We’re beginning to post audio from the Web 2.0 Summit on the Conversations page. New podcasts are scheduled to arrive weekly, so visit often.
November 2006 Archives
Web 2.0 Summit
“Developers at the Web 2.0 conference are offering web users an escape from the hassle of remembering usernames and passwords across multiple web sites,” observes Evan Prodromou in this LinuxWorld.com article that was picked up by NetworkWorld.
Where 2.0
Do you have ground breaking ideas about location aware technology–amazing location systems, open source hacks, untapped geodata, the next killer app to roll off the lab bench–and want to share them? Do you run a company developing new mapping products and services, or mashing up old ones? If so, we want you to present at the 2007 Where 2.0 Conference, happening May 29-20 in San Jose, California. Proposals are due January 5, 2007–visit the website to submit a proposal and share your ideas about what would make Where 2.0 a must-attend event.
Web 2.0 Summit
Over on LinuxWorld.com, Evan Prodromou writes:
Web services, software-as-a-service, and per-node, per-hour rent-a-grid computing are meeting in the middle. Web sites, companies with server software roots, and open source developers are converging on new ideas for business IT that blur the lines between APIs, services and software products.
Michael Liedtke writes: Although conditions haven’t returned to the feverish levels of the dot-com boom, the Internet’s business atmosphere is clearly heating up.
The latest symptoms of the escalating exuberance bubbled up this week at an elite gathering called the Web 2.0 Summit — a 3-year-old event billed as a mere conference until the organizers renamed it this year to underscore its exclusive status.
Dan Farber writes: Nick Carr was at this best synthesizing the week that was-the Web 2.0 Summit-and he wasn’t even there. I agree with other bloggers, commentators, writers, reporters, pundits, podcasters, vloggers, journalists and user generated content creators who said that the Web 2.0 Summit, which I covered extensively, didn’t produce any great revelations or a great step forward for the global Web. It was more about scraping money off the table as the money-VCs, IAC, Fox Interactive, Google, Yahoo, Microsoft and others-were auditioning startups in the hallways and in private rooms.
Ross Mayfield writes: John Markoff writes in the NY Times that Web 3.0 is coming.
Apparently he missed my post last week, for There is no Web 3.0. The funny thing about my summation last year (Web 2.0 is Made of People!) is the web has always been that way — and always will. At first glance, John seems to think the next web is made of machines.
Adam Lashinsky writes: Despite lofty predictions for MySpace and YouTube, almost no one in the current Web wave is making money - except Google. That could be a good thing for investors, argues Fortune’s Adam Lashinsky.
For a couple of years now, Internet-industry cognoscenti have cringed at the expression “Web 2.0″. It’s one of those catch-all phrases that started with a fairly specific definition (more on that in a bit) but has mushroomed into meaning essentially anything the person who evokes it wants it to mean.
What became clear at the loftily renamed Web 2.0 Summit, held last week at a posh hotel in San Francisco, is that the frothiness of Web 1.0 has returned and that Web 2.0 really is all about “the Google” and how everyone else relates to it.
Search upstart challenges Googlewith help from international array of investors.
Hakia said it has raised $11 million in its first phase of funding from a panoply of investors scattered across the globe who were attracted by the company’s semantic search technology, which the upstart aims to make superior to Google’s search engine.
The company is currently beta testing the search engine at its web site and previewed it at the Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco last week.
Forbes’ Adam Lashinsky writes:It’s time for Silicon Valley to accept the same laws that govern the rest of American business, says Fortune’s Adam Lashinsky.
A key tenet of life in Silicon Valley is that the technology industry is different from other businesses.
Employee compensation in the stock option culture is different. Accounting typically follows its own set of rules. Performance metrics that businesspeople elsewhere wouldn’t recognize are coin of the realm here. It’s an obnoxious attitude that nevertheless undoubtedly fuels a good deal of the tech industry’s outsized success.
