their self worth is defined by a sense of overinflated value (codeword: a bubble) and if you don't come from their bubble wand, your opinion is worthless.
End of story time, I've meandered in some level of expertise. Now, I'm a normal person with a slightly below normal level of social interest, so what about social networking sites? I kinda think the socially inept are going to have a hard time designing a self sustaining social networking site. Examples:
1. iminlikewithyou.com: A cracked out, Speed Racer-esk mess of a interface that I find profoundly confusing and annoying. It was probably designed as some amazing Flash programming pissing contest that I don't understand or care to understand. They certainly got a couple visits from me, but I will never go there again. And I won't be a hyper-link enabler. (Friends don't let friends go to epilepsy inducing websites. Trust me, the Camaro has an awesome level of infinity +2.)
2. Myspace: Though it has reigned supreme for several years now, it still generally sucks and has gotten more and more cluttered in pretending to be like Facebook (a site I refuse to use). The persistent slowness of the site probably has to do with attempting to expand their base of features to keep up with the techy trends (i.e. smite competitors with the clever use of Musical Groups), but 14 year old *~*♥Ashlee♥*~* In a Relationship Aries attending Rhodes Junior High is in Arizona holding her breath because all she cares about is she has to wait 15 minutes to view a message from the super cute boy at school who kinda looks like Nick Jonas that only contains the letters "K TTYL!".
If these sites aren't wasting resources trying to steal bad ideas off of one another, they are going so far into the realm of absurdity that their quality of service dissipates exponentially. What's the point to being on a site intended to be used for communication if you can't communicate? It's not just that these techies have lost sight of the end user, they don't care about the end user.
I started using Myspace because my family was on Myspace. I started using Justintv because my boyfriend is their chief designer. I use Blogger because Justin.tv hadn't developed a bulletin system yet (too late to turn back now). I use Gtalk because its generally clear and concise, and I read Wonkette and xkcd because the content is hilarious. YouTube I bring up once a day to check for Obama videos, and Yahoo email is for junk accounts and ex-boyfriend filtering. My priorities online: choosing who/where I want to receive information from, finding this information quickly, sending information to specific recipients, being able to de-prettify clean interfaces with my bad color choices and imbeds, look at muscle car and cute puppy dog pictures, and blocking evidence of my existence from stalkers if I so choose. What about all those sites that leave out a vowel in a suffix or add in a vowel as an imaginary prefix? iGive MyMiddlefingr
I've always been more comfortable being around men than women, and even then, I've never been much of a social butterfly. But the inability to sympathize or empathize I've witnessed this past year is beyond my comprehension. I can't imagine how someone can choose to sacrifice their youth, friendships, and other people's money to create something as immaterial as most websites strive to be. It is staking everything in a gambling game where the rules are made up and the strategy is imaginary. It makes for such bad business.
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