I recently read an article on Techcrunch on how web 2.0 had undoubtedly made an impact, but had yet to truly make money. From my stance they is really one way to make money on the web, which is through advertising (paid subscription services are dying). This can either be done through a simple banner ad, or something that can more easily be deemed a qualified lead or referral. Ads will always be there, but if web 2.0 is to start making money it must be on improving the measurement and throughput of qualified leads.

I’m finding it a growingly interesting balance in consuming versus producing information. I also feel with the increase in availability of information, the barrier to entry in so many areas are shrinking rapidly. I think of some of the areas where the barriers to entry are typically much higher. 15 years ago we would have never seen a 23 year old as the CEO of a company valued at 15 billion dollars. While my vantage point even within the business market is narrow, as I think in relation to technology I still believe it applies across the board. Now it no longer takes 20 years in business , learning from your experiences and mistakes, to have the knowledge and ability to run a large company. In fact, in some cases that may be a hinderance, because you will expect that your previous experiences have prepared you to handle the situation, which you may not view as different. The difference in today’s world is that businesses, the ones that will at least be around in 5, 10, and 20 years are the ones that manage to adapt to change extremely quickly.

As I’ve become more or less a web 2.0 whore. I’ve also had a great interest in web 3.0 and what it will fortell. Most believe natural language and the semantic web will play a large role in that. And while it will that will not be the end result of web 3.0. While web 2.0 included AJAX and Flex, that really doesn’t fully encompass what they are. Web 3.0 to sum it up most simply will be about reducing the noise of the web. While I can take very little credit for this idea as I have heard others say the same or at least similar things, there is an interesting side that I believe most have not thought about.

Products Company - For me this may the be most obvious and strongest reason for any of the four groups to begin using Twitter. It’s quite simple, people use your product or service, people talk about your product or service, people ARE talking about your product or service on Twitter. Regardless of whether you want it or not, people are going to talk and they’ll speak their minds. I don’t believe I know of a company that wouldn’t want to know what it’s consumers are saying about them, much less that wouldn’t want to be part of that conversation. But if they really do want to, they have the chance to at least be part of it over twitter if they so choose.

At the time one startup that would be a prime example of what I’m about to detail did not come to mind. Salesforce, salesforce has a respectable feature list, yet is also one of the web companies that has managed to scale well. The interesting thing about web companies is the best ones are the ones that can truly scale to a mass audience. Many can offer an okay service, but scaling that service is a truly difficult task.

I’ve heard that mobile devices will be everywhere and will replace computers for what seems like decades, but is probably growing on 6 or 7 years now. The thing is I don’t really need a desktop with me every where I go. Seldom am I somewhere and I wish I had access to Microsoft Office or wish I had Eclipse or Visual Studio. While I concede that I occasionally watch youtube on my IPhone, this is far more rare than it is common. Most of the time it’s simply for the wow factor that I pull it out and load up the “Here comes another bubble” video.

After a year of living in Silicon Valley it’s hard not to be consumed with the excitement around one startup after the next. The hopes of being the next eBay, Google, or Facebook lie within many of individuals in the area. Some pursue it, some write it off as a distant hope, and still others just want to be a part of them at some point.

But why would someone just want to be a part of Google 5 years ago? The first thing that comes to mind is money, and while thats nice, I don’t believe its at the root of it. There’s a vastly different atmosphere at a startup. For one you have a say, right now if I left my company, I’d get good-byes from 100 people, be missed by maybe 20, and the other 159,900 would move along as if nothing happened. But if I left a startup the entire company notices, so there is a closer sense of belonging. Still I don’t believe this is the heart of it.

Twitter is great for a few key reasons, first let me highlight the two key uses I feel it has in the enterprise.

Spend five minutes talking to me about technology or business and you’ll quickly realize I’m a fan of Adobe AIR. Adobe has done a very good job building a cross-platform runtime, and providing tools that make the transition from the web to the desktop quite minimal.

First to elaborate why I like AIR. For one I’m a fan of web 2.0, the sites feel cleaner, smoother, and drive new capabilities. Versus most desktop applications that are starting to feel old, and much like 1990’s Java Applets do on the web. With Flex Builder, which is an IDE for developing for flash and/or AIR, I can develop a sweet website, but then quickly port it to the desktop while maintaining a rich web 2.0 feel.

As I write this, I write only from my vague knowledge of where revenue’s come directly from. However, I do hope to back this up in the future with more numeric backing. My title of the post may be quite strong and negative, but I feel it has reasonable ground to stand on, based on one simple principle. A corporation should stick to and focus on it’s core business, and exhausting resources outside it’s core business could end up costing them their business.