How about a web site for hooking up borrowers who can’t get a loan from anywhere else with lenders who are not in the business of making loans? Prosper is exactly that. On the list of borrows is a young man who wants to borrow $12,000 to buy a wedding ring, someone else pleading for $8,000 to consolidate credit cards, and a romantic that wants to borrow $1,000 to buy something to surprise his wife. Like we said, a thoroughly bad idea.

A website for carpoolers? Pooln describes themselves as a national community for folks who are interested in carpooling. This has a zero % chance of surviving past the experimental stage. (I’ll give them credit though for being the only Web 2.0 company that did not do a “mash-up” with Google Maps even though in this instance it might have made sense.)

How about a website for sophisticated people? By “sophisticated” we mean people like the young lady below who we plucked from their member gallery. Their name is Phusebox.com (the funny thing is they couldn’t even get the dot-com URL for this silly name and are Phusebox.net). I’m all for mindless social interaction but the bar has to be set somewhere around my shins to expend the energy to register.

Two Crowds is a complete misapplication of the “wisdom of crowds” concept. In this manifestation, users make silly predictions to which others can agree or disagree. In theory the people going to this website will be smart enough to determine who will win the next election, the NBA finals, and the mysteries of life. In reality it is a social experiment proving once again that people have far too much time on their hands. Also showing how much of a cool 2.0 company they are they use Flickr images to weed out comment spam. Ooohhh.

Flickrlogomakr turns any word into a Flickr logo! Somebody gets these folks some VC money before Google buys them!

NetworthIQ. List your assets and liabilities online and compare your net worth with others. Build a community with others in your socio-economic status.http://independentsources.com/wp-admin/post.php?action=edit&post=1352

MyVideoKaraoke. Listen to and watch talentless “singers” on small jerky video! A can’t miss value proposition for those looking for an alternative to cutting oneself with a razor blade. (Click here for possibly the worst rendition of Queen’s “Bohemian Rhapsody” of all time).

tags: web 2.0 web2.0 Internet bubble

This entry was posted on Friday, May 5th, 2006 at 7:15 am by Insider and is filed under How Not To Succeed In Business. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.