* See the scope and criteria for the list.

* No doubt many will disagree with what has or hasn’t been included in the list. That’s inevitable in drawing boundaries around defining Web 2.0 applications. We have been strict in applying our scope, and many very worthy applications have not been included in the list, not because they’re not excellent, but because they haven’t met our judge’s view of what constitutes a Web 2.0 application.

* A few more applications have come to our attention since the list was finalized. In a very dynamic landscape we cannot hope to cover everything, but we are continuing to build as comprehensive a view of the landscape as possible. Please let us know what we’re missing.

* Despite the caveats above, we’re very happy with the list and what has come out of our efforts in creating it. It provides the broadest coverage of the Australian Web 2.0 landscape available, and we are sure will achieve its intention of supporting and drawing attention to the value created by Australia’s vibrant online entrepreneurial community. I hope and expect that the 2009 list will once again represent a far deeper and richer landscape featuring many global success stories.

1. mig33

Website: https://www.mig33.com/

Person/Company: Project Goth (Steven Goh/ Mei Lin Ng)

Description: Global mobile and web-based community, including social networking and messaging such as IM, email, text and photo sharing. Founded in 2005 in Perth and now based in the US. Has raised US$23 million, and has over 7 million users across 200 countries.

2. Confluence

Website: https://www.atlassian.com/

Person/Company: Atlassian (Mike Cannon-Brookes/ Scott Farquhar)

Description: Enterprise wiki with 5,000 clients in over 80 countries. Based in Sydney and San Francisco. Atlassian has over $22 million in revenue with no external funding.

3. Red Bubble

Website: https://www.redbubble.com/

Person/Company: Martin Hosking/ Peter Styles/ Paul Vanzella

Description: Art gallery and creative community where artists can upload art and sell it in many formats. Over 100,000 items sold in 71 countries in the first financial year. Has raised $3.7 million in funding.

4. 3eep

Website: https://www.3eep.com/

Person/Company: Rob Antulov/ Nick Gonios

Description: Social networking platform covering sports from national to school level for sports enthusiasts, players, teams and parents, allowing discussions and photo and video sharing. Has licensed the platform in Australia, Canada and Germany, and is also run as a stand-alone social network.

5. Engagd

Website: https://www.engagd.com/

Person/Company: Faraday Media (Chris Saad/ Ashley Angell)

Description: Web service application that creates ‘attention profiles’ of users, and enables these to be used in customising services and content for users.

6. MyVirtualHome

Website: https://mvh.com.au/

Person/Company: Greg Lane/ Paul Condon

Description: Allows users to create an accurate 3D walk-through model of their home, preview renovation possibilities and products provided by vendors, and contact service suppliers. People can share their home interiors and gardens for collaborative design. The viewing software will soon be available as a free download, allowing manufacturers and retailers to display products and themed homes in interactive 3D on their websites. Software being sold and licensed in a number of overseas countries.

7. Booking Angel

Website: https://www.bookingangel.com/

Person/Company: Dean McEvoy/ David Watson

Description: Service for restaurants to take online bookings without needing a computer. Expanding into the US. Coming features include a validated restaurant rating system.

8. Gnoos.com.au

Website: https://www.gnoos.com.au/

Person/Company: Red Lion Ventures (Ben Barren/ Michael Leone/ Peter Burley)

Description: Australian blog and media search engine that indexes over 150,000 sources. Services include providing large companies with detailed information on blog and social media references to their activities, and syndication of blog content to media organisations.

9. Scouta

Website: https://www.recommendationventures.com/

Person/Company: Richard Giles/ Graeme Sutherland

Description: Collaborative filtering and recommendation engine provided as a web service for online retailers or entertainment providers. The consumer site Scouta.com provides personalised recommendations for video and audio.

10. RetailMeNot

Website: https://www.retailmenot.com/

Person/Company: Stateless Systems (Guy King/ Bevan Clark)

Description: Community sharing of discount coupons with major presence in the US. Provides multiple ways to access coupon information, including through widgets, gadgets and browser plug-ins.

11. vibEngine

Website: https://www.vibecapital.com/

Person/Company: Vibe Capital (Clay Cook/ Rachel Cook/ Jackie Shervington)

Description: Richly featured social community platform used by Vibe Capital’s Minti and Gooruze, and licensed to a number of overseas clients.

