My view on TechCrunch's "Some things need to change" post and a proposed solution.

The problem here is that starting a web service has become so cheap and easy that there is now ridiculous competition for eyeballs.

The vast majority of startups probably don't get a fair chance at success and this can be very frustrating to their founders.

IMO, we need a new way to advertise. Paid advertising doesn't work particularly well when targeted to early adopters (who tend to ignore/block ads). And bloggers such as Arrington are already overwhelmed.

The solution IMO is to make self-promotion socially acceptable and mutually beneficial.

This means not getting upset when people self-promote on reddit and Hacker News.

But we can go further with services such as http://www.readmytweets.com that are designed specifically for mutually beneficial self-promotion.