As we are nearing the end of 2008, we need to start reflecting on our startup madness of 2008. Following are the list of ideas that were overrated and over-hyped for year  2008. Definition of over-hyped: over 100 companies working on the same idea.

1. Social Networking: The over-arching theme was to build a social network for almost anything. Do you know a verb? lets start a social networking about it!!
2. White-labeled and Hosted Social Networking solutions: You would’t believe the number of companies offering these services.
3. Video Delivery: Thanks to YouTube, everyone jumped on this band-wagon without realizing how cost-prohibitive to match up to YouTube.
4. Online Advertisement: There were so many ways to manage advertisement that I keep losing track of them.
5. Video Editing/Advertising: This is a bye-product of YouTube’s success.
6. FaceBook applications: FaceBook did an amazing job with their platform. But lets face the truth, how many apps are really useful?
7. Internet Radio: This is a great concept and does not make any business sense due to the frigging royalty models. The Record Companies have easily won the battle for 2008.
8. Twitter Maniac: Twitter is becoming the preferred method of news distribution for many of us. But too many companies have tried copying twitter and failed. I guess, being first to the market really helped twitter.
9. Web 2.0 API Platform: Pretty much everyone now offers APIs. On a recent count, there were over 1000 web 2.0 APIs at  ProgammableWeb. Even myGPSID has its fair share, so I can’t complain too much about it. Oh, you have a subway? You should create Web 2.0 APIs to sell more subs.
10. Google Killer - Quil: Even though we all love Google, part of us wants to have options. We feel that Google will become the future evil. But it is pretty obvious that killing Google is not an option anymore.