An accurate, if reductionistic and pessimistic post by Russell Beattie categorizing Web 2.0 startups. His list:

• scrape engines
• mashed ups
• web trapps
• social anything
• phile sharing
• content management saturation
• rss holes
• firefoxing

(Send TechCrunch post’s through that filter next time you read it…)

I say accurate, because as Russ points out, most of these startups are only playing at the edges of innovation.

I say reductionistic because it’s natural for the web as a platform to have multiple layers of use. He points to Amazon & Ebay as building successful platforms (I’d have to add SalesForce, delicious & Google), but I think Russ is missing that many of these initial attempts are the beginning of figuring out what it means to build on top of these platform-provided services.

Granted, they probably shouldn’t be businesses. But the fact is that they’re an important first step that will teach us a lot.

It’s interesting that the companies he mentions as providing a successful platforms have viable (and huge) real businesses they can leverage. How can you turn your business into a platform?