This distinct form of exceptionalism was on display at last week’s Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco during a particularly illuminating panel discussion, “The Pirate and the Suit.” It featured DJ-mashup artist Eric Kleptone, who created the wildly popular “A Night at the Hip Hopera,” and David Munns, vice chairman of EMI Music.
Matthew Creamer writes:If the term Web 2.0 means anything at all to major media companies, it’s that having a potent way to get video content in front of consumers-and pull in a growing pile of ad bucks-will determine the winners from the losers. Last week’s Web 2.0 Summit, probably the highest-profile annual gathering of media and tech bigs, demonstrated that the answer to a single question determines a media company’s worth to Wall Street and advertisers: Does its digital strategy include a way to distribute both copyrighted and user-generated clips? The haves: Google and News Corp. The have-nots: pretty much the rest of ‘em, from Yahoo to the New York Times Co.
John Markoff writes:From the billions of documents that form the World Wide Web and the links that weave them together, computer scientists and a growing collection of start-up companies are finding new ways to mine human intelligence.
Their goal is to add a layer of meaning on top of the existing Web that would make it less of a catalog and more of a guide — and even provide the foundation for systems that can reason in a human fashion. That level of artificial intelligence, with machines doing the thinking instead of simply following commands, has eluded researchers for more than half a century.
For one evening, at least, it felt like the good old days again.For those around for the first bubble, this week’s Web 2.0 conference in San Francisco felt awfully familiar. A big name rock act, hipster god Lou Reed, was brought in Wednesday night to serenade blue-shirted, cell phone packing dweebs.
Big name tech companies like Intel competed with old media powerhouses such as The New York Times to show their Web 2.0 credentials.
In a week of second, and third, acts Web 2.0 impresario John Batelle, publisher of the late, lamented, Industry Standard was most impressive, presiding, once again, over a week of sheer effervescence.
Constance Loizos and Elise Ackerman write:For the 1,000 attendees at the third Web 2.0 conference in San Francisco, there was ample opportunity to network, nosh, check out new startups and mingle with some of the biggest names in the technology industry.
Yet this year’s conference was perhaps most notable for its high-profile speakers, which included Ross Levinsohn, CEO of Fox Interactive; Ram Shriram, one of Silicon Valley’s most prominent angels — he was Google’s first investor; and Roger McNamee, a prominent investor and cofounder of Elevation Partners.
Dan Fost channels Herb Caen at Web 2.0: I have been to the mountaintop. I have learned the secrets of the Palace.
OK, I have been to the Web 2.0 Summit, a highly hyped Internet conference. I have overheard a few things at the Sheraton Palace Hotel. I will share them with you, three-dot style.
Alan Sipress writesIf you’re the man who replaced Bill Gates, you’re sure to inherit a certain mystique and engender intense interest both inside Microsoft and out. But since Ray Ozzie took over as the company’s chief software architect this year, he has studiously maintained a low public profile that has fueled curiosity even further.
Ozzie broke his silence this week at the “Web 2.0 Summit” in San Francisco, where he appeared on stage to be interviewed by conference chairman John Battelle of Federated Media.
Forbes’ Rachel Rosmarinhas posted several entries on the Forbes blog during the Web 2.0 Summit…The Palace Hotel is crammed full of ambitious tech geeks, all jockeying for a bit of WiFi bandwidth, a rare power outlet or the chance to pitch their startup to a captive listener. Space, laptop juice and attention spans, are oversold. Tim O’Reilly, one of the founder’s of this conference, says he had to turn away 5,000 eager attendees. He invited them all to a new conference in April, and renamed this one the Web 2.0 summit, today.
Martin LaMonica writes: With Microsoft’s Vista and Office 2007 released to manufacturing, the software giant is preparing to adapt the products for the Web-dominated era, Chief Software Architect Ray Ozzie said Wednesday.
Ozzie spoke at the Web 2.0 Summit here, where he said the company overall is making a transition to designing software that takes advantage of the PC–as it has historically done–as well as online services.
