I sometimes have a strange feeling that a majority of new web applications that are launched daily are mostly launched for bloggers to write initial reviews, create some buzz and bring a handful of early adapters to the application. And only a select few apps actually get visibility among mainstream users, those that are actually supposed to create the community, share content and participate in various activities on this or that website.

Sure, the best Web 2.0 products eventually reach their potential users but there must be a chance for an average guy to easily find some precious gems of the online world he could use to improve his work and/or entertainment habits. Now it looks to me there is such a place where Web 2.0 is actually friendly towards a person not typically obsessed with anything lacking the last vowel in the name and featuring "beta" near logo. The place I am talking about is named Simple Spark and works as a recommendation system for people to get to know online services and applications that could be useful for them (or that could replace their desktop apps). This website basically serves as a catalogue of applications categorized according to purposes and types.

The first thing you see on the website is a number of newly-added applications (they are added by developers) and a short list of broad categories (Media, Living, Office, Organization, Travel, Marketplace, Finance) - upon clicking any of them you will see a number of sub-categories that you can browse. And honestly, these categories contain almost everything a mainstream user may find interesting (some websites appear in several categories simultaneously, such as blogging and social networking, thus in every category the apps are further divided into groups, such as music, video or social networking).

Fig. 1. Screenshot of the Blogs category

The catalogue really looks like a complete one with over 3,000 entries. At least, I tried to add one of my recent favorites YooRL and found it already there though it is pretty new. For every application a profile here contains logos, screenshots, summaries, and reviews submitted by users. After the fastest registration I have seen for a while (no email confirmation at all) you will be able to contribute to the catalogue as well: for every application you can provide additional information, rate it, add to list of your favorite applications to revisit it or add a review later and bookmark the app on over 20 of the most popular social bookmarking services. It is also possible to browse the pending apps (those that have been added but have not been approved and their profiles are not complete yet) and contribute to how their profiles will look like when approved.

Fig. 2. Here is how a profile for one of my favorite social networks looks like

In addition to its primary goal of recommending web 2.0 treasures to a mainstream user the website can be very well used for professional purposes: bloggers can subscribe to the feed of newly added apps to stay up to date with the latest developments, developers and marketing people can track possible competitors that emerge in their relevant category, a business user can hunt for a better or cheaper services he or she is not completely satisfied with (profiles in every category can be delivered via RSS). Anyway even as a Web 2.0 blogger myself I could find many applications in various categories I did not even know exist (here you can easily overlook a newly launched product by not reading news for just a single day).

My summary? I can definitely tell that Simple Spark can be a very useful discovery tool for any user wishing to improve his or her working performance or online entertainment activities. The only thing I can not understand is how they actually created such a catalogue but I am totally sure that once the developers are here it will become much easier for creators of the website to build the catalogue because developers will definitely want to see profiles of their products as complete as possible. And since the website provides new opportunities both to business and mainstream users it really might have a bright future in the Web 2.0 world - at least, its collection is quite refreshing after the general collections of links or logos we are all accustomed to.