I have been away from the wireless Internet market for a little over twelve months; three spent planning our wedding, nine spent travelling the world. I checked in on sites like Moconews every so often, and I took a look at the services available in many of the countries that we visited, but for the most part I kept my distance.
Catching up now I am struck by how little has changed in the last year. Where are all the new startups?
About a year ago Tim O’Reilly wrote an excellent essay, What is Web 2.0, in the course of which he mentions "9.5 million citations" of the term on Google to illustrate how popular it had become. Today I see 57.5 million citations of the phrase "Web 2.0" on Google, and the list of so-called Web 2.0 startups has gone from the unwieldy to the unbelievable to the ridiculous.
On the other hand the list of exhibitors at CTIA has hardly changed at all in the last year.
Web 2.0 may be a bubble. But better to have bubbled and burst than never to have bubbled at all.
