Yesterday Mike was going through all the posts we’ve written on TechCrunch since it first began, and getting them into an OPML file that Dave is now using on Scripting News. One thing we were talking about during the time was the surprising amount of companies that we haven’t heard anything from since they were first profiled for the site. The conclusions to take from this are simple:

• Most development happening now is as a proof of concept. A showcase of what the new “web 2.0″ methodology allows. Services, mash-ups, social networks. Most of the new projects out there don’t have a business model, or a plan to move forward (keep in mind that I love projects built for the pleasure of development). They exist because they can exist.
• Investment seems to stifle innovation. Some of these companies I’m talking about are funded. Some had A rounds of several million bucks. Some had some real cash flow going on. But once the money lands on the bank accounts, bang: innovation stops. This is an unfortunate, general case.

One of my favourite projects out there was Flickr. I remember when I first saw it and began testing it out. I bought a pro account. I love it. But since they’ve been acquired by Yahoo, there’s nothing new. When they were independent, they were listening to their users, adding cool stuff, making my time on Flickr worthwhile.

Now I’m using them as an example because I love them. There are so many others like that out there that I wonder about the future of this “era”. Does innovation come in waves of money out / development in, money in / development out? It seems like it, and that’s a shame.

I can only hope to myself continue innovating. And that others do the same. Even if their bank account looks (much) better than mine.

Related Link: Cash Advances Overnight payday loans

According to this article InformationWeek, 1 in every 10 consumers reads weblogs at least once a week. This means the numbers have doubled since last years Forrester Research results. The question is, is there still any doubt in anyone’s mind that consumer-publishing and decentralized content are here to stay, and possibly conquer the media world?

This new publishing mechanism is allowing (as InfoWeek mentions quite correctly) people to connect to people, and people to connect to business in entirely new ways, ultimately benifiting both parties - that is, if the businesses can adapt to the new methodologies of what you might call the read/write web.

Interestingly, the numbers for RSS usage seem to have grown from 2 to 6 percent too, and I’m pretty sure we’ll see some great advances when (more of) the big boys have jumped on the bandwagon of syndicated content (remember Apple did the jump last year) - I still am to fully see how Microsoft will play the RSS meme in their upcoming Windows Vista.

All in all, these are good news for those of us who have been following the blogging world and the edge of the network for a long time. They’re also great news for people who believe in sharing knowledge and writing great independent content.

Every once in a while, I get to have fun. Fun, is how I describe a little (very little indeed) project that I, Nivi and Dave Horner worked on for a few days some time ago (it was actually built for Foocamp). So, slawesome is out there - I know, the name isn’t easy. Blame Nivi.

Anyway, Slawesome is all about allowing people to send notes, email, love mail, hate mail, or anything else they can do with a microphone, to someone else or themselves. It’s about allowing people to express themselves in ways email doesn’t really allow, because you know how voice can be powerful. Would you rather write a 10 lines text, or speak for 30 seconds? If you’d prefer to speak, you’d probably like slawesome.

We did it for fun. It’s not a full-blown web-application. Nivi had a good idea and we decided to get it out there. We hope people have fun using it. We’ll be having fun adding new features to allow you to express yourself. You know, with voice! Now, go on and send me some voice-mail: my email is “hello@webreakstuff.com”. Use it, amuse me. And turn your messages public, share the fun. Email <3’s voice.

Update: TechCrunch, SolutionWatch. and UneasySilence are talking about it.

43 People is about to launch. By the same guys who’ve already delivered the great 43Things and 43Places (The Robot Co-op), this is one of the best applications of the “web 2.0″, because it connects people to people, and allows them to share little intimate details to the public, while not being “weird” about it.

Sometimes I wonder how many of the entrepreneurs working on the “next killer app” realize how much of the web 2.0 is about connecting people who are on the “edge” (of the “content publishing” world, that is) and allowing them to interact. This ability to connect people through services, transparently, is amazing, and something I personally think about a lot - and now even more, since the work I’ve been doing is all about this sort of stuff.

One concern of mine is how much social software out there packs no meaningful “social object” - you know, what connects two or more people (like photos on Flickr, podcasts on Odeo or videos on YouTube). The result is usually the same all the time - people get tired, they stop visiting or they leave. Plus, there’s the problem of not being connected to the social network all the time (you are not on, say, hi5 all the time - hopefully), eventually leading people to forget or ignore the software. The meaningfulness of the social object around which the social network revolves is extremely important. Too important to forget.