The Golden Rule Of The Big Thing

The lemming-like behavior of those in the Silicon Valley software startup ecosystem (which has branches around the world) is based upon the golden rule of the Big Thing:

There must always be one, and only one, Big Thing.

The lemmings, err, sorry, the VCs and software entrepreneurs then flock to that Big Thing.

The last Big Thing was The Web, now known as Web 1.0. If you could spell www, you could get funded. The Valley had a crisis of confidence when Web 1.0 crashed and burned in 2000 and there was no successor Big Thing to take its place. Was the Golden Rule violated? Was the universe as we know it at risk of imploding? Thankfully, Google emerged to save us, assuring us by its madcap growth and willingness to scoop up (often ditzy) software startups that the dream was still alive. By 2004, this begat Web 2.0, the AJAX, social networking, and user-generated content Big Thing. But the interregnum between Web 1.0 and Web 2.0 was painful and shook the Valley's confidence.

But we're back now, and to show we are in control, we are working on the Next Big Thing. We have learned that we must get this in place before the Current Big Thing starts to fade. Thus there are two questions to answer:

1. Has Web 2.0 peaked?


2. What shall we anoint as its successor?

The hubris, of course, is in the second question. Note that Web 2.0 was already ascendant when it was anointed the Big Thing three years ago. No such successor is currently obvious, though there are some pundits lobbying for the semantic web as Web 3.0, the Next Big Thing. But it doesn't work that way. Picking the Next Big Thing is like picking hot stocks. By the time the third major analyst initiates coverage on the stock with a buy, it is probably time to sell. The Next Big Thing will already be on its way to bigness before the lemmings pile on.

Copyright © 2007 Philip Bookman

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