Who has scored from Web 2.0?

Interesting article in BusinessWeek about the present (tough) conditions in the VC market, including this extract:

Take Web 2.0, where exactly one company, YouTube, had a $1 billion-plus outcome when it was purchased by Google (GOOG). Only a handful has sold in the hundreds of millions. And because the costs of starting these businesses are so low, venture investors own smaller stakes than they did in the last Web bubble.

I'm sure the statement is right - as far as it goes - but I'd make the following comments:

- like much in this world, it all depends on how the key terms are defined.

- many of the 2.0 companies have been founded, effectively, as single-product or niche-focused businesses suitable for early, cheap acquisition rather than building into stand-along megaliths. And much of the early development of these focused businesses took place out of the pockets of angel funding and/or bootstrapping and/or very small VC rounds. Meaning that the peersons involved probably did fine out of relatively small exits (although I'm sure some - such as the founders of flickr - wonder what might have been).

- GOOG's suite of 'web 2.0' assets would be valued at far more than $1 billion; as would Yahoo!'s; as would News Corp's etc etc. Much of the Web 2.0 upside has been captured (at least in monetary terms) by the media and Internet giants. They either developed in-house or, more commonly, bought earlier. The media and 1.0 survivors have done an excellent job in the latest wave of making smart, early, cheap acquisitions: MySpace, flickr, photobucket, FeedBurner, etc etc.

- the BusinessWeek analysis ignores the gorilla currently sitting and waving in the corner: Facebook. To suggest it has a less than $1 billion valuation at this point would be ludicrous.