It can be argued that AOL’s purchase of Time Warner in January of 2000 marked the exact end of the dot-com, and now I think they’ve done it again with their purchase of Techcrunch. For me Techcrunch, the blog that was written by Mike Arrington alone in 2005, was the reason I got back into software after retiring. His excitement over the new wave of software that came to be called Web 2.0 was the first sign of real life I had seen since the dot-bomb crash.
In software it is all a matter of riding the waves, and Mike nailed the Web 2.0 wave perfectly. Now I think he is signaling the close of this wave. That’s great, because I want to ride another wave, maybe my last before retiring for good, and we need to close this one before a new one can start.
The first Web wave was about companies building simple, brochure style websites. The second wave added online tools, social networking, and user generated content to this website foundation. I’m betting that the third wave will be companies upgrading their brochure sites to incorporate all the features from the second wave. That’s why I am focusing on the Twitter API as a key ingredient in this coming third wave.
The first wave was from 1994 to 2000. The second wave was from 2003 to 2010. I think it’s a safe bet that everyone will recognize that the third wave has begun in 3-4 years.
Update: Sarah Lacy agrees with me.
