At a time when economic downturn seems imminent one must wonder; will 2008 see the same time of start-up activity that was seen in years prior?

This morning I got to thinking, what would I do if I had capital for a start-up?

Would I create yet another social network or a human powered search engine?

Maybe I could start a content site centered a much coveted vertical such as health. The fact is I would not consider any of these avenues. 

While I have not given this a lot of thought I would probably be thinking along the following lines;

• Creation of a web services
• • Note: I use the term “web” loosely. By “web” I am including mobile and iTV or anything that operates over IP
  • • Let’s face it, unless you have best of breed content, we don’t need another health, sports or news site that’s sole value proposition is it’s content (especially when the content is not better than everything else that is out there)
    • You don’t agree with me? Look at what the big boy’s are doing
    • • Yahoo Go, Google Panasonic
    • Or take a look at the types of things being covered at Tech Crunch these days (I will just pick some random ones)
    • • Ridbit, Simulscribe, Visible Measures or Trolltech which was just acquired by Nokia for 153 million dollars
• Creation of platforms that are ready for mobility
• Creation of a platform or service that is interoperable
• • You can no longer wall yourself in, data portability will play a major role in 2008

For most of us that follow the tech industry fairly closely, these things are not new however, I feel that there are enough people out there who are not thinking along these lines that, this post was warranted.

Tags: google, panasonic, yahoo go, dataportability, trolltech, nokia, ridbit, simulscribe, visible measures, web services, web platforms, mobile