Social Glass

I’ve recently returned from a 2 week vacation visiting my family in snowy Colorado.  No, this is not another complaint abou the “evils of email” (Australia virtually shuts down between December 18 and January 15 anyway).  It is instead a post about the amount of Web 2.0/Enterprise 2.0 news I had to catch up on.

In the Beginning

I first ventured into blog syndication reading Techcrunch.  Techcrunch was virtually the only blog I read until I discovered Andrew McAffee and Enterprise 2.0.  I’ve since added a series of blogs to my repertoire, including:

• Andrew McAffee
• Dion Hinchliffe
• Firestoker
• Innovation Creators
• The FAST Forward Blog
• Web 2.0 Explorer

Upon my return (and having been away from internet access for 5 days), I found over 100 unread blog posts in my feed aggregator.  This was far above the number of unread emails I had.  We talk a lot about Signals when it comes to Enterprise 2.0. In this case my “signals” backfired as I was overwhelmed with information (maybe I should just cut down on the number of blogs I read).

So, I set out to make myself current with what had been going on in the Enterprise 2.0 and Web 2.0 space during my absence.  Heaven forbid I miss out on a vital detail about some new development.  I noticed several posts about the reality of Web 2.0 startups, including this post by Michael Arrington.  It seems that many Web 2.0 companies are shutting their doors, and that few are actually going through the IPO process.  2007 should see a reconciliation with those companies that actually add value sticking around.

Maybe this also means the blogsophere will settle a bit, and that the next time I take a 2 week vacation I’ll only have 50 unread posts to read.