“Now we are at an interesting juncture with Vista and Office (2007) done,” Ozzie said during an on-stage interview with conference organizer John Battelle.
Dan Farber writes:Yahoo co-founder David Filo, who rarely gets in front of a conference crowd, chatted with John Battelle at the Web 2.0 Summit, aided by Bradley Horowitz, Yahoo vice president of product strategy. Filo is the product focused half of the founding duo. The other founder, Jerry Yang, focuses on the business issues.
You would think after 12 years in the saddle and with billions of dollars in their accounts, the motivation to keep at it would diminish for the founders, but Filo said that the opportunity that lies ahead keeps him motivated, as well as being part of the “revolution.”
Evan Prodromou writes: The Web’s business and technology elite convened for O’Reilly and Associates’ third annual Web 2.0 Conference in San Francisco’s Palace Hotel last week. Started in 2004, the meeting lends its name to what some call a movement and others an ignorable wave of marketing hype…Is Web 2.0 relevant for open source developers, users, and IT managers? Although it may seem like just so much marketing fluff, Web 2.0 does have meaning for open source creators and users as well as IT decision-makers.
Posts Michael Arrington:
Amazon founder and CEO Jeff Bezos has been talking about their web services business unit a lot lately. Moments after he left the stage at the Web 2.0 Summit last week I was able to speak to him about three of their most recent web service offerings: Mechanical Turk, Simple Storage Service (S3) and Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2). This is a short podcast but you get a glimpse of how important this new business line is to Amazon’s future.
“Social news aggregator Digg.com was able to spotlight Donald Rumsfeld’s resignation faster than machine-operated Google News,” writes Kate Greene
Less than 10 minutes after the news of Donald Rumsfeld’s resignation hit the wires last week, the information was visible to hundreds of thousands of people via the homepage of Digg.com, a social news aggregation site that relies on readers to submit and promote interesting news stories.
According to Digg founder Kevin Rose, the Rumsfeld news was submitted to Digg three minutes after the Associated Press released it; four minutes later, the story had acquired enough “diggs” to jump to the front page of the site. The speed at which the Rumsfeld news–a quick read at only two sentences–was promoted to the front page of Digg “broke a record,” said Rose last week at the Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco.
Michael Calore took a lot of Monkey Bites out of the Web 2.0 Summit:
The Radar Team picked up on a few more signals at the Web 2.0 Summit:
Richard McManus has written a thoughtful summary of this year’s Summit:
It’s the end of a hectic week of conference-going for your R/WW correspondent - and so time for a wrap-up of my thoughts on the Web 2.0 Summit. Firstly, my overriding feeling is that this year’s conference was a lot different from last year’s. It was still a great conference, but in a different way - perhaps reflected in the name change to Summit (a more business-sounding title).
Lynne Johnson, with some help from Scott Kirsner, has posted a number of pieces from the Summit, covering social networking, Google, collaboration, video, Lou Reed’s appearance, and more.
Falguni Buhta filed a trio of pieces from the event:
Red Herring editors also posted a Week in Review piece that summarized some thoughts on the Summit, including the comment: “…John Batelle, publisher of the late, lamented, Industry Standard was most impressive, presiding, once again, over a week of sheer effervescence.”
Thomas Claburn wrote an article on how “Vendors look for ways to achieve user lock-in in a world of open networks, open source software, and open APIs.”
Among the many buzzwords associated with the Web 2.0 hype, none has quite the cachet as “open.” Yet no idea is more profoundly troubling to the companies trying to build profitable Internet businesses.
“The challenge we have in the Web 2.0 world is to invent new kinds of lock-in,” said Marc Canter, CEO of Broadband Mechanics, speaking at a session of the Web 2.0 Summit on Tuesday.
In an interview with InformationWeek’s Thomas Claburn, Amazon’s Jeff Bezos “dishes the dirt on IT ‘muck,’ talks about selling IT services by the sip, e-commerce, the advantages of VoIP, and why he’s interested in space travel.”
Peter Spande has also blogged some quick thoughts on the Web 2.0 Summit.
