Elance Blog

I recently attended an event at the headquarters of LinkedIn where Dan Nye, CEO, and Allen Blue, VP and Co-Founder, spoke about their company.

One of the most interesting parts of the event was when Allen Blue shared his thoughts on Web 2.0.  He defined Web 2.0 as a set of learnings from Web 1.0:

1. Distribution – Web products should distribute themselves
2. Content creation – Websites are valuable when they have content, especially content created by users
3. Monetization – Monetize from the beginning

These comments got me thinking about Web 1.0, 2.0, and beyond.  What do you think is next?

A few years before Elance came to life, Daniel Pink wrote a book about the rising relevance of independent workers and wrote an article with the same title which appeared in Fast Company at the end of 1997:

"There's a new movement in the land. From coast to coast, in communities large and small, citizens are declaring their independence and drafting a new bill of rights. Meet some of the 25 million residents of Free Agent, USA".

Today, the free agent movement is global and uses the Internet as its workplace.

Last week, I attended an “Innovator’s Dinner” hosted by the customer experience consulting firm Creative Good.  The presenters from Creative Good mentioned that often times, the most interesting takeaway from an event comes from an unplanned, random meeting. And while I caught up with a few friends and colleagues, I did hear something quite novel from someone I met randomly.

This was a serial entrepreneur who has sold a few companies and, as it turned out, started using Elance in 2000.  He has periodically used Elance ever since then, most recently hiring a full-time researcher to gather competitive information every week.  Today, he is working on a mobile phone startup.