“Incumbent to watch”

I was re-reading The Next Net 25 on Business 2.0 at a more leisurely pace than the first time around, you can find the whole article here.

In the article, all Gaul is divided into five parts:

• Social media
• Mashup and filters
• The new phone
• The webtop
• Under the hood

An interesting list, one that I want to look at more carefully in the context of Four Pillars.

Against each of those classifications, they name five companies to watch. Interesting as well.

Also against each classification, they named “incumbent to watch”. Here’s the list of ITWs (I know, I just couldn’t resist the TLA )

• Social media: Yahoo
• Mashup and filters: Google
• The new phone: Skype
• The webtop: Microsoft
• Under the hood: Amazon

There’s something obsolete-making about being called the “Incumbent to Watch”. It feels a lot like being called The Establishment during the 60s.

I can’t help hearing Terry saying “I coulda been a contender“. The question is, who’s Charlie?

And thank you BBC for the photo.