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“We are going to lose some good companies.” That’s the warning cry from investors in tech these days.

Some we won’t miss, of course: the lame, me-too, or single-featured “products” masquerading as businesses. But be prepared. Some Web 2.0 start-ups that are well-loved by many are in serious danger of falling off the cliff.

The problem is that being loved is no guarantee for success. Even being used isn’t enough. Remember Kozmo, the munchie messenger service from the last bubble? Not a person who used it didn’t love it. In the interest of building a user base, the company was OK with losing money on every transaction in its early days. But when the time came for it to become a real business, it was too late. It couldn’t transition to a viable company, and it folded. It was a tragedy.

Here, in no particular order, are 11 online services companies that could face a similar fate. Several of them are 2008 Webware 100 winners. Like I said, popularity isn’t enough.

Twitter

Although well-used by many and even relied upon by some (like me), Twitter has yet to turn on a revenue model. It’s not like the company would lose users, if it set up a minor advertising strategy as a test; people want to see the company make some money. Please, Twitter, turn on the revenue before it’s too late.

Meebo

This is one of the coolest online communication companies I’ve seen. I like its products and services. But the revenues for running branded chat rooms cannot be all that large. Meebo belongs under the wing of a larger company like Facebook or Microsoft, but with Meebo’s expensive valuation and the coming cutback in M&A, I fear that its exits may be blocked.

TripIt

A very useful service for organizing travel information. Wait, travel? Who’s going to be traveling more often during the economic storm we’re heading into? People are going to sit at home on their mattresses filled with cash, teleconference instead of go on business trips, and take vacations in their backyards. I fear for this company and other clever travel start-ups.

Zillow

The real-estate site’s revenue model is advertising. Real estate and bank advertising. Unless the real-estate research site starts charging for foreclosure listings, I don’t see it doing too well in a hunkered-down economy, in which people are trying to hold on to their homes for dear life, not upgrade.

Pandora

People love this product. It helps them find music they like. What’s wrong with that? Here’s what: unfavorable royalty rates could make it too expensive to run. Survival depends on ongoing negotiations with the music industrial complex. They appear to be going well, but the company is very exposed.

Second Life

The Web interface and social network of the future. Except that it’s expensive to run, hard to use, and suffers from empty-restaurant syndrome.

Skype

The revolutionary VoIP service was acquired by eBay, which someday may be seen as its downfall. A noncore service to the auction site, eBay may well want to spin off Skype to maintain focus. But who would buy it at the valuation that would make eBay stockholders comfortable?

Ask

Why isn’t it dead yet? It’s really a good search engine, and even a small piece of the search economy can generate significant revenues. But running fourth place in a three-horse race is not a good position to be in when the costs of competing are high, as they are in the search market.

DailyMotion

This popular mostly European video-sharing site isn’t under the protection of a major moneymaker like YouTube is, and it hasn’t yet found a way to offset its streaming costs with advertising revenue.

Netvibes

Here’s another product I have used and still like a great deal (occasional frustrating slowdowns notwithstanding), but that has a limited upside as a standalone business.

Netvibes’ much smaller competitor, Pageflakes, was acquired earlier this year, and that’s what needs to happen with Netvibes. But media companies–the natural acquirers for Netvibes–are about to get hammered by a retrenching advertising market, and that may spell the end of Netvibes’ survival plan. (The upcoming release of a Facebook product might help growth, but I don’t think that’s the real issue Netvibes is facing.)

MySpace

Walking dead. Although it’s under the aegis of Rupert Murdoch, the notoriously ruthless businessman could easily cut loose this social network of yesterday. The momentum is certainly not with this one.

See also: The tech downturn: How long and how bad?

More here:
Today’s Kozmos?: 11 potentially doomed dot-coms

“We are going to lose some good companies.” That’s the warning cry from investors in tech these days.

Some we won’t miss, of course: the lame, me-too, or single-featured “products” masquerading as businesses. But be prepared. Some Web 2.0 start-ups that are well-loved by many are in serious danger of falling off the cliff.

The problem is that being loved is no guarantee for success. Even being used isn’t enough. Remember Kozmo, the munchie messenger service from the last bubble? Not a person who used it didn’t love it. In the interest of building a user base, the company was OK with losing money on every transaction in its early days. But when the time came for it to become a real business, it was too late. It couldn’t transition to a viable company, and it folded. It was a tragedy.

Here, in no particular order, are 11 online services companies that could face a similar fate. Several of them are 2008 Webware 100 winners. Like I said, popularity isn’t enough.

Twitter

Although well-used by many and even relied upon by some (like me), Twitter has yet to turn on a revenue model. It’s not like the company would lose users, if it set up a minor advertising strategy as a test; people want to see the company make some money. Please, Twitter, turn on the revenue before it’s too late.

Meebo

This is one of the coolest online communication companies I’ve seen. I like its products and services. But the revenues for running branded chat rooms cannot be all that large. Meebo belongs under the wing of a larger company like Facebook or Microsoft, but with Meebo’s expensive valuation and the coming cutback in M&A, I fear that its exits may be blocked.

