Social Media Consolidation
By Rob Safuto on Oct 26, 2006 in Analysis, Observations, Social Media | Tags: Acquistions , Obvious-Corp , Odeo , Social Media
As with any new industry there are many entrants who rush to be on the cutting edge of new markets and technology. I one heard that there were thousands of car companies in the U.S. in the early days of the automobile. Now we’re down to a handful of American car companies. Will this be the fate of social media firms?
Big name tech firms are swallowing up independent outlets as fast as they can get their hands on them. Fox bought MySpace. Yahoo bought Del.icio.us and Flickr. Google bought Writely and YouTube. There will be more deals to come.
Now we get the news that Odeo has bought their company back from investors. According to the story on TechCrunch, “Odeo has kicked out its investors and is going it alone. Evan Williams along with Biz Stone and all other current Odeo employees have created a new company called Obvious Corp. ”
Evan Willams raises the question about whether or not the little guys can exist in a world where the large players dominate. Evan states on his post, “Nearly everyone I know in the Internet business is either at one of the giants, wishing they were at a startup, or at a startup that hopes get bought by a giant.”
Is it possible to start and grow an independent company in the world of social media without being squashed or bought? I hope so. Being bought certainly isn’t the worst fate for a company but small players would like to think that they have a choice that allows them success on their own.
[tags]Social Media, Acquistions, Odeo, Obvious Corp[/tags]
