GigaOm: Level 3 Not a Web 2.0 Company

Om Malik, a veteran scribe who has covered the web/telco industry through boom and bust, is writing about Web 2.0 fatigue, a malady he says can be aggravated by spin. GigaOm, who recently launched his own network of newsblogs, cites recent announcements from Level 3 – which has unveiled connectivity deals with MySpace, YouTube and now Photobucket – as an example. An excerpt from Om:

It is all spin and a blatant attempt to get a little Web 2.0 pixie dust. In fact, Level 3 is spending liberally to get it. They are sponsoring the Web 2.0 conference, and paying top dollars for it. … Hate to break it to you guys, but you paint a pony with black stripes, it doesn’t become a zebra. You are a bandwidth provider, and might become a content delivery network, but you will still remain in the background, and a plumbing company. Not that there is anything wrong with it.

I expect much of the coverage of the Web 2.0 conference to focus on the bubble/hype question, but we’ll be on the lookout for meaningful coverage of Infrastructure 2.0. Is the pixie dust working?

RELATED POSTS:

• Level 3 Provides Bandwidth for Photobucket
• Level 3 Buys Broadwing for $1.4 Billion
• Rumor Patrol: Will Google Buy Level 3 Next?
• YouTube Gets Bandwidth Boost from Level 3
• Level 3 to Acquire ICG Communications

About Rich Miller

Rich Miller is the founder and editor-in-chief of Data Center Knowledge, and has been reporting on the data center sector since 2000. He has tracked the growing impact of high-density computing on the power and cooling of data centers, and the resulting push for improved energy efficiency in these facilities.