>
Vertical markets - the next phase of Web 2.0.....
At the moment, if you think of Web 2.0 sites, your list is likely to include mostly businesses with a technical (horizontal) focus or no focus at all. Sites like flickr (photos), del.icio.us (browser favourites), last.fm (music) and technorati (tags) have made a big splash, and pointed the way for specific Web 2.0 functions. Other well-known sites, such as Blogger, Blogspot, MySpace and Facebook have taken a broad approach, and built up enormous subscriber bases in a short time.
However....
....there is a new wave of sites, of which ITVidya itself is one, whose vertical market focus is much tighter, and which I believe represent the next phase of Web 2.0 development. Because of their focus, they offer much more scope for interesting community functions, since the members will naturally have many similar interests.
I believe that there will be a rash of such sites during 2006 and 2007, and that they will start to win attention away from less focused offerings. The opportunity for anybody to launch a vertical web 2.0 play is right now....
All the best,
Patrick
"...Because of their focus, they offer much more scope for interesting community functions, since the members will naturally have many similar interests...."
Pray can somebody tell me how are such sites different in concept from the Yahoo e-groups of yore !
There is increasingly lesser sense of business realism in these sites that are trying to ride the wave!
The only remark I made to Ajay when we met was that he has niche vertical to deal with. The "Tech Professionals" Unfortuntely uniting the techies in India takes some serious efforts initially and then on it could begin yielding results. On the similar lines as you noted, a team at Zudha is working for uniting the Healthcare Pros through a custom built blog/playspace for the stakeholders in Indian Healthcare to voice out at Health & Me
Cheers,
Rajesh