I haven’t been a big fan of college basketball since my days in college, but I can’t resist getting a little excited when everyone starts talking about filling out brackets. So in the spirit of the tournament and all the copycats it generates, I thought I’d produce my own bracket system … the buzzword-compliant “Web 2.0” Madness! With all the seriousness in the industry right now (and heck, in this blog) I thought a few lighthearted posts might be in order.
16 teams in each of 4 divisions, will face off head to head to yield one Champion. Half the entrants are companies or sites, the other half are individuals. I tried to avoid selecting individuals who are already covered by the companies they represent, and tried to avoid companies/sites which are owned by other entrants. I probably failed on both fronts … sorry. This is my first attempt at filling out the 64 competitors, including a really half-baked “ranking” in each division. Trust me, it’s a mess.
Please hit me with some comments on who I forgot, who I should have left out, and why my rankings are awful. If you get your comments in in time, I can modify the brackets or re-order them prior to running the matchups. I’ll publish head-to-head competitions over the course of the next few weeks (or until I lose interest and get distracted by something shiny!), and hopefully I can crown a “Web 2.0 Champion” some time in April.
Division: Websites / Companies (A)
Google
Facebook
Digg
Twitter
Yahoo
LinkedIn
myspace
Wikipedia
Wordpress
Flickr
Skype
Ning
Technorati
Vimeo
last.fm
icanhascheezburger.com
Division: Websites / Companies (B)
Apple
Amazon
Mozilla
Zappos
Netflix
FriendFeed
eBay
Microsoft
Delicious
Techmeme
Dell
Pandora
Meebo
Slideshare
mashable
craigslist
Division: Industry Contributors (heavily biased towards people I know about)
Robert Scoble
Guy Kawasaki
Tim O’Reilly
Jeremiah Owyang
Chris Brogan
Seth Godin
Jeff Atwood
Gina Trapani
Veronica Belmont
Bruce Schneier
Arianna Huffington
Michael Arrington
Maria Thomas
Jimmy Wales
Justine Ezarik
Steve Wozniak
Division: “Celebrities” (heavily biased towards people on twitter)
President Barack Obama
Shaquille O’Neal
Britney Spears
Ashton Kutcher
Lance Armstrong
Al Gore
Dooce
Wil Wheaton
Stephen Fry
Stephen Colbert
Jonathan Coulton
Felicia Day
Trent Reznor
Jimmy Fallon
MC Hammer
Rick Astley
4 comments ↓
Suggestions for websites: Second Life, Diigo, Friendster, Orkut
Suggestions for people: Stephen Downes, George Siemens (come on at least ONE edu person!) 🙂
I had Orkut in an early draft, but since they are owned by Google I replaced them. With so many subdivisions it’s going to be hard for Google not to run the board. Hmm.
I’ll look into the others tonight, including your EDU folks, I promise! 🙂
My fave new website is pandora-just type in the song or artist you like you get hours of radio tailored to your taste.
I love that you included Rick Astley and I can’t quite explain why…
Guess I am never gonna give you up.
I wanted to launch the tourney this morning but haven’t been able to quite yet. Some tidbits to take notice of:
I’ll have to remove flickr as they are owned by Yahoo!, a #5 seed already.
Skype is owned by eBay, a #7 seed. I will have to remove Skype as well.
This opens up some space for Second Life and either Diigo or Friendster.