This sort of leads me to an epiphany -- a large part of what makes new startups interesting (and possibly palatable for acquisition) is how they choose to sort

This sort of leads me to an epiphany -- a large part of what makes new startups interesting (and possibly palatable for acquisition) is how they choose to sort data. I think a good recipe for a startup (in the current climate on the 'net, anyway) is: Offer a service that happens to build a collection of data. Find ways to organize that data for your users that are useful, but haven't occurred to anyone before.