My Project Blog

Adapting a successful idea to a new market is a no brainer business plan.  It happens everywhere.  International franchises,  tv shows, car designs, movies… but more interestingly, there seem to be a trend to migrate successful Web 2.0 ideas into the office.

The winner of TC50 (52 now?  Or more like 51.5 (Kutcher’s counts as half a start up. I shouldn’t get myself started!)) Yammer, is one of those ‘Enterprise Web 2.0 Startups’ that seem to have a great business model.  It is basically Twitter-E, so this article from Techcrunch claims Link. Other major Web 2.0 ideas that got displaced into the corporate world is social networking (Igloo), fancy emails, fancy calendars/expense systems, and blogs.

Enterprise Web 2.0 startups bones investors because it fits the “move a successful business into a new market” outfit. A part of this excitement stems from the stigma that enterprises are cash cows. But i think Web 2.0 maybe too much for enterprises to accept.

Web 2.0 is not just about connection, it is also about expression. The 100 million or so people on Facebook do want to connect with friends and classmates, but i think more importantly, they want to express themselves and be the extroverts they aren’t in real life. Same goes for Twitter users. But in the corporate world, connectivity is key, expression is almost discouraged. Minus personal rants, I guarantee Twitter won’t have the server problem it has today. Guaranteed. I wouldn’t disagree that Twitter-E will increase office connectivity, but without expression, it won’t be a smash hit as Twitter.