Jazz Odyssey

An excerpt from today’s CNET Anchordesk:

“Social networking is laboring under the inescapable weight of the dot-com curse: you have to find the money. No matter how cool your idea is, it’s dead on arrival without an actual business plan. At least, that’s the theory. If that’s true, though, why has blogging, which seems like a neat idea dependent on interest but without a concrete revenue stream, managed to not just thrive, but really dominate the Web? How is it that free instant messengers are as indispensable as any search engine, and little guys like Trillian are still going strong? Is it really true that free services can’t be effective business plans? Or is it possible that–gasp!–social networking isn’t really that tenable an idea after all?”

CNET’s Molly Wood offers 5 reasons that social networking may not work….read the full article here. She raises some interesting and valid points, and certainly the failure of many dot coms that couldn’t find the workable and sustainable business model support those points. Yet companies like MySpace are thriving and if they can retain enough momentum to R&D various revenue streams they could be the exception to the rule. Read on…