The problem with the wealth of “web 2.0” services springing up all over the place at the moment is that it has become a bubble once again, with companies attempting to solve problems which never really existed in the first place. Some are reporting that the global economic slowdown is going to slow the pace of development of these new services with less VC backing available for new startups and I for one am not complaining.I am not saying all new web-based services are pointless at all. I love and use Facebook, Last.fm, Wikipedia, Flickr, but these are all in completely independent spheres. What we do not need is another contender to the social networking crown with a very minor twist to one or two elements of the established services. If you come up with a new product or service great, and if you have a business plan to back that up and turn it profitable then even better. Hoping to be bought out by Google, Yahoo or Microsoft is not a business plan and developers would be in good stead to remember that.

Here on TechFruit I am going to introduce and evaluate services that may actually get used by people outside of Silicon Valley. It needs to solve a current problem or annoyance in people’s day to day home or work life, save people money, or be damn fun to use – why else would somebody use a service or buy a product?