Be Transcendent

Traditionally speaking, NEW products are released upon inception of a cool new idea which is framed up with hard work and covered in marketing. Once the product is released there is an army of cheap knock-off product producers racing to get their imitation products to market thinking they can ride that wave of fame.

Craigslist.org – Any local newspaper (like Boston Phoenix) is starting to offer free classifieds.

Apple’s iTunes Music Store – Every other online big-media company has created their own music store.

Search Engines? – …

Social Networks – Friendster came out with a bang in 2003 and within months there were lots of sites where you could assume they were developed by the same person because they’re the same with one small bit of focus.

So, for your next online (or otherwise) project, I suggest to be transcendent. Like Google Maps or Google Base or Ning.com, be transcendent. These applications with sustaining organic growth are incredibly rare because it takes real vision to produce them. What’s the difference between a platform where you can integrate with maps to create any sort of fun mapping function, localized advertisement, geography searching, etc. and a mapping program like Mapquest? It’s not the shiny/interactive user-interface though that is a difference. It’s just that they have an extensible platform of which many people on many applications can share a part.

What other transcendent application opportunities are there? My examples are bad, thus I’m writing this blog from my cubicle in suburbia instead of my window office downtown Boston.

* Community Management – There must be some way to help bridge both online and offline organizations. There are too many sites focused completely on the online audience and they’re missing out on the offline community. I’m pretty sure your small-town government body wants to hold meetings and have collaborative discussions both in person and online. Bridging that electronic divide isn’t as expensive as it once was… local advertisers have been consolidated into organizations like ThePlaceMatPeople and other groups where you could poll for local ads when delivering physical content. Heck, if someone could ever get micro payments figured out your accounting would be fantastically easy to distill.

* Advertising – ThePlaceMatPeople create those paper placemats you use in diners and cheap restaurants. I don’t know about you, but there are lots of web sites that I go to which contain localized ads: “MEET GIRLS OF MEDFORD”. What if there was a transcending advertising agency that could operate online and off, handling automatic distribution of television ads, web page ads, instant messenger ads, electronic billboard ads, radio ads, etc. Micro payments, people!

* Analytics – Business Intelligence (BI) is a new buzz-word your resume should not be without. Google has its own analytics package which is very convenient, simple, and though lacking features, makes up for shortcomings the Google way (being free). There’s many Terabytes of freely available data out there on the web – what if there was a site that could allow people to model data and author algorithms in the public or in private groups to further research and help the human race – of course, making a few bucks along the way. Naturally, one must make the service available to process data and provide plugs into other analytics applications.