TripIt

A very useful service for organizing travel information. Wait, travel? Who’s going to be traveling more often during the economic storm we’re heading into? People are going to sit at home on their mattresses filled with cash, teleconference instead of go on business trips, and take vacations in their backyards. I fear for this company and other clever travel start-ups.

Zillow

The real-estate site’s revenue model is advertising. Real estate and bank advertising. Unless the real-estate research site starts charging for foreclosure listings, I don’t see it doing too well in a hunkered-down economy, in which people are trying to hold on to their homes for dear life, not upgrade.

Pandora

People love this product. It helps them find music they like. What’s wrong with that? Here’s what: unfavorable royalty rates could make it too expensive to run. Survival depends on ongoing negotiations with the music industrial complex. They appear to be going well, but the company is very exposed.

Second Life

The Web interface and social network of the future. Except that it’s expensive to run, hard to use, and suffers from empty-restaurant syndrome.

Skype

The revolutionary VoIP service was acquired by eBay, which someday may be seen as its downfall. A noncore service to the auction site, eBay may well want to spin off Skype to maintain focus. But who would buy it at the valuation that would make eBay stockholders comfortable?

Ask

Why isn’t it dead yet? It’s really a good search engine, and even a small piece of the search economy can generate significant revenues. But running fourth place in a three-horse race is not a good position to be in when the costs of competing are high, as they are in the search market.

DailyMotion

This popular mostly European video-sharing site isn’t under the protection of a major moneymaker like YouTube is, and it hasn’t yet found a way to offset its streaming costs with advertising revenue.

Netvibes

Here’s another product I have used and still like a great deal (occasional frustrating slowdowns notwithstanding), but that has a limited upside as a standalone business.

Netvibes’ much smaller competitor, Pageflakes, was acquired earlier this year, and that’s what needs to happen with Netvibes. But media companies–the natural acquirers for Netvibes–are about to get hammered by a retrenching advertising market, and that may spell the end of Netvibes’ survival plan. (The upcoming release of a Facebook product might help growth, but I don’t think that’s the real issue Netvibes is facing.)

MySpace

Walking dead. Although it’s under the aegis of Rupert Murdoch, the notoriously ruthless businessman could easily cut loose this social network of yesterday. The momentum is certainly not with this one.

See also: The tech downturn: How long and how bad?

Source:
11 troubled Web companies: The next Kozmos?

Chances are that your online social networking habits are bringing you online via your phone.

A recent survey by ABI Research reports that almost half of those using online social networks have visited a social network through a mobile phone, with MySpace and Facebook being the most popular sites visited.

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Survey: Most Popular Mobile Social Networks

Facebook and MySpace are the most popular social networking destinations for mobile phone users, according to a survey conducted by ABI Research.

Researchers found that 46 percent of those who use social networks have visited their favorite services on a mobile phone. Out of that group, nearly 70 percent visited MySpace on their mobile phone and 67 percent visited Facebook. No other social network was able to muster 15 percent mobile adoption.

The study also found that about 50 percent of respondents are checking comments and messages from their friends when they access social networks from their phones, while 45 percent said they usually post status updates instead.

Facebook and MySpace dominance in the mobile space shouldn’t come as a surprise, considering their control over the U.S. social networking market. According to the latest figures from Hitwise, Facebook’s traffic is up 50 percent since last August and commands almost 21 percent of the market, while MySpace still owns 67.5 percent of the social-networking market in the U.S.

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Facebook, MySpace reign supreme in mobile market

MySpace says that 1 billion songs have been streamed since the News Corp. social network debuted its MySpace Music service last month.

“We can confirm that we hit a milestone of one billion music streams only a few days after launching the new product,” the company said in a statement, and a MySpace PR representative clarified to CNET News that the number only includes songs streamed since MySpace Music’s debut. “More importantly, we are still compiling our metrics on engagement and unique users which will tell a much richer story on how positively the community is responding to the new music experience. We’re excited to share more information and data as soon as it’s available.”

MySpace Music launched on September 24, with the catalogs of all four major record labels as well as indie music distributors encompassed by Sony ATV. The debut was accompanied by heavy promotion from big-name artists, across other Fox Interactive Media properties, and even a billboard in Times Square.

The iTunes Music Store, the biggest name in digital music, hit the five-billion-songs mark in June after over five years in business. But it’s not really comparable to MySpace Music, because iTunes is a software download rather than Web-based, and charges 99 cents per song. MySpace Music streaming is free.

Let’s do some simple math: if MySpace has about 120 million members worldwide, that’s slightly over eight songs per member. Obviously, not all MySpace users have streamed any music, and there are probably quite a few who have streamed far more than eight songs. That’s also a rough estimate, considering you do not have to be a MySpace member to stream songs–any visitor to, say, the Jonas Brothers’ MySpace page could simply hit the “play” button.

But a billion is still a big number–and CNET News is waiting to hear from some third-party analysts and research firms to see if anyone has a different take on it.

Continued here:
MySpace Music: 1 billion songs streamed