12. Enhanced Media Platform

Website: https://www.enikos.com/

Person/Company: Enikos (Jonathan Wolfe/ Mike Nicholls)

Description: Video advertising platform based on the MPEG-21 video standard that allows publishers to create or mashup widgets, and enables user interactivity and targeted advertising.

13. Rememberthemilk

Website: https://www.rememberthemilk.com/

Person/Company: Emily Boyd/ Omar Kilani

Description: Web, mobile and IM shareable to-do lists with features including location. Over 500,000 users globally.

14. OurWishingWell

Website: https://ourwishingwell.com/

Person/Company: Joseph Renzi

Description: Gift registry that enables people to donate towards presents around the world. Strong revenue and international presence.

15. StreetAdvisor

Website: https://streetadvisor.com.au/

Person/Company: Jason Spencer/ Adam Spencer

Description: Residents rate their streets and localities on criteria such as public facilities, noise, and neighbourly spirit, and write reviews. Users earn ‘streetcred’ and ‘local experts’ are appointed. The primary focus is on Australia, US, UK and Canada, but it has been launched in many other countries.

16. TheBroth

Website: https://www.thebroth.com/

Person/Company: TheBroth (Markus Weichselbaum)

Description: Browser-based real-time collaborative art application. TheBroth, which also has over 13 million users of its Facebook applications, is shortly relocating to San Francisco from Perth.

17. Plugger

Website: https://plugger.com.au/

Person/Company: Stephen Phillips/ Richard Slatter

Description: Australian news aggregator covering mainstream and social media, and providing recent trends in coverage of leading companies and people.

18. Tangler

Website: https://www.tangler.com/

Person/Company: Martin Wells/ Alex von Kotze/ Mick Liubinskas

Description: Customisable live forums with features including embedding discussions into blogs and social networks. Popular with Australian and US technology start-ups for their user forums.

19. COZero

Website: https://cozero.com.au/

Person/Company: Nick Armstrong/ Dan Sullivan

Description: Site to calculate and offset personal and business carbon emissions. Includes ability to publicly share carbon emission profiles and utilities such as car pooling.

20. SwapAce

Website: https://www.swapace.com/

Person/Company: Joseph Renzi

Description: An online market place to sell, buy and swap products, services, employment and events. Enables bartering of products and services, mulitple offers and counter-offers and negotiation on non-financial components.

21. Particls

Website: https://www.particls.com/

Person/Company: Faraday Media (Chris Saad/ Ashley Angell)

Description: Application and browser plug-in that uses the Engagd web service to provide personalized news and alerts based on users’ attention profiles.

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22. VastPark

Website: https://www.vastpark.com/

Person/Company: Bruce Joy

Description: Enables individuals and companies to create custom 3D interactive virtual worlds or games and build their own distributed social networks. VastPark uses open standards to enable sharing and remixing of virtual worlds for entertainment, education, and business collaboration.

23. Ripple

Website: https://ripple.org/

Person/Company: Matt Tilleard/ Mack Nevill/ Jehan Ratnatunga/ Simon Griffiths

Description: Charity site that generates income for donation through advertising and sponsorship. Buttons and search boxes are available on Facebook, widgets for blogs and websites, Google gadgets, and browser toolbars.

24. MeBeam

Website: https://www.mebeam.com/

Person/Company: Ashod Apakian

Description: Web based video conferencing providing instant live video calls for up to 16 people simultaneously.

25. Loc8

Website: https://www.smartpath.com.au/

Person/Company: Smartpath (David Hodges/ Owen Batt)

Description: Asset management and help desk management software delivered as an online service.

26. 2vouch

Website: https://www.2vouch.com/

Person/Company: 2Vouch

Description: Social job recruitment service. Uses social networks such as FaceBook, MySpace and LinkedIn to distribute job listings, and enables employers and recruiters to reach passive candidates who have personal recommendations. Customers pay only on placement and get a money back guarantee.

27. Builtwith

Website: https://builtwith.com/

Person/Company: Gary Brewer

Description: Automated reports on website and search engine optimization, including basic information for free and paid detail reports.

28. Supervirals

Website: https://www.supervirals.com/

Person/Company: MassMedia Studios (Jon Skinner/ Christian Finucane/ Steve Lennon)

Description: Site where users submit brand ideas and content in response to advertisers’ briefs. Is looking for US funding to support its expansion into this market.

29. BugMeNot

Website: https://www.bugmenot.com/

Person/Company: Stateless Systems (Guy King/ Bevan Clark)

Description: Service to enable web users to bypass websites’ compulsory registrations by sharing logins and disposable email addresses.

