The Day Web 2.0 Died.
Google release a completely obvious but great new product – saveable personal maps.
On the same day, Techcrunch review an enterpise mashup service, Rearden Commerce, with $100M of funding. This wouldn’t appear so ironic, (since they currently and sensibly have their feet firmly in the ‘stupid money’ enterprise camp), if it weren’t for the fact that they are announcing a move into the consumer space.
Talk about a day to pick for that announcement. To add insult to injury, Rearden have an hilariously meaningless ‘long tail’ graph and are apparently going after the services market: “services are roughly 60% of the worldwide economy.”
Oh yeah, are Rearden gonna run the Bosnian police force (like Computer Sciences Corporation) and hook up tourists with Bangkok Ladymen?
Going after the ‘services market’ with a mashups startup is like going after the global arms trade market with a paintball gun and smacks of the heady days of 1998 when Internet Startup plans used to quote the Forrester numbers for the entire ‘eCommerce’ market.
Meanwhile, OM Malik points out that Google’s very predictable move blows away a raft of maps mashup startups.
Plazes is in the list, and somewhat unfairly, since its not really a ‘saveable map’. In fact, if anything, it scloser to the current darling of the digeratti, Twitter.
But you know things a screwy when the current investment climate requires people to describe their product in incomprehensible jargon. See the description of the company from Plazes’ Felix Petersen.