An article from Jefferson Graham:
Yahoo (YHOO) on Thursday previewed a new tool that wraps instant messaging into its hugely popular e-mail program. Launching in early 2007, the feature will enable Yahoo members to see their mail contacts online and instant-message them directly from Yahoo Mail. It “makes e-mail a more social experience,” says Yahoo Senior Vice President Brad Garlinghouse. Yahoo unveiled the tool at the Web 2.0 conference here.
And a blog from Kevin Maney, “What I learned at Web 2.0, Day One.”
The Summit was “a chance to mingle with giants in tech,” write Elise Ackerman, Constance Loizos and Michelle Quinn:
For the 1,000 people gathered at the third Web 2.0 conference in San Francisco, there was ample opportunity to network, nosh, check out new start-ups and mingle with some of the biggest names in the technology industry.
Michael Calore has posted this article on one of the Launch Pad sponsors, In the Chair:
In the cacophony of mashups, widgets and collaboration tools demoed at the third annual Web 2.0 Summit here, one rang out as the biggest crowd pleaser: a musical instrument instruction web app with a golden ear and infinite patience.
Michael also blogged some highlights from Kevin Rose’s talk over on Monkey Bites.
From the Marketplace entry: “A weeklong conference looking at the future of the Internet wraps up today. It’s all about monetizing the Web, Rachel Dornhelm reports.”
Justin Ewers writes:
Call it the Grand Summit of the Internet Digiterati. Or a geekfest worthy of Star Trek. The Web2.0 conference in San Francisco is an annual gathering of those hardy souls in Silicon Valley-and beyond-who are still hanging on to the notion that the dot-com era wasn’t just a flash in the pan.
A post from The Post’s Alan Sipress:
Jeffrey P. Bezos, chief executive of Amazon.com Inc., outlined his ambitious strategy for selling online storage and computing power before a crowd of entrepreneurs gathered here Wednesday for the Internet industry’s marquee conference and annual pep rally.
Editor in chief Harry McCracken has posted several entries:
- At Web 2.0 Conference
- Ray Ozzie at Web 2.0: Vista, Office, Etc.
- Yahoo Mail’s New Built-In Instant Messaging
- More Web 2.0: Microsoft’s Amazing Photosynth
I’m sitting in a ballroom at San Francisco’s Palace Hotel, where the Web 2.0 Summit began today. If interesting stuff going on on the Internet has an epicenter, it’s this event.
Eventful week for Microsoft–on Monday, it announced that it had released Office 2007 to manufacturing, and today’s it’s saying the same for Windows Vista.
I’m back for the last day of the Web 2.0 Summit, and one of the first sessions this morning spotlights Yahoo.
Gary Flake of Microsoft’s Live Labs is onstage demonstrating what is without question the coolest thing I’ve seen so far at Web 2.0: a photo viewer called Photosynth.
Master podcaster Daniel Steinberg has started to post audio from the Summit, brought to you by the Intel Software Network and Intel Software Partner Program:
- Lou Reed at Web 2.0
- Launch Pad at Web 2.0
Day two of the Web 2.0 Summit 2006 began with conversations with Jeff Bezos and Bruce Chizen followed by a debate on Net Neutrality between Vint Cerf and Robert Pepper. GoDaddy’s Bob Parsons gave the audience advice on running a company. Performer Lou Reed capped off the day with an after dinner set.
Before the start of Web 2.0 Summit 2006, 13 companies announced new products at the Launch Pad. We take a quick look at some of them in this report from the show.
More podcasts of the Summit will be available starting November 15.
Martin LaMonica writes: Marc Andreessen and Gina Bianchini took the stage at the Web 2.0 Summit here Wednesday to publicly launch Ning.com, which lets people build Web sites for online socializing.
The company has been operating for more than a year, but waited until the conference to reveal details on its product. Bianchini, who is CEO, gave a demonstration in the afternoon after technical glitches marred the first attempt.
