Having worked in the corporate world for several years, I find that Web 2.0 is very irrelevant to most businesses. Companies spend a lot of time and money collating information which is proprietary in nature and will never share the information freely with their competitors.

I make money online,  but I have spent a lot of time and money experimenting to find out what works and what does not. The knowledge I have is not coding, which is basically a+a = 2a . Why should I share it with others for the sake of friendship or networking?

Other than startups flush with money from Venture Capitalist, most of the major spenders online are small and medium enterprises, and they will never share their trade secrets easily. In fact Web 2.0 makes corporate espionage easier, so no well run non-internet business will promote many aspects of Web 2.0.

Information stolen from Just Dial ( I wonder why I cannot locate the original article on the Times of India website)

am aware of few very well known startups that are shutting shop (will share as we get a green signal from founders/investors).

In India, most internet companies think that getting funding = success, but they do not realize that you lose independence and have to consult your investors before taking major decisions.

One of the things about the internet which make it such a magical place (for me at least) , is that you do not need much money to make money online. If you are willing to spend time understanding the market, there is a lot of money which can be made.

Most Indian internet companies who get funding only have a very limited market and so the growth prospects are limited. They usually target urban  India and Indians settled abroad and rarely have a universal appeal. So unless these companies are bought out, it is difficult to get good returns on the millions of dollars invested.

Another over hyped Web 2.0 website like  You Tube, I wonder for how long it will remain popular.   All these websites are good only for researching the people you will be or are dealing with. Their friends and avatars tell  you a lot about the person.

Soon many of these social networking websites will close down. So much much time and money is spent and it all is wasted.  If only people had thought about where the money is coming from, instead of following the latest trends. 

If it is someone else’s money, you can be careless  with it, hype matters more.  If it is your own hard earned money , your savings after doing a 9 to 5 job for years, you are far less likely to waste it, profits are important.

There so many stories about social networking websites, but I feel it will not take off in a big way as there is no use for the “friends” you make, many profiles are fake anyway. For teenagers and students, they are a good way to spend time, but they really do not serve any purpose. They are just a fad, which will fade away after some time

Social networking sites are very resource intensive and difficult to monetise. I had a fairly busy forum, but it was not worth the effort, since maintenance and taking backups is very time consuming. So now I try to reduce activity on the forum to a minimum, page views are not important for me, my time and revenues are.

 There are many disadvantages of not knowing anything about the internet initially, you start later , you learn everyone from scratch . But the big advantage is that you can focus on what you feel will work, instead of bothering about short term trends.