Exit Strategy: Why Does Every Web 2.0 Company Have Only One?
by
on June 02, 2008,
Facebook fatigue. Have you heard the phrase? Are you suffering from it? Where once I logged into Facebook first thing every morning to check status updates and new links from tech-minded friends, I can't tell you the last time I logged in. And I no longer seem to get friend requests, although I regularly find adds on FriendFeed and LinkedIn.
Today is the first anniversary of the launch of the Facebook Platform, and it was marked with the official announcement that the development platform would be open-sourced. But much like they threw a party and no one came, the announcement (and anniversary) hasn't generated near the reaction in the blogosphere that the news that HP was ditching Yahoo's search for Microsoft's on their PCs.
Isn't this the company with the $15 billion valuation? With the CEO that everyone and their brother referred to as the next Bill Gates?
It's getting harder and harder to imagine an eventual Facebook IPO getting the touted valuation as time passes, and it may symbolize the ubiquitous Web 2.0 exit strategy: get someone to buy you.
It seems like most companies these days are being create in hopes of a big fish buying them. While the -killer title is appended to any number of established players when marketing a new company, odds are the new guy is fervently praying that the name in front of the -killer is the one who will offer them the lottery ticket buyout.
The early adopter crowd has a serious case of ADHD with a side of magpie, growing quickly bored with their former favorites and staking claim to the latest shiny object. If a company isn't bought out before the userbase moves on to the next cool thing, is there hope to continue to grow the company? We've already seen at least three business models out of Mahalo, for example, and I'm pretty sure that they trail LaLa in trying to find the one thing that will either take them to widespread adoption or at least get that limited timeframe bumped a little wider.
When is the last time we saw an IPO? And does the lack of IPOs mean that there isn't any company that will be around for the long haul as anything but a small corner of the Googleplex?
