The After Thought - Web Business Models

Posted on January 17, 2008
Filed Under Making Money | | Written by Gary Reid

I found this post by Fred Wilson, who is following on from Mr. Long Tail himself, Chris Anderson’s post on media business models.I’m not going to list them all out, this is a division of labour, you need to hop over and read them, only fair really.

One guy has created a wiki page here, but I’m guessing us Web Two Point Oh guys may not walk the talk, but I hope this wiki page becomes well known and updated, have I added mine? No!

I really like the idea of this list but is it the long tail? One commenter at Fred’s blog has already pointed this out. On the list are

Licensing of brand
Licensing of content
API Fees

Not many in the long tail will have much luck with these, by definition they’ll be too small or are these the long tail of business models rather than business models for the long tail?

What it brought home to me is how the whole thing is becoming counter-intuitive - I mean starting a business used to mean generating revenue in sufficient quantities to make a profit, that was the starting point.

But, that is no longer the case, you don’t need a business model to start with.

You’ve got to admit you can see why so many people think Web 2.0 is bullshit. Are there really people in meetings saying - holy crap how are we going to make money?

That is the counter-intuitive world of the contemporary business model - the world isn’t flat, even though it bloody looks like it is from my window.