Tech Stock Profits: Mobile Technology and Web 2.0

In 2003, behind closed doors Tim O'Reilly, of Irish descent and founder of American firm O'Reilly Media, held a brainstorming meeting for his company discussing computer technology conference.

Out of that simple brainstorming meeting, and a conference that followed, came the famous term that coins the current trends in computer technology: Web 2.0.

O'Reilly merely stated, "Web 2.0 is the business revolution in the computer industry caused by the move to the Internet as platform, and an attempt to understand the rules for success on that new platform."

The dot-com bubble burst in 2001 -- as devastating as it was to stock market investors who believe they put their money in long-term investments, not to mention the CEOs that lost everything in the failure of their dot-com startups -- was very similar to the slash-and-burn strategy once used for crops: As everything fell, the soil (the infrastructure of the technology industry) was ready for new growth.

The Internet is a platform now. The wires have been run, the systems have been manufactured, and the users are versed in the simple operations of point and click. Now that developers have tested the limits of Web technology, it's only a matter of making those experimental applications better.

A good example of what Web 1.0 did for the tech is Netscape. Netscape was the first "Web as platform" blockbuster product: a purchased Web browser wrapped with a desktop application. It used the popularity of its Web browser to sell its server services. Eventually, both browsers and servers were so popular that new companies started up to provide services and applications to run on both.

Web 2.0: The Next Generation is exemplified by Google. Its service offers free online applications supported by the sales of ads. There's no software to install. It's all done through your Web browser. There are no upgrades to be purchased -- just updates that make the service even better, increasing Google's ability to provide business to its ad partners. It's an application, a middleman between the browser and the user.

Web 2.0 has seen some of the most important applications that are exactly this: middlemen. And within the success of these Web 2.0 companies you can see common trends: social networking with sites like Facebook and Myspace; multimedia applications with the success of video site YouTube and online photo album Flickr; and continually updated information at your fingertips 24/7 from sites like Wikipedia.

These are some of the Web 2.0 applications as platforms that are launching mini success stories across the world. It's allowing new generations of application software enthusiasts to add services and increase the efficiency and usefulness of the technology we are increasingly dependent upon.

Last week, I had the pleasure of attending Dow Jones' annual VentureWire Mobile Technology Summit. I heard presentations from some of the up-and-coming superstars of the Web 2.0 frenzy.

A growing trend in technology is for Web-based applications to be more accessible through mobile devices.

Here are just some interesting highlights that could be the near-distant future in mobile technology:

With a specific patent-pending technology, realtors can walk by any house and type into their mobile phone the address and find out how much it's selling for, increasing their lead potential...

In a city you've never visited before, you can use your GPS-enabled mobile device to find the best sub shop within a 5-mile radius or the best nightclub for after dinner...

You can speak into your phone and having it speak back to you with the name and location of your next appointment -- and directions on how to get there...

All of these technologies are poised to break out onto the market soon, and are set to change the way, once again, in how we view technology as a whole, the usefulness of the Internet and the power of mobile technology.

Stay tuned to tomorrow's Taipan Daily for all of the inside tips on investing in tomorrow's mobile technology powerhouses today.

Ann Sosnowski
Editor, Diligent Investor

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