The New Wisdom of the Web

NOTE: NewsWeek recently wrote about how the Web has quickly replaced phone books, newspaper advertising and other traditional means of offline marketing programs. In addition, with online marketing strategies like natural search engine optimization, one of the many services Search Circus offers its clients, small businesses can successfully compete with larger firms online, and customers don't know the difference when choosing which company to buy products and services from while shopping online. What is important to them is quality, good customer service, and affordability.

Why is everyone so happy in Silicon Valley again? A new wave of start-ups are cashing in on the next stage of the Internet. And this time, it's all about ... you.
By Steven Levy and Brad Stone

April 3, 2006 issue - A little over two years ago, even the most sensitive entrepreneurial radar could not pick out two pairs of people on opposite ends of the West Coast starting companies that would make plenty out of nothing. In Santa Monica, Calif., dot-com survivors Chris DeWolfe and Tom Anderson were hatching the idea of taking on biggies like AOL and Yahoo with a Web site consisting only of stuff that people would bring to it. And up in Vancouver, B.C., married collaborators Stewart Butterfield and Caterina Fake were just figuring out that the online game they were developing might work better as a way for people to share their digital photos with each other.

Now both fledgling companies are leading a charge of innovators making hay out of the Internet's ability to empower citizens and enrich those who help with the empowerment. The southern California guys head MySpace, the prime hangout for 65 million (mostly young) people, and thousands of rock bands, movie stars and marketers begging for their attention. Canadian-born Flickr, by building a 2.5 million-member community solely around a passion for sharing photos, has become a poster child on how a well-executed Net effort can make big changes in people's habits. Welcome to the new tech boom.

Oh, and unlike the old boom, where entrepreneurs couldn't get to the IPO broker's office quick enough, these crafty duos have already taken the money and stayed. Yahoo has snapped up Flickr to bolster the portfolio of services it offers to its half-billion users. And the new owner of MySpace is that wild and crazy (like, um, a fox) digital punkster, Rupert Murdoch—hedging his bets on what might be the next Net-powered media upheaval.

Read more about how the Web is changing the way you do business in the NewsWeek article "The New Wisdom of the Web" here.