Nav

The Web Landscape 2010

Facebook’s monthly unique count is approaching Google’s.  This got me thinking about the maturity of the internet, who the incumbents are ahead of the next phase of innovation as handsets become as important as the desktop, and who might be vulnerable to an entrepreneur and some investment.

In my view, the important consumer-facing companies on the web today are:

- Google, where you look for new things, and

- Facebook where you interact with who/what you have invited into your life.

- Amazon/Ebay, where you buy the things you find on Google

- Expedia/Trip Advisor, where you discover & arrange to travel to places you find on Google

- Match/eHarmony, where you search for romance/relationships

- Monster, where you search for a job

- MSN/Yahoo/Google where you read news

- Wikipedia, where you learn facts about whatever you find on Google

These are the companies that solve everyday problems for real people.  As the web’s primary launch point, Google is important to every company on this list…except for Facebook.  So Google can extract a chunk of value from everyone on this list…except for Facebook.  Understandably, this gets those Google competitive juices flowing.  And they will continue to invest in capturing a bigger slice of the social media pie until they get somewhere.  But that feels a bit forced to me, as when Microsoft tried to go after Yahoo! and Google with me-too offerings.  Google wants to be social, feels they have the might to make it so, while consumers, who have their needs met quite well already, just shrug.  I don’t see it working.

Noticeably absent from the above list is Twitter.  What about Twitter?  Is this “invented for feature phones” lightweight service obsolete?  It feels that way to me.  In the age of the iPhone, Twitter is really feeling more like a feature than a product.  The brand is valuable, the user base is valuable, and those are real assets.  But my sense is they are at a value peak right now and if I were an investor, I would be seeking to partner with a media company to expand the offering.  Will we see a Skype-esque Twitter exit in 2010?  Unlikely – as the Twitter Board probably (and in my view mistakenly) feels they have a lot more company building to do and won’t seek to be acquired.

As for who is vulnerable on this list?  Match and eHarmony are being attacked by just-as-good free offerings.  The rest feel relatively unassailable to me.  But that’s how I felt about Dell once upon a time.