30. Pikistrips

Website: https://pikistrips.com/

Person/Company: Pikicentral (Neil Pentland/ Mark Pentland/ Greg Pentland)

Description: Create comic strips using uploaded images, with user rating and ability to put comics on merchandise.

31. dLook

Website: https://www.dlook.com.au/

Person/Company: Meg Tsiamis

Description: Local online business directory with a variety of features, including mapping, embedding YouTube videos, and user rating of businesses. Competes with Sensis.

32. Mojikan

Website: https://www.mojikan.com/

Person/Company: MOR(F) Dynamics

Description: Virtual world where users create virtual pets that communicate via intelligent agent instant messaging technologies.

33. Menulog

Website: https://www.menulog.com.au/

Person/Company: Menulog Pty Ltd

Description: Eating out guide, including user ratings, search, and a ‘My Restaurants’ Facebook app.

34. Blogarate

Website: https://www.blogarate.com/

Person/Company: Clarke Scott

Description: Online service and widget to enable readers to rate blog posts and find related items.

35. PickupPal

Website: https://pickuppal.com/

Person/Company: John Stewart/ Eric Dewhirst

Description: Matches drivers of private vehicles to passengers or packages to be picked up, enabling the payment of an agreed fee and providing user-contributed driver ratings.

36. Powerhouse Museum Collection Search

Website: https://www.powerhousemuseum.com/collection/database/

Person/Company: Powerhouse Museum (Sebastian Chan)

Description: Interface to museum collection combining user tagging (folksonomies) with formal taxonomies to provide recommendations.

37. Peepel

Website: https://peepel.com/

Person/Company: Stephen Kelly

Description: Suite of web applications (word processing, spreadsheeet, contact manager etc.) that allow multiple applications in the same window.

38. Feedity

Website: https://www.feedity.com/

Person/Company: Ashutosh Nilkanth

Description: Generates RSS feeds for web pages without syndication format.

39. Genbook

Website: https://genbook.com/

Person/Company: Rody Moore

Description: Online booking and appointments system for small business. Has moved its headquarters to San Francisco.

40. CushyCMS

Website: https://www.cushycms.com/

Person/Company: Stateless Systems (Guy King/ Bevan Clark)

Description: Service that allows clients of web developers to edit website content directly.

41. Vquence

Website: https://www.vquence.com/

Person/Company: Chris Gilbey/Silvia Pfeiffer

Description: Enables users to create video montages of slices from different videos, and creates automated sequences of most popular videos for browsing. The resulting video compilations click through to the video source, and can be embedded in any website.

42. Ador

Website: https://www.ador.com.au/

Person/Company: Zhu Cheng/ Xin Zhang

Description: Community site for rating and searching for restaurants and dining-out. Includes mapping and other features.

43. Uvouch

Website: https://www.uvouch.com/

Person/Company: Parveen Panwar

Description: Community for sharing favourite online content and discussions in groups and fan clubs, including creation and sharing of playlists. Primarily international audience.

44. Popnets

Website: https://www.popnets.com/

Person/Company: Buzka (Raphe Patmore)

Description: Application to share, organise and discover favourite pages within interest groups such as travel.

45. Quotify

Website: https://www.quotify.com.au/

Person/Company: Peter Crowe

Description: Customers for home services specify requirements and are provided with quotations from selected providers, providing ratings and reviews on suppliers and their experience.

46. inthemix.com.au

Website: https://www.inthemix.com.au/

Person/Company: The Sound Alliance (Neil Ackland/ Cliff Rosenberg)

Description: Australian dance music forum and social network.

47. NationMaster

Website: https://www.nationmaster.com/

Person/Company: Rapid Intelligence (Luke Metcalfe)

Description: Aggregator of highly diverse data on countries that can be used to generate charts and graphs. Strong global traffic.

48. Adimade

Website: https://adimade.com/

Person/Company: Jake Lawton/ Nat Graf

Description: Service to submit video ads to respond to requested projects, and vote on the best. The selected ad receives a pre-defined prize of cash or other rewards.

49. Cagora

Website: https://australia.cagora.com/

Person/Company: Rob Anderson

Description: Community site with multiple functionality including user generated content and affiliate revenue for members.

50. Omnidrive

Website: https://www.omnidrive.com/

Person/Company: Nik Cubrilovic

Description: Online storage allowing aggregation of files from desktop and online applications, and online publishing and sharing of any kind of file. Encountering competition from Google and Microsoft. Has been rumoured for several months to be going under, but is still functioning.

