[tweetmeme]FastCompany has a very interesting blog post about Web 2.0 companies that failed. With all the success of Facebook, MySpace, Yahoo Answers, Flickr and others, there’s bound to be 10x more that failed.
Here are some interesting Web 2.0 failures and lessons you can learn from them:
1. Akimbo = even with raising $56 million from investors such as Cisco and AT&T;, this video on demand service suffered from inability to focus and define a profitable business model for itself coupled with management problems.
2. RSS Calendar = this site allowed the easy sharing through RSS of calendars such as Microsoft Outlook. However, with studies showing that only 5-6 percent of Internet users actually using RSS, it is very hard to create a business around a very limited user base.
3. ProtectMyPhotos = when all your competitors are going in one direction, it is a big gamble not to join your competitors and in fact, go against the tide. While all photo sites allow photo sharing, ProtectMyPhotos limited itself to photo backups and photo restoration, with no photo sharing. The gamble, unfortunately, proved to be their undoing and the company closed after a little more than a year of operations.