The ability to access your financial information in consolidated form from anywhere. This is what Mint.com does for its members. Mint.com looks at your financial picture, classifies expenditures, and analyzes spending. The site takes a read-only snap shot of your online bank accounts by using log-in information you provide. Mint.com only reads the accounts it does not maintain a connection with the banks, nor does it allow you to transfer money or make adjustments through the site.

I have been using Mint.com for the past couple months as our schools proxy servers block financial software like Microsoft Money or Intuit’s Quicken from connecting with the banks automatically. However Mint.com gets around this by being a application entirely based on the web. It has not been smooth sailing all the way for me with Mint.com. About 75% of my accounts worked, and after speaking with my banks and receiving little help from the Mint.com customer service department, it is still only 75% of my accounts that work. However, for the accounts that do work, I love it. The site is easy to use, beautifully designed, and a great idea.

The site makes money through offers it can make to you through it financial partners. All the offers aim to help you save money on fees and gain money on interest. They even explain that they don’t make money off of every deal they offer you. So why use this then the other computer based software? For the same reason you use Google Docs or any other “Web 2.0″ software, you have 24/7 global access to your resources, it just makes sense.

So i checked out the site linkedin.com.  It seems like it’s basically just facebook for businesses.  So that got me thinking, you could take most any successful website and a “business version” of it.  For example, you make a website that is basically Ebay for businesses.  This way business could buy/sell used office furniture or business assets to/from each other.  I dunno.  Maybe the ebay idea is kind of corny.  I guess my point is that we shouldn’t overlook the B to B market.  We talk alot about facebook and youtube, and the social networking power they offer, but the B to B world has alot of similar needs and opportunities.

Many of the new web 2.0 sites contain a viral element to help them attract new users and generate new content. Some sites are better at this then others ning.com or facebook.com or youtube.com for example. Let’s look at how these sites differ in their techniques of using viral elements.

YouTube – Post a video, now put it on your own web site while promoting the YouTube brand.

Facebook – Goes after existing communities of people (schools and work places). Get everyone to drive their friends to Facebook so that they can keep track of each other.

Ning – Who needs Facebook, why not create your own network and invite your friends?

I suppose I am comparing apples and oranges here since these sites are all different in how they obtain new users, but in the end it comes down to one concept: Tell your friends to sign up for our service!!!

So my roommate and i had cable the first semester.   But then we decided to get rid of it, because it way too expensive.  Guess what?  I don’t miss it!  I can watch everything i want on the internet, whenever i want, without commercials.   This brings up a couple of  questions.  For example, what is going to happen to cable?  I imagine it won’t go away anytime soon, because there are enough people who are more comfortable watching tv on the television than on their computer.  However, i do think that the format of tv will change.  I imagine it will change to an on demand format, more similar to what you would find on YouTube.  Another point worth making is that youtube has introduced a different kind of video experience.  They are generally clips only a few minutes long, just enough to experience a thought or an idea.  Exactly how this will affect the way we think about television, i’m not sure.  But it is interesting to think about!

One really interesting internet phenomenon is that many sites are not money driven.  Take Craigslist for example.  It is a very well known site, and many many people use it.  But at the same time, its founder has not made any great effort to monetize it.  sure, he does has some revenue streams from the site, but mostly it is a free website with no ads.  Now contrast this with other large organizations.  Large companies are always profit driven, even to the point of committing fraud to make their financial statements look good.  Even governments are anxious to monetize themselves, seeking tax revenues any way they can get them.  I guess the internet offers something else to individuals besides money.  I think it’s the whole notion of being part of a community and being able to contribute to that community that is valuable in and of itself.  I believe this is why some very successful internet entrepreneurs, such as the founder of Craigslist, are more concerned with creating a useful website than generating revenue from it.