Second Thoughts

Om Malik wrote about the end of Web2.0 innocence after Google launched My Maps in direct competition of the many mash-ups based entirely on the Google Maps API. The main thesis was that the happy love-all, no-competition days in Web2.0 are over. The big players serving most mash-ups will eventually compete directly with the many services using their data.

I agree that it is a risky business to build a mash-up based entirely on one company’s API. But I truly believe in the internet as a distributed desktop. I see a future where computing will be internet-based with lots of small, independent internet applications serving the needs in the market. I don’t believe that Google will do to the internet what Microsoft did to the desktop.

Second Brain is to some extent a big mash-up - but our strategy is to bring in all available internet-services into one simple library for the user. This way, we depend on other services opening up their content and functionality, but we hedge our bets by connecting to the many, not just to a single service.

We’re trying to solve the information/service chaos involved in using many different internet services.  We think that the main challenge holding back further adoption of internet-based computing is that it is difficult to manage many services, logging in and out and getting familiar with many different interfaces.

The main benefit we deliver to our users is to let them see content from
all the different services they use in a single library. If they want
to access/edit any of their stuff, they are forwarded to the
source/service. We sometimes describe this as the Windows Explorer for
the internet.

The main benefit we provide to other internet services is that we make
it easier for their users to access their content among the other services that they may be using. People can also sign up to new services via Second Brain.

In short - we we want to make it easier for people to use many internet
services, and make it easier for services to reach existing and new customers. We are looking for the strategic sweet-spot between users’ needs for simplification and services’ need for more users.