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Gazing away from the navel

David Hornik CNET News

Published: 23 Jul 2004 12:30 BST

More than a year ago, I began collaborating on a blog with a couple of other colleagues from work about changes in the venture capital industry.

We were particularly excited about the power of the new Web log platforms and the ease with which it allowed us to share our thoughts.

We also put our money where our collective mouth was by funding several start-ups involved in this technology. Despite genuine reason for excitement, however, this nascent industry finds itself stuck on, well, itself.

Not long ago, I attended yet another social-networking panel. This time it was an event sponsored by Silicon Valley's Churchill Club on the subject "blogging and social networking: who cares?" The panel was a cast of thousands, including such social-software panel mainstays as Ross Mayfield, Marc Canter and Dan Gillmor.

Unfortunately, I have seen enough of these panels to conclude with certainty that they are all the same. This nascent industry finds itself stuck on, well, itself. To save you the time (and aggravation), the following transcription of the evening's event condenses the essential content of any past and future social-software panels. Read it, and you'll get a sense of what these events inevitably turn into:

"Welcome blah blah blah relationship capital blah blah blah social contracts blah blah blah media businesses blah blah blah identify the rabid fans of the iPod blah blah blah utility media blah blah blah this is the future of the Web blah blah blah RSS blah blah blah spam blah blah blah killer app blah blah blah business model blah blah blah advertising model blah blah blah Is this a product or a feature? blah blah blah A feature doesn't make a business blah blah blah leveraging relationships blah blah blah decentralised system blah blah blah privacy concerns blah blah blah profiling people blah blah blah.