Buckle Down but Keep Innovating

With the global economy in flux, there’s no way online start-ups can escape unscathed. Companies are going to be more focused on operating costs, generating revenue and making their financing last as long as possible.

That said, it would be a shame if the tougher times means that innovation within the online landscape starts to decline. For all the hype about Web 2.0, the far more interesting element has been the flurry of cool, useful, interesting and/or valuable tools developed. If you want to do something online, there’s a service that will meet your needs.

Of course, many of these services are free and many of them don’t have a business model or, at best, a shaky business model. Nevertheless, the fact they’re available reflects an amazing period of enthusiasm, creativity and entrepreneurship.

For all the excitement about the dot-com boom, the last few years have been far more interesting. The rise of user-generated content, social media, social networking and video has pushed the Web deep into the mainstream, and changed the economic landscape for many industries, particularly the media.

As we head into more difficult waters, my hope is innovation and the creation of new online services remains vibrant. With development and distribution costs low, the landscape for new services should hopefully remain fertile. Entrepreneurs may have to buckle down but there is no reason why they should disappear.

As a bonus – and an illustration – of just how much of a “candy store” it’s been over the last few years – here’s a short list of cool online services that I’ve discovered recently.

Filtrbox: A media monitoring service (free and premium) that works based on keywords that you provide. It reminds me of Google Alerts but more structured.

Scribblar: online collaboration tools, including a digital whiteboard.

Addictomatic: a meta-search engine to to find the “latest buzz” on any topics.

Social Mention: a search engine for social media (blogs, micro-blogs, comments, video, etc.)

Cli.gs: a new URL shortening tool. A nice feature is the ability to track your URLs have been used.

Pingg: a user-friendly online invitation service with just the right amount of bells and whistles.

Snipshot: an online photo-editing tool with free and premium features.

ReportingOn: a service that helps journalists (and bloggers) find sources for a particular topic, story, or source.

PressFlip: a way to find the news

Matt: For anyone with multiple Twitter accounts, Matt makes it easy to post from one place.

PrintWhatYouLike: At a time when everyone is trying to be more green, PWYL is a tool that makes it easy to only print the part of a Web site you want.

Update: The Next Web has some pragmatic thoughts about all the sky-is-falling chatter about online startups.

Rather than it being doom and gloom, Ayelet Noff says “it is my belief that the current situation will only do us good and allow those startups that have a unique offering to survive while flushing out those startups that were doomed to failure from the beginning.”

Technorati Tags: startups, web 2.0