She showed that Ning allows people to create socially oriented Web sites without having to write code. People are presented with choices, such as who to share the site with and what kind of look it will have.
Ning has built templates for hosting discussions and sharing music, photos and videos. The site is set up so people can retain their own branding–a logo can appear in a video player, for example.
“What’s different about Ning from other services is that we give you your own video site like YouTube, or social-networking site like MySpace,” she said. “But unlike being a page in somebody else’s service, it’s yours. You get to choose what it’s about.”
In December, Ning plans to launch an upgrade that will let people more easily customize their social-networking sites, she said.
Andreessen, best known as a Netscape co-founder, said Ning is betting that more and more people will want to create social-networking sites of their own. He added that the site is fully programmable by developers.
“Our basic theory is that as people get more sophisticated and used to social networks, they are going to want a lot more flexibility and a lot more customization,” Andreessen said. “We’re making a big bet that there will be a lot more social networks over the next couple of years.”
Web 2.0 Conference/Summit regular Mike Liedtke writes: Although conditions haven’t returned to the feverish levels of the dot-com boom, the Internet’s business atmosphere is clearly heating up.
The latest symptoms of the escalating exuberance bubbled up this week at an elite gathering called the Web 2.0 Summit — a 3-year-old event billed as a mere conference until the organizers renamed it this year to underscore its exclusive status.
The San Francisco shindig attracted so many movers and shakers that more than 250 Internet entrepreneurs jostled for a chance to show off their Web sites at a 90-minute session devoted to startups. The demand for on-stage presentations more than quadrupled from last year.
An advisory board winnowed this year’s field of applicants to 13 lucky startups who paid $10,000 apiece to take center stage before a packed room of venture capitalists, reporters, bloggers and Internet cognoscenti.
Each demonstration was limited to five minutes, a constraint that required some presenters to wrap things up before they had a chance to show off all their whiz-bang technology.
“It’s a little nerve-racking, but it’s very exciting,” said Nicole Morris, who highlighted 3B.net, a London-based startup that provides tools to construct three-dimensional settings around Web pages.
The audience could have been even bigger. More than 5,000 people wanted to attend this year’s three-day event, but the organizers — O’Reilly Media and CMP Technology — capped the attendance at 1,000.
Seeking to make the most of her opportunity, Morris ended her five-minute pitch by reaching out to venture capitalists — a group of financiers that is becoming more aggressive about pursuing investment opportunities.
Through the first nine months of this year, venture capitalists had invested $455 million in Web startups, more than doubling the amount from the same time last year, according to research firm Dow Jones VentureOne.
Other summit presenters like Palo Alto-based Sharpcast.com, which already has raised more than $13.5 million in venture capital, seemed more interested in creating a buzz that would lure more users to their Web sites.
Still other entrepreneurs on the summit’s stage might have been trying to follow the example of JotSpot and Upstartle, two Silicon Valley startups that presented at Web 2.0’s two previous gatherings. Google Inc., already home to hundreds of millionaire employees, bought both of those companies for undisclosed sums this year.
David Needle writes: The second day of the Web 2.0 Summit featured some of the Internet’s heaviest hitters talking strategy, new products and how to compete with search king Google, one of several sponsors of the event.
“There is immense opportunity in the core space that they are in that I’m surprised we haven’t branched into,” said Microsoft’s Chief Technical Officer Ray Ozzie.
Ozzie mentioned advances in the refinement of search and making it more contextual as areas ripe for innovation.
But he also ticked off many of Microsoft’s advantages, particularly it’s enormous user base that includes close to a half a billion Office users. “I don’t have to acquire companies, all I have to show is we get it and deliver the value they want to use it.”
He also disputed Google’s belief espoused yesterday by CEO Eric Schmidt, that most software is moving to an online or hosted model.
“I don’t see that it’s the right thing to do, to take the PC functionality and put it up on the Web. I think you have to look at what the Web is really good at like sharing scenarios and getting quickly in and out,” said Ozzie.
