The bMighty Blog -- Internet/Web

There's a lot of talk about how Web 2.0 can help smaller businesses work. And a lot of talk about what Web 3.0 will be able to do for smaller businesses. It's all good -- just don't forget about Web 1.0.

An article at PBS's Media Shift highlights the 11-year old Web site, The Smoking Gun.

According to the article last month the site, which has remained a very small business with just three employees, logged a whopping 5.7 million unique visitors and 58.8 million page views. (That was thanks to Eliot Spitzer and Tupac Shakur: Monthly numbers are usually a still impressive 3.75 million uniques and 45 million page views.)

Writer Mark Glaser explains the site's success this way: "In a world of social network widgets, videoblogs and Web 2.0 gewgaws, sometimes it’s the simple things that work best. That's the lesson of Web 1.0 startup The Smoking Gun, a simply designed site that relies on public documents and criminal mugshots to bring in boatloads of traffic."

Of course there is a lot to be gained from interactivity with customers, creating a community, blogging, and all the good stuff the new Web has to offer. But smaller businesses can learn one thing from the Smoking Gun (besides, of course, what Lindsay Lohan looks like in her latest mug shot) and that is that you cannot forget that all the tricks of the new Web doesn't mean you can forget what your business is all about.

The Smoking Gun figured that out. Glaser notes that , "While every large news organization is trying to figure out a business model for online reporting, The Smoking Gun has proven that small and simple can work."

He quotes David Carr, who wrote about the Smoking Gun in The New York Times: "Much has been said…about how the emerging digital economy has decimated the business model of journalism. But the same digital technology has made each remaining journalist several times more powerful. As working reporters, we are able to get information -- through the public and government web databases and proprietary digital sources -- that our ancestors in the business would not have dared dream of. I know because I'm one of the ancestors."

Marrying the new to the old is the key here. As we head into the next Web it's important to keep that in mind.

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