Downstream Effects of Moore's Law

Those of you familiar with Moore's Law know that basically it states that computing power will double every 2 years. Occasionally, it's so interesting to experience a real-life effect of such a frantic pace of technological advancement.

In early 2006, a trade association I helped create made a strategic decision to launch a new online community in the form of a "niche" social network. We gathered 8-10 of our senior Advisors and planned our project. We estimated that our custom development project would cost the equivalent of $75K and take up to 6 months for a team of specialized developers to complete. Since we did not have that kind of extra cash in our budget, we would have to rely on donated services. Needless to say, the project never really got off the ground.

In early 2007, we identified a relatively new open source content management platform (Drupal) as a potential alternative solution. Drupal essentially provided an affordable set of hosted modules that could be assembled into a relatively customized online community. Suddenly, our "development" project from a year prior transformed into an "integration" project, which we figured would cost $15K and take 2 months for a team of general integrators to complete. Much better.

However, before we could really get THAT project off the ground, we discovered a company called Ning, a venture co-founded by Marc Andreesen, the technological co-founder of Netscape and one of the "Fathers of the World Wide Web." Essentially, Ning offered an online platform that made it easy to create, host, and manage social networks. In late October 2007, it literally took me 15 minutes to launch our group's social network. Granted, it will take us a bit longer to fully customize it and get the look/feel just right, but the basic components were live on the Web in 15 minutes. Oh, and did I mention that the basic Ning service is FREE (the premium services that our group will have to purchase still come to less than $50/month!)?!

So ... imagine this:
- In early 2006, our "development" project was estimated at $75K and 6 months of a specialized team of developers.
- In early 2007, our "integration" project was estimated at $15K and 2 months of a generalized team of integrators.
- In late 2007, our "activation" project was completed for FREE ($50/mo max) in 15 minutes by 1 non-technical person.

This is truly the power of Moore's Law in action on the business end of computing power!