Web 2.0

$100B “Internet Idiot” Industry Set To Explode

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* Greeting Y.combinators! If you enjoyed this article’s keen eye for journalism and the truth, you may want to see our coverage of Robert Scoble’s brutal win over Louis Gray in a cage match for the ages at BlogExpo, SlotMusic’s immiment demise as called by bookmakers across these 50 states, or more crazy lunacy from “Uncle” Steve Ballmer as he escaped his padded room once again.

Although much of the data released from the University of California has been greeted with some surprise, the presence — and staggering growth — of the so-called “Internet Idiot” industry is, perhaps, one of the greatest kept secrets on these Internets.

With growth pegged at a mind-boggling 25% per year every year since the popularization of e-mail, and valued at somewhere close to $25-100 billion dollars, the “Internet Idiot” industry is fueled by several key sectors, which include both the shady and the stupendous.

At one end lies your spam-kings and domain-squatters, who capitalize on the gullible, desperate, and the habitual misspellers. Somewhere in the middle lie the faux-security companies peddling their wares via popups the very viruses, trojans, and spyware they are purported to fix. And on the other end, we have Google, the darling of of darlings “legitimate” tech startups, who capitalize on the idiocy of millions who don’t understand that those blue-underlined words on the right of search results are NOT, in fact, search results at all.

To many geeks, the billions of dollars that are exchanged every year through the misunderstanding of what constitutes a link freely given, and a link that is either paid for, or is associated with an affiliate marketing program, or multi-level-marketing program, is so shocking that many simply refuse to believe it.

This self delusion comes from the fact that acknowledging that the Internet is largely made up of simpletons who do not know what a web application is, will never really understand Twitter, and who continue to use Hotmail happily, and who use Yahoo as their “homepage”, puts them at risk of catatonic stupifaction and massive permanent brain damage.

Nevertheless, the size, scope, and growth of the industry hasn’t escaped notice from the Venture Capital industry, who has secretly funded many prominent “Idiot” startups in stealth, including several prominent domainers like Dr. Kevin Ham, spam king Jeremy Jaynes, and of course, Google, when they needed a little extra capital to fund Google Adwords.

With the explosion of popularity in social media, new startups are salivating at the opportunity to dupe even more unsuspecting innocent suckers on Twitter, Facebook, Friendfeed, and beyond into finding and things of little to no value, and encouraging them to click, click, and click away at those pretty blue words. Since the naivite of the gullible is something that is relatively insensitive to changes in the economy, the growth of the Internet Idiot industry is bound to continue its aggressive growth in the years to come.

And that information is sure to warm the cockles of any Venture Capitalist.

(for those that have hearts, that is).

© 2008 TekPopuli.