Darwinian Survival

One clear lesson from the dot-com era was about survival of the fittest; it didn’t matter how revolutionary the mutation, without the ability to survive, it became at best a footnote in history. Conversely, the ability to survive often brings unwanted baggage in the form of odd vestigial standards, as exemplified by the httpmail adopted by Hotmail when the rest of the email world runs either POP or IMAP. Workarounds do exist, from 3rd parties; yet the sheer size of the dinosaur means that it continues to bedevil existence.

For the dot com era, survival clearly implied venture funding followed by IPO – Amazon, Ebay, Google among others exemplifying the survival ethic. Yet, for Web 2.0, the hallmark approach appears to favor acquisition over independence; YouTube, Reddit, Jotspot, and so on.

Agreed, it’s early days yet, and these might turn out the exceptions to the rule, like Hotmail years ago. But it still leaves open the question – is acquisition the route to survival? And can you call it survival at all, if identity gets submerged?

Part of the reason for preferring acquisition might well be the fact that a number of Web 2.0 sites are more of feature than really applications. Dana Gardner hits the nail with the observation :

Social publishing and collaborative content creation and aggregation are fundamental aspects of work itself — they are not destinations or portals. Same, by the way, can be said of ranking content, ala Digg. This should be a service, not a destination.

That said, acquisition is one way to build bundles and critical mass. Alliances and sharing could be another. Unfortunately, the old fashioned way – of building up value in house – doesn’t quite fit the internet time paradigm.

Or does it?