“The PC is really, really flexible, with a fast UI regardless of connection speed.” He also said that the PC is a better tool for users to embed emerging data types, including multimedia, that would be limited by bandwidth constraints online.
In an earlier panel, Steve Berkowitz, the Microsoft executive in charge of business development for its online services, said there is plenty of opportunity to compete with Google. That view was echoed by fellow panelist Jim Lanzone, the CEO of Ask.com. (Ironically, Berkowitz is a former CEO of Ask.com).
“So much in search needs to be improved,” said Lanzone. He said Ask.com was broadening its appeal by focusing on improvements to specific search areas, such as images, video and maps.
He also claimed Ask.com’s singular focus on search and easily understood brand helps it compete against portal sites like Yahoo. “If you’re a portal with a 3D this and checkout that, it’s a very jumbled thing to say what the brand stands for.”
Berkowitz said he expects more graphical user interfaces and personalization will make the search experience better.
“A lot will come down to how you enter the Internet,” said Berkowitz. By better understanding its community of users and adding relevant features and links, Berkowitz said Microsoft will be able to keep more of its users from leaving to Google and other sites.
He also conceded Microsoft’s new Live online effort “isn’t where I want it to be.”
He said Microsoft’s goal is to make Live a complete online service that can be readily accessed by a wide range of devices from desktop to mobile and provide more than search, but a range of services. “In the future, search will always be central to the property.”
That Ning Thing
Social networks like MySpace are a huge trend that got plenty of attention at the Web 2.0 Summit. Marc Andreessen, the founder of Netscape, is also co-founder of a new service called Ning, that adds a lot more customization to the social networks.
Gina Bianchini, the other co-founder of Ning, shared the stage with Andreesen and ran through a quick demo, setting up a social Web application in a few minutes.
“We give you the ability to set up your own video site like YouTube, or a site like Facebook, but unlike a page in someone else’s service, it’s yours - you decide the appearance and how to customize it,” said Bianchini. Video, audio and photos can be imported from your computer or other sites.
You can also decide on whether the sites you create will be public or private.
In December, Ning plans to bring an upgrade online that will integrate access to multimedia types from within Ning rather than having to retrieve them from other sites.
“We think Facebook and YouTube are fantastic, but they are one size fits all,” said Andreessen. “It reminds me of AOL and Prodigy in the ’90s. It wasn’t until we had fragmentation, specialization and customization when the Web gained traction.
Andreessen said Ning is making a big bet that “as people get more used to social networking they want more flexibility. It’s a really important step to unlock the creativity people have.”
Verne at the Chronicle writes: All things Internet were the topic at the Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco this week, where technology luminaries including Amazon.com CEO Jeff Bezos and Netscape founder Marc Andreessen spoke Wednesday.
And while big names draw crowds, for most attendees this annual meeting of digital media entrepreneurs is an opportunity to keep up to date with the latest in the technology industry, schmooze and strike business deals.
What’s hot is easy to find out. Just listen in on a few conversations and you’re bound to hear ample discussion of Google and its pending acquisition of video-sharing Web site YouTube. MySpace, the popular social networking site, was also a big talker. Startups at the conference are focusing on a wide range of business models, including search, online video and social networking
Bezos’ talk focused not on book-selling, Amazon’s primary business, but the more technical and less known side of the company: offering its data and services to software developers.
Bruce Chizen, chief executive officer of Adobe Systems, the San Jose softwaremaker, talked about the encroaching ambitions of Microsoft in various fields of software, a development that he called flattering. He then thanked Google for releasing products that compete with Microsoft’s software business, such as calendars and a word processor, because, he said, Microsoft is distracted by it.
“I’m thrilled that Google is there, because they are the heat shield,” Chizen said.
Many of the same characters who populated the original dot-com boom are also in evidence at Web 2.0, some in prominent roles.
