THE BEST WEB 2.0 SOFTWARE OF 2005
It's getting towards the end of the year and I'm feeling the need to take stock of where we've actually come with Web 2.0 in the last 12 months. So much has happened in this space recently and a tidal wave of innovative, high-quality software has been released this year.
Context & Ripple Effects
This year-end roundup lands three weeks after the same blog published its diagnosis of ten issues facing Web 2.0 going into 2006 — the arc moves from problems to verdicts. Having spent twelve months watching what the author calls a tidal wave of new software ship, the piece does the filtering work the November post implied was needed: converting a flood of launches into a single ranked shortlist.
The significance is distributional. In a market where discovery runs through blogs rather than established enterprise software channels, who compiles the canonical list matters almost as much as what is on it.
First-order effects
- Vendors named on the list get an immediate credibility stamp with precisely the audience evaluating tools for 2006 projects and purchases.
- Readers get a pre-sorted answer to the evaluation overload the blog flagged in its November issue list — one trusted filter instead of dozens of product trials.
Second-order effects
- Other bloggers and tech outlets face pressure to publish their own year-end rankings, turning late December into a contest over whose list becomes the reference point for the year.
- Startups take the lesson that a slot on an influential roundup substitutes for real marketing budget, shifting go-to-market effort toward courting the small set of bloggers who make these lists.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, independent blog curation hardens into a structural gatekeeper between Web 2.0 startups and mainstream users, with influence consolidating around whichever publications own the recurring franchise lists.
The trend: Discovery for web-based software is shifting from directories and analyst reports toward blogger-curated year-end rankings, effectively creating a grassroots awards season for the Web 2.0 wave.