Following the buzz

I don't know whether someone knows of a site that tracks each and every site that is showing off. Everybody following the web 2.0 wave is probably reading techchrunch, o'reilly radar, web 2.0 explorer, etc, etc. There are also web 2.0 applications to propagate and follow the buzz like buzzshout.

There is actually a site that tries to track all emerging web 2.0 start-ups: NEO Binaries. As a brand new entrepreneur, I sometimes find all this information overwhelming. If you run a search on the domain of your future product, there is a high probability you will find some competitors already. Maybe many of them.

I am not an expert in business strategy, nor do I have a related degree, but it seems to me that in traditional markets having some competition is not necessary a bad thing, because if some companies are already there, there is actually a market for your product. If you need to find and educate the market on your own you will have to invest a lot of money and effort.

In the world of web 2.0 this doesn't need to be true. Why? Well, creating a new internet application does not necessarily need a very important investment upfront, therefore anybody with some knowledge of programming and an idea can build an application in a very short time and make it available. This person has not probably made any (extensive) analysis of the market because it is expensive, so it is cheaper to build the application and see what happens.

What I am trying to point out is that following the buzz is very time consuming (it's is easy to expend half of the day reading blogs about new exciting websites) and not necessarily very productive because it is difficult to come out with good conclusions.

My advice is read one or two blogs at most so you stay tuned, but don't spend a lot of time on it, it is not worth it.