John Battelle, the program chair, engaged in some playful give-and-take with Morgan Stanley Internet analyst Mary Meeker before her presentation, recalling how he and Meeker had run “Internet Summit” conferences from 1998 to 2001, when Battelle ran the Industry Standard magazine and Meeker was “queen of the Net.”
Tony Perkins, who wrote a book, “The Internet Bubble,” in 1999, moderated a panel. Andreessen, the wunderkind behind the Netscape browser, flogged his new startup, Ning. Kim Polese, who adorned business magazine covers in what’s now called Web 1.0, promoted her new company, SpikeSource, which packages a Web 2.0 software suite for businesses.
Author Kevin Kelly, a former Wired magazine editor, assessed the crowd. “It’s young but not that young,” he said. “All of these people have been through this once or twice. These are people who have been through Web 1.0 and succeeded, failed or something in between. They’re lifers.”
For that crowd, Kelly said, the dot-com crash was better than a master’s degree in business. And now they’re back. “Web 2.0 is the next season,” he said. “They’re entrepreneurial to the bone.”
For all the “Bubble 2.0″ cracks, however, Scott Meyer, CEO of About.com (a division of the New York Times Co.), said, “It’s not Bubble 2.0 because you don’t have companies going public on no revenue. It is all the same people, 10 years older and hopefully a little smarter.”
He said that in Web 1.0, people bragged about how much money they raised and how many people they hired. “In Web 2.0, it’s how little money you raise, how few employees you have and how virtual you can be,” he said.
Mena Trott, president and co-founder of the San Francisco blogging software company Six Apart and a Web 2.0 stalwart, said she noticed a shift in the attendees this year.
“There are more suits here,” she said.
The Web 2.0 Summit, organized by O’Reilly Media of Sebastopol and CMP Technology, ends today after a three-day run at the Sheraton Palace Hotel. The list of speakers also included Eric Schmidt, Google’s chief executive, and Barry Diller, chief executive of IAC/InterActiveCorp. The conference ends with a rare public interview with David Filo, co-founder of Yahoo.
Eric Auchard has filed another story:
Web telephone-calling company Skype on Wednesday unveiled new software with automatic click-to-call features designed to make shopping easier and that also encourages users to join group conversations…Speaking to an audience of Internet industry insiders at the annual Web 2.0 conference in San Francisco, Zennstrom reiterated that Skype must move to replace communication revenue as phone calls eventually become free.
The folks at Red Herring have been busy at the Web 2.0 Summit, with six articles so far, including stories on the Barry Diller/Arthur Sulzberger session on old vs. new media, Intel’s announcement of their Web 2.0 Suite, Google’s Eric Schmidt on the YouTube acquisition, the “next” YouTube, the launch of TimeBridge, and how News Corp. got beat by Google in the race to buy YouTube.
Complete CNET coverage of the Web 2.0 Summit can be found at Spinning the Web 2.0 at conference and their new blog, Webware.com.
“Levinsohn takes up inside Fox Interactive,” writes Constance Loizos:
Fox Interactive Media — the digital division of News Corp. formed last summer when it acquired the popular Web site MySpace — has mushroomed under President Ross Levinsohn, 43, formerly president of Fox Sports Interactive Media. Today, the unit employs 1,400 people, 60 percent of whom have come to Fox through the seven start-ups acquired since its launch.
Writes Richard McManus, “The Launchpad at the Web 2.0 Summit is a popular event, the venue is packed. 13 companies have 5 minutes each. Here are some quick impressionistic views of how it went….”
“The Spirit of Robin Hood Lives On With Opportunity to Make and Grant Wishes At RobinhoodFund.com And On Second Life,” is the headline of the press release issued by sponsor Cambrian House:
Based on tales of the legendary Robin Hood, the fund is the first crowdsourced charity that invites everyday people to make wishes come true. The crowd can submit a wish at RobinhoodFund.com and vote on the wishes that they would like to see come true. The most popular wishes are then granted and receive a collection of funds.