51. Zaabiz

Website: https://www.zaabiz.com.au/

Person/Company: Michael Brecht

Description: Australian social networking site for professionals.

52. Minti

Website: https://www.minti.com/

Person/Company: Vibe Capital (Clay Cook/ Rachel Cook/ Jackie Shervington)

Description: Online forums and community for parents, including tagging, rating and comments. Based on VibeCapital’s vibEngine platform.

53. HooJano

Website: https://www.hoojano.com.au/

Person/Company: Mike Giuffrida

Description: Social recruitment site that enables people to recommend people for positions, and earn referral fees.

54. Top Bargains

Website: https://topbargains.com.au/

Person/Company: Top Bargains

Description: Sharing of bargains and discount offers, in which people submit bargains and recommend them into popular lists.

55. Norg Media

Website: https://www.norg.com.au/

Person/Company: Bronwen Clune

Description: Citizen journalism websites that allow local residents to report and comment on what is happening in their city and community. Currently available in Perth, Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane. ure directions include licensing the platform into overseas markets.

56. Buzka

Website: https://www.buzka.com/

Person/Company: Raphe Patmore

Description: Social bookmarking site enabling users to create Spots on particular topics.

57. Saasu

Website: https://www.saasu.com/

Person/Company: Marc Lehmann/ Peter Cooper/ Grant Young

Description: Comprehensive online financial and accounting application, including integrated access to external applications such as mapping and search across social networks.

58. 88 Miles

Website: https://www.88miles.net/

Person/Company: Myles Eftos

Description: Online time-tracking utility for professionals, including project allocation and time punch in and out.

59. Loconut

Website: https://www.loconut.com.au/

Person/Company: Alex Blain/ Allan Loh

Description: Community social networking site based on user-submitted and syndicated content. It is currently focused on WA and will expand across Australia.

60. Docoloco

Website: https://www.docoloco.com/

Person/Company: Johnny Cussen/ Chris Mander

Description: Site for sharing recommendations on local businesses including restaurants.

61. Kwoff

Website: https://www.kwoff.com.au/

Person/Company: Dan Walsh/ Stephen Mayne/ Greg Barnes

Description: User voting on the most interesting content for an Australian audience, including news, photos and video.

62. Chin Swing

Website: https://www.chinswing.com/

Person/Company: Dean Worth

Description: Online discussion site that allows people to record voice messages to build a conversation.

63. Flogd

Website: https://www.flogd.com/

Person/Company: Phillip Kingston/ Edward Thomson

Description: Allows online product shops to be easily set up and integrated into websites and social network pages.

64. Invoiceplace

Website: https://www.invoiceplace.com/

Person/Company: Scott Carpenter

Description: Creates and keeps track of quotes, invoices, and payments.

65. MyCyberTwin

Website: https://www.mycybertwin.com/

Person/Company: Liesl Capper/ John Zakos

Description: Social networking site populated by virtual personalities that learn their owners personalities’ so they can engage in autonomous messaging with people.

66. Not Good Enough

Website: https://www.notgoodenough.org/

Person/Company: Brandaide

Description: Consumer feedback site to voice gripes or compliments about companies. Companies are provided with updates and the opportunity to engage directly with consumers.

67. Gooruze

Website: https://www.gooruze.com/

Person/Company: Vibe Capital (Clay Cook/ Rachel Cook/ Jackie Shervington)

Description: Social network for online marketers. Includes ranking of members and their submissions based on their contributions and user ratings. Based on VibeCapital’s vibEngine

68. Tiinker

Website: https://tiinker.com/

Person/Company: Deep Grey Labs (Alex North/ Oleg Sushkov)

Description: Personalised news and content recommendations based on individual preferences and opinions.

69. MyCosm

Website: https://www.mycosm.com/

Person/Company: Simmersion

Description: Free custom 3D virtual worlds, including personal selection of users and integration with external social networks and content creation and sharing applications. In Beta.

70. Global Surfari

Website: https://globalsurfari.com/

Person/Company: Gary Brewer

Description: Provides free surf forecasts, reports, predictions, weather forecasts and surf accomodation for global surfing locations

71. Raveabout it

Website: https://www.raveaboutit.com.au/

Person/Company: Tim Griffin/ Mark Rimmer

Description: Local business search based on user reviews and ratings. The platform is used by other directories.

