New Year's Resolutions for Web 2.0

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Speaking of unproven business models, I have some thoughts for video startups as well. Guys, sort yourselves out. If I'm confused and exhausted with all the video startups out there, imagine what it's like for someone who doesn't live and breathe Web 2.0. Is it any wonder only YouTube has broken out? I would love to see a separation of the men from the boys this year when it comes to online video. What makes you different? It will take more than starting the response with, "We're like YouTube, but…" Venture capitalists: If they don't have a good answer, they're not getting bought for $1.65 billion. Cut the cord already!

Warfare on the Way

While I'm on the subject of selling, I'd also like to see what's in store for some of the entrepreneurs who sold in the early 2000s but have laid low for a half-decade. You know who you are. You worked at startups like del.icio.us and Flickr just as the user-generated Web was getting off the ground. Often, such companies were founded by passionate coders and big-idea people, not your Valley establishment types, and they sold long before Web 2.0 got overhyped. The companies fetched well under $100 million and budding online phenomena were subsumed into big corporations like Yahoo! (YHOO) and Google. A generation of smart, young entrepreneurs went to work for new corporate owners for preset periods under terms of the buyouts.

Well, a lot of those lockups are expiring and those young Turks will soon be wandering the Valley in search of new work. Here's hoping, now that they've made their first few million or more, that they'll be ready to build something big.

And finally, for everyone else: Brace yourself. Hype cycles are ugly things. And Web 2.0 is about to enter a period where many in PR, the media, the blogosphere, and the research community begin tearing down the very companies they've spent the last few years building up. Even clear winners like Facebook and News Corp.'s (NWS) MySpace will suffer—though they'll weather it. The same can't be said for the hundreds of marginal social networks, YouTube wannabes, and other online businesses that have failed to build a community. Sell while you can, because here's the prediction you don't want to hear: TechCrunch's Dead Pool will swell to thousands by yearend.

For more on Sarah Lacy's Web 2.0 New Year's resolutions, see BusinessWeek's slide show.

Sarah Lacy has been a business reporter for 10 years, most recently covering technology for BusinessWeek. Her book, Once You're Lucky, Twice You're Good: The Rebirth of Silicon Valley and the Rise of Web 2.0, will be published by Gotham Books in May, 2008. She is also Silicon Valley host of Yahoo Finance's Tech Ticker.