Web 2.0: Bubble or healthy competition?
Simply Hired CEO Gautam Godhwani is focused on company ROI. In announcing the company’s latest initiative, Job-a-matic, today, he told me solid ROI is what will enable Simply Hired to pursue all possible options for Simply Hired, including a possible sale. SEE “Simply Hired vs. Google: Job classifieds ad network launches.”
Godhwani knows about launching, growing and selling start-ups, successfully. He founded three ventures in the last eight years; He was CEO and co-founder of AtWeb, “an Internet 1.0 company” funded by Sequoia and acquired by Netscape/AOL in 1998.
Simply Hired’s new Job-a-matic contextual job listings publisher network offers bloggers and Websites an alternative to the ubiquitous Google AdSense contextual advertising publisher network.
Vendor choice makes for a healthy competitive market (see “Google dependency is risky business”).
Michael Arrington, however, has tallied up the number of “job boards” in the space and laments the arrival of Simply Hired’s Job-a-matic as perhaps signaling an impending “job boards” addition to the TechCrunch deadpool.
Arrington’s enumeration of a job board bubble is not that terrifying though:
There are at least two services that will give you a “job board in a box”, and another one coming soon. Job Thread powers a number of job boards…Edgeio (a company I own stock in) also announced their own product yesterday, called “Marketplaces.”
Half a dozen competing “jobs boards” offerings with differing product features and business models does not signify a Web 2.0 “bubble.”
It is not surprising that Arrington attributes the dreaded "bubble" designation liberally at TechCrunch. As chronicler of Web 2.0, he enjoys the roles of both inflator and deflator.