72. RAYV

Website: https://www.rayv.com.au/

Person/Company: Anil Sabharwal

Description: Local business directory including reviews, ratings and recommendations.

73. AustraliaForum

Website: https://www.australiaforum.com/

Person/Company: AustraliaForum

Description: Forum for discussion of travel and living in Australia.

74. Blocklayer

Website: https://www.blocklayer.com/

Person/Company: Greg Tarrant

Description: Online calculator for builders, including layout for stairs and gazebos. Includes a services for mobiles.

75. eWise Systems

Website: https://www.ewisesystems.com/

Person/Company: Alexander Grinberg

Description: Financial account aggregation performed on client-side.

76. Fwditon.com

Website: https://www.fwditon.com/

Person/Company: Fwditon

Description: Rating and sharing of funny emails, videos, and photos.

77. RocketReader

Website: https://www.rocketreader.com/

Person/Company: RocketReader

Description: Speed reading application including online service with ability to share self-created tests.

78. Si-Mi.com

Website: https://si-mi.com/

Person/Company: Si-Mi.com

Description: Site enabling creators to sell content including videos, music, podcasts and games. The online community provides ratings of the content.

79. Publicity Wheel

Website: https://www.publicitywheel.com.au/

Person/Company: Mark Schumann

Description: Collaborative promotion service in which websites are selected to be promoted to all members.

80. The Fame Experiment

Website: https://www.fameexperiment.com/

Person/Company: Mark Schumann

Description: Allocates points to people based on their promotion of the experiment, selects individuals through the network, and invites them to blog about their experience.

81. Pikifx

Website: https://pikifx.com/

Person/Company: Pikicentral (Neil Pentland/ Mark Pentland/ Greg Pentland)

Description: Simple online tool for modifying images.

82. SameSame.com.au

Website: https://www.samesame.com.au/

Person/Company: The Sound Alliance (Neil Ackland/ Cliff Rosenberg)

Description: Australian gay forum and social network.

83. fasterlouder.com.au

Website: https://www.fasterlouder.com.au/

Person/Company: The Sound Alliance (Neil Ackland/ Cliff Rosenberg)

Description: Australian rock music forum and social network.

84. Buttonator

Website: https://www.buttonator.com/

Person/Company: Pikicentral (Neil Pentland/ Mark Pentland/ Greg Pentland)

Description: Drag and drop button creator for websites

85. Oziwi

Website: https://www.oziwi.com/

Person/Company: Gregg Nelson

Description: Recently launched social network focusing on Australia and NZ.

86. Ovosuite

Website: https://www.ovosuite.com/

Person/Company: Ovosuite

Description: Online office applications including document sharing, calendar, forums, and minute maker.

87. Confer

Website: https://www.confer.com.au/

Person/Company: Rod L’Huillier

Description: Social news sharing, recommendations, and discussion.

88. Pxcream

Website: https://www.pxcream.com/

Person/Company: Pierre Sauvignon

Description: Enables professional and semi-professional photographers to showcase their pictures, sell images and services, and engage in community discussions and activities.

89. Facts Online

Website: https://www.factsonline.com.au/

Person/Company: Chris Jolly/ Rafael Cohen/ Richard Sheehan

Description: Online personal financial calculator, including budgeting, cashflow and superannuation calculations.

90. Booze Counter

Website: https://www.boozecounter.com.au/

Person/Company: Tim Willis

Description: Online service to help people track their drinking habits.

91. Factbites

Website: https://www.factbites.com/

Person/Company: Rapid Intelligence (Luke Metcalfe)

Description: Search engine that provides full sentence, meaningful results distilled from a range of sources.

92. The Roar

Website: https://www.theroar.com.au/

Person/Company: Conversant Media

Description: Australian sports opinion site, including user generated content and discussion.

93. Service Seeking

Website: https://www.serviceseeking.com.au/

Person/Company: Service Seeking (Jeremy Levitt/ Oliver Pennington)

Description: Companies bid to win jobs of all kinds, and are rated on their performance. Covers both local services such as gardening and remote services such as IT, where it competes with global services such as elance.com.

94. SuburbView

Website: https://www.suburbview.com/

Person/Company: Mark Ferris

Description: Real estate search engine using mapping to show listings, including RSS feeds and alerts to mobile.

95. Writetomyblog

Website: https://writetomyblog.com/

Person/Company: Mark Ashcroft

Description: Web-based word processor for bloggers.

