During my flight back from NYC, I managed to read another profile book. This one was not a company profile that I have read before, but covered the changes in Silicon Valley since the phrase Web 2.0 was coined. The book "Once You're Lucky, Twice You're Good - The Rebirth of Silicon Valley and the Rise of Web 2.0" by Sarah Lacy was a really good read as well.

There is no back cover summary of this book, and the inner liner is too long to really want to post here. However, here is the summary:

After the DotCom Bubble burst in 2000, many of the IT companies that had started to be formed with grandiose ideas failed miserably and vanished. There were a select few that continued to prosper amazingly well, and some of them that continued to grow slowly, but the majority of them closed shop. Then, several years later, what people originally thought of as the next bubble began to form. This was not a bubble, though - this was a completely different mindset as to how the IT industry would grow. Instead of companies forcing product out the door with only one thought in mind, the new iteration was dubbed Web 2.0 and got feedback from the users and facilitated communication in order to grow.

According to Wikipedia, "Web 2.0 is a term describing the trend in the use of World Wide Web technology and web design that aims to enhance creativity, information sharning, and, most notably, collaboration among users." The key element here is the collaboration, which enhances the communication from users on the system with one another as well as with the owners of the site. This led to the growth and expansion of many such sites - MySpace, PayPal, LinkedIn, Digg, and the one that blew everyone away - Facebook. Some of these have gone public, some have not; either way, they are examples of how the owners of the sites have grown it for what they want as well as keeping in mind the needs of the users.

The nice thing about the book is that it does not cover only the successes, but also the failures. Some learn from success, others from failure, and those on the outside learn from both. It is an interesting viewpoint of the changes in the industry from the 90s DotCom Bubble to the new method of the successful sites and see what happens to make a successful business that is not custom-made solutions for clients but a service-oriented product delivered to the public for anyone and everyone to use. Most of these applications have simple to use interfaces, are geared towards the community as a whole (and not defining a specific community), and the most popular ones allow for unique customization (MySpace allowing for custom skinning and Facebook for the addition of a number of applications - most of which are just ANNOYING, as a personal note).

The book covers the growth of the new Web 2.0 industry and shows budding entrepeneurs the upsides, the downsides, and the growth of the new industry. It shows others what has worked and what has not (unlike the DotCom Bubble, there was still VC funding here but not as much as there was up front back in the 90s).

A nice review of how the industry has changed and where it is going for those of us in the IT industry. It gives ideas and shows that things change frequently. What was hot one day may not be hot the next day - complacency breeds failure. The companies have to listen to the public and make changes accordingly to keep the business thriving.