Technology nerds are well served for news and discussion on the Web with great sites that encourage participation, like Slashdot and Kuro5hin. Business geeks have found it harder relying on mainstream media outlets, like C|Net and the Guardian's Online section.
But now, those with a commercial and economic bent have their own forum to vent steam. The end of January saw the launch of the AlwaysOn-Network, a new website covering the emerging technology industries. Based in Silicon Valley, which is still reeling from the dotcom bubble and subsequent downturn in IT spending, it is a refreshing piece of entrepreneurial activity during a bleak period for the sector.
The AlwaysOn-Network (AO Network) is a "super blog for business geeks" according to its founder and publisher Tony Perkins. The idea is the fill in a niche in the market: providing detailed comment, analysis and discussion on the technology. He calls this "opinion journalism" arguing "what passes for objective comment in ordinary media is purely opinion. Blogging is, at least, honest expression."
The AO Network epitomises many of the core features of the new, lean Silicon Valley rather than the bloated, capital-intensive bubble Valley.
1. It has bootstrap capital rather than venture capital. Perkins and his associates have put in their own money rather than take a business plan around to the venture capital community.
2. Community rules: The AO Network is designed to be a two-way web site. Every article has user comments and ratings on it. Members contribute half of the writing and the editorial team can see which users have the most impact. Those super-users will be encouraged to become correspondents for the site working for love and recognition (but not money, at this stage).
3. Open source: Perkins has joined the open source brigade. Eschewing traditional platforms from vendors like Microsoft and Sun, he is powering the site using Linux and associated tools. The software for this site cost $150. He reckons a non-open source route might have cost 1,000 times more.
AO Network is Perkins' third start-up business. The first was Upside, a now defunct technology magazine. The second, the Red Herring, covered the entrepreneurial technology businesses and grew fat and profitable as money poured into the Valley between 1998 and 2000. Perkins became an international business celebrity speaking regularly on television and to governments around the world.
Since the collapse in the tech sector in summer 2000, times have been tough for the Red Herring. Perkins oversaw four rounds of lay-offs and watched the magazine struggle for survival as 70% of its revenues-advertising from tech firms with rich marketing budgets-disappeared.
Some of this was perhaps a little ironic. Perkins had been an uncannily early Cassandra about the tech boom with his 1999 book, The Internet Bubble. In it he predicted the boom would collapse imminently. It did, but the magnitude of the collapse exceeded his expectations.
"I projected a 33% meltdown. With the blue chips freezing their tech spending and then all these corporate scandals, we've seen a 75% meltdown. No one could have predicted that-and even if they did, no board of directors would have believed them."
Perkins is optimistic about the prospects for Silicon Valley, pointing to the ongoing success of young companies like Google and Salesforce.com in reaching profitability. He gets additional reassurance from the continuing growth of the internet population: only 5m in 1995, more than 100 times that today. And his attitude eponymises his new venture. He is always on: "What I have learned that business is just the game that grown-ups play and that it is really important to understand that there are cycles to life. The history of Silicon Valley is the story of one cycle after another. It is good to take history into consideration and ride the rollercoaster. Because that is what it's going to be."
Useful links:
· Slashdot
· Azeem Azhar is at http://azeem.azhar.co.uk