96. BEE

Website: https://www.onmyweb.net/

Person/Company: Jacky Ko

Description: Collaborative website editing platform

97. RosterLive

Website: https://rosterlive.com/

Person/Company: RosterLive

Description: Online workforce management software, including rostering and attendance.

98. Chop or Champion

Website: https://www.choporchampion.com/

Person/Company: Brian Vella

Description: Community site for followers of Australian sports, enabling users to discuss the performance of teams and players and to ‘chop’ or ‘champion’ them.

99. Spyk

Website: https://spyk.com/

Person/Company: Tim Kremer/ Andrew Franklin

Description: Property search integrated with mapping.

100. Buggerall

Website: https://www.buggerall.com.au/

Person/Company: Australian Blogs

Description: Blog search based on tags.

The Top 100 Australian Web 2.0 Applications will be launched tomorrow morning. I’ve seen the BRW issue, and the 8 page feature titled The New Web Revolution looks great, including a couple of articles by technology editor Foad Fadaghi, and a few breakouts on the value of Web 2.0, challenges for Web 2.0 in Australia, and the venture capital perspective, as well as the list.

The list will also be released on this blog and the Future Exploration Network site first thing tomorrow Australia time.

Do NOT be put off by the cover of the BRW magazine – we were earlier told that the cover would be on the Web 2.0 feature, but a late editorial decision changed this to a headline on agribusiness :-(.

The compilation of the Top 100 Australian Web 2.0 Applications list has now been completed. It will be made public on 19 June, when it will be the cover story on BRW magazine, accompanied by feature stories on some of the leading applications. It will be released the same morning on the Future Exploration Network website and this blog.

The Top 100 Australian Web 2.0 Applications Launch Event at KPMG will include a panel discussion by Australian online notables, a showcase of five leading Australian Web 2.0 applications (3eep, BookingAngel, Engagd, Plugger, RedBubble) (Note that the showcased applications are NOT the top five on the top 100 list, but have been selected to demonstrate the diversity of successful Australian Web 2.0 ventures; companies that were showcased in last year’s Web 2.0 in Australia event won’t be duplicated in this year’s showcase), a panel of the founders of these applications, and one-hour of semi-structured roundtables for participants to discuss current issues in Web 2.0 in Australia. IBM, Adobe, and Starfish Ventures are sponsors. We are getting close to fully booked, so register soon if you’d like to attend.

No information about who is on the list or rankings will be released until 19 June, so don’t ask! :-) However it’s probably worth clarifying the scope and criteria for the list.

SCOPE

To be eligible for the list, applications needed to be:

• Applications (not content only)

• Rich web-based interface (not mobile only)

• Create value from participation

• Represent genuine innovation

• Significantly Australian

CRITERIA

Each application was assessed on the following criteria, with a weighted points system determining the final ranking.

• Revenue and viability

• Users

• International success

• Business value

• Innovation

• Web 2.0 features

There are a few early high-level insights to share from the compliation of the list. I’ll supplement these with more detailed commentary at the time of the launch.

* We have come a long way. From a top 60 list last year, which covered close to everything we were aware of, we have well over 100 applications that fit a strict interpretation of the criteria, plus over 40 applications that do not fit the criteria (e.g. no significant Web 2.0 characteristics, mobile-only, content publishers etc.). This a vibrant scene.

* There are some major success stories. There are now a range of significant Australian successes in this space, showing that it is possible, and the sector can be a real source of wealth creation for the nation.

* Many initiatives are not surviving. Some applications have been bought (e.g. Faces.com), others have disappeared (e.g. StudentFace, Babbello), while others are on the verge of dropping out given lack of success. As I told the Australian Financial Review last year, it is a sign of a healthy entrepreneurial environment that many start up, and quite a few fail or morph into something else. In addition, true entrepreneurs learn from their lessons and try again and again. Especially in the Web 2.0 space, the most promising path to success is through failure.

* There is a strong movement overseas. Many of the leading companies in the space have moved overseas, have an overseas presence – often in the form of the CEO or a senior executive moving to Silicon Valley for an initial 3-6 months – or are preparing to move. Silicon Valley is certainly where most are heading, though there is also activity in East Asia, India, and Europe.

* There are many me-too applications. Doing this deep survey of applications within one country is very instructive in gaining insights into the likely profile of the top 5,000 (or so) apps globally. There are many very common themes across many apps (as well as some many highly innovative ideas). This isn’t bad per se, but many of these will struggle without exceptional execution. I’ll comment more on this point after the list is released.