Those familiar with the Darwin awards probably have a special appreciation for the man and his theories (I only call them theories, because the idea of evolution or anything even remotely related to the subject is somewhere up there with same-sex marriage. Although I acknowledge thatÂ? evolutionÂ? from a big picture perspective isÂ? still theoretical, I can’t ignore the obvious signs of evolution displayed throughout the biological world, like Hox genes.). Moving right along, the general description of Darwin’s (most famous?) theory is often summarized as “survival of the fittest.” A more accurate description of the theory is those best able to adapt will survive. This is even true on the Net.

A recent articleÂ? we wrote talked about Microsoft and their new, risky moves towards increasing their Internet presence, and with that, the software company will look at capitalizing on the potential of their userbase and sell advertising. Although Microsoft continues to dominate worldwide with their Windows operating system and their Office suite of applications, online competitors like Google and Yahoo! have made moves that would inevitably destroy the near monopoly that Microsoft has in those markets. Through acquisitions, both Google and Yahoo! have acquired Web 2.0 companies that will allow users to complete the same tasks as they would with Microsoft Office, but the documents would be accessible worldwide, and there would be no costly software to purchase. In response, rather than stumbling along on their doomed path, Microsoft will attempt to reposition itself. No longer will Microsoft be a software company. Instead, a large portion of their revenue will come from advertising media.

This becomes more important when you look at two other online behemoths and how they’ve responded to adversity lately. One is Facebook, and the other is eBay. I wrote earlier about Corporate Facebook, and before that, about the recent VC investment into Facebook. It seems that the questions I had about Facebook finding a unique niche have been answered by the launch of their corporate social networking site. Again, it’s going to be difficult to get as much out of the corporate social networking world as it was to get a positive response from the high school and college worlds, but at least Facebook is adapting within their more general niche to try and capture their own unique piece of that pie.

eBay has taken another approach. Instead of looking at adapting itself, the world’s most famous online auction will be looking at partnering itself to improve it’s business. The move is to try and better compete against Google. It seems completely logical for both Yahoo! and MSN, two of the rumoured partners being sought out, to want to create their own competing sites or sub-sites. Although aligning with eBay may be a logical, short-term partnership, both these sites have the user potential to tackle this problem head-on, or through the acquisition of a start-up. A post on gigaom.comÂ? (with a link to a podcast covering the topic in detail) talks about 5 things that eBay can do. Nowhere in the post does it say that eBay should continue to do what it has always done, nor should it. This is just another example of a company that forgot how important innovation is, especially on the Internet.

With the purchase of Skype, there is the potential to re-invent the website, or at least broaden the sources ofÂ? revenue, and hopefully it’s not too late.Â? Being able to adapt is something that should never be over looked, which hopefully eBay is able to do. However, like most things in life, timing is everything, and much like Microsoft and the move to advertising and a more pronounced Internet presence, let’s hope this isn’t too little, too late for eBay.

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