If you are contemplating potential options for a Web 2.0 venture, you should read this. I have always felt the need for an online marketplace where one could buy/sell web applications, widgets, scripts, media players etc. There are hundreds of companies on the web that sell premade websites (or scripts) but they are typically fragmented and unorganised. How great it would be if somebody could create an ‘Ebay for webapps‘.

This morning I noticed this incoming link to Webyantra from a site called Sitepoint. The link is from the auction page of Sitepoint (which looks like a pretty solid developer oriented forum) and it features the “For sale auction notice for Tuhee.com“, a website that I had profiled on this blog sometime back (incidentally the auction’s min bid amt is 10K USD). Tuhee is an E-cards website from a tech company called Technizant (run by some Indians) in the Silicon Valley. When I profiled it, I had mentioned that the site was work-in-progress (it was tagged proof of concept); its creators were testing the waters before deciding on the future course of action. Tuhee is essentially a widget and not exactly a complete self serving application and widgets are hot property in the Web 2.0 world. Check out what their ad says “…We are engineers and have taken this idea from concept to code. Now we are looking to sell to a person or company who can take it to the next level. Note that the websites contain multiple components each of which can add value in a variety of applications…”

Web 2.0 is characterised by low barriers to entry and exit; hence its extremely likely that buy/sell/rent/outsource/acquisition decisions will be an integral part of this space. Just as a pointer, TechCrunch writes frequently about web startups on sale on Ebay (it refers to failed startups as the deadpool). There are also related places like Elance, Rent a Coder which have overlapping functionalities, but a dedicated marketplace may make more sense.

Somebody please correct me if such a marketplace already exist? The one example (similar in many respects) that I am aware of is the thriving trade in Flash widgets that has been around for 4-5 years. There is a mini marketplace on the web for Flash stuff with hundereds of creators, buyers & sellers; it has participation from whole companies, independent developers, ISVs etc.

Update: Tuhee has been put up for sale on eBay as well. Check out the auction page here. Key elements on sale OpenLaszlo AJAX code, mashups to Flickr, Yahoo Photos and Google Local and graphics content including Flash animations

BlogAdda (no relation to BigAdda) is an aggregator that provides Indian bloggers a platform to showcase their blogs. You might find this website useful if you are looking to promote your own blog or discover blogs on various topics. Readers can discover interesting blogs using tags or ratings. For those wishing to add their blog to the network, you need to create an account and add your blog’s url to the site (along with other info). You cannot create a blog on the site itself, you just specify the blog’s URL which could be hosted anywhere. That factor by itself makes the site fall short of being a complete blogging network; it works essentially like an aggregator of sorts. BlogAdda comes from a web-development company called Nettalk.

The idea behind the site is simple but it probably needs more meat to enhance its overall appeal. From a user perspective, the best place to discover interesting blogs is the blogroll (or inbound/outbound links) on other blogs and social bookmarkings sites. The world over, blogging aggregators have not found the kind of success that blogging networks (like LiveJournal, Blogger, WordPress etc) or blog search engines (like Technorati, GoogleBlogSearch, IceRocket) have. Maybe there is some learning for BlogAdda here.

Update As pointed out by Sandeep in the comments, something that BlogAdda could add is an innovative blog ranking system for India that is in line with the times (BlogStreet is one that I know of though I am unsure how contemporary its methodology is…does anybody else have any perspective on this???)