Two of the Radar team members have posted about Launch Pad Sponsors, Stikkit and oDesk:
- Stikkit - Sticky Notes Reborn from Allison Randal
- oDesk/O’Reilly Tech Visualizations from Brady Forrest
Sponsor Cambrian House Inc. (thanks!) announced the winner of its first IdeaWarz tournament, FundableFilms (known as FilmFunder in the tournament) at the Summit. The press release notes that FundableFilms will connect aspiring film makers with other members of the industry to acquire funding and support. It will now enter the Cambrian House test marketing phase to determine both its overall viability and profit potential.
Michael Arrington has posted a good overview of yesterday’s Launch Pad:
The annual Web 2.0 Summit kicked off today at the Palace Hotel in San Francisco. The Summit, which has been sold out for months, is noticeably larger than last year and hundreds of people are milling about, seeing and being seen.
The highlight of last year’s conference for me was LaunchPad, where thirteen young startups showed their stuff to the audience. See our coverage from last year here and here. Many of those companies are doing very well. Only one, Pubsub, has entered the TechCrunch DeadPool.
LaunchPad this year was perhaps even more competitive than last year. Over 200 companies applied to present at the conference. Only thirteen were accepted, and each had five minutes to demo their product to the crowd.
Writes Matt Marshall, “Our favorite event at the Web 2.0 Summit is the Launch Pad, where 13 new start-ups launch and give a five-minute presentation.”
Yesterday’s Web 2.0 Summit included a few highlights worth mentioning. Elinor Mills covered Skype co-founder Niklas Zennstrom’s chat with John Heileman, Skype plans to offer bloggers and others the ability to hold audio chats in the next version of it service.
The next version of Skype will enable people to post a link on a blog or Web site that will take people to a public chat room when clicked on, he said during a question-and-answer session during dinner.The live chats would be “Skypecasts,” which Zennstrom described as public conversations or audio conferences that people can moderate. He would not provide a timeline for the features except to say it would be “soon.” Meanwhile, Skype has had conversations with many social-networking sites about offering services that would allow users to “share content with each other in a conversation,” he said.
Zennstrom also briefly touched on two Skype-backed projects, FON and the The Venice Project. “FON could become the largest public Wi-Fi network,” he said, and the Venice Project will take the best of TV and puts it on the Net, not just the short, low-quality video clips. He also said that Skype revenues will be close to $200 million for this year, up from $60 million the previous year.
Martin Lamonica posted about John Battelle’s conversation with Barry Diller of IAC and Arthur Sulzberger, chairman of the New York Times Co. On the subject of user-generated or amateur content, Sulzberger said that the NYT plans to embrace content produced by the masses, but with caution. “We are looking at information gathering by amateurs, if you will, that we trust. Because at the end of the day, we’re putting our name on that work, and finding the right balance is hard work.”
“It doesn’t matter how you present the journalism-paper or electronic. It is the quality of editing and reporting that is important,” Sulzberger said.
Diller came up with his usual memorable comments. He agreed with Sulzberger that “editorship” is not going aways and that “everyone would like to believe that their entrails are of great interest to everybody, but it’s just probably not so.”
Martin also covered a panel that discussed the hurdles standing in the way social networking applications. For businesses, many of the social networking tools are not industrial grade, and for consumers Web users are stuck in silos.
Despite ongoing attempts to establish single sign-on standards, Web surfers typically are not able to log on to several sites at once, such as booking an airline ticket from United Airlines and then renting a car from Hertz.
Marc Canter, the CEO of Broadband Mechanics, wants end users to have the ability to control their profiles.
End users are asking for the ability to have a master profile so that they can keep data in one place and can update it. They want to move their data and feel like they are in charge of their data.
Web 2.0 Conference/Summit “regular” Eric Auchard writes: Schmidt was interviewed on stage at a session of the three-day Web 2.0 event by conference organizer John Battelle. In a two-part question, Battelle asked whether Google’s deal included a secret reserve for legal claims and, secondly, what progress Google was making in striking licensing deals with media companies to avoid threats of legal action.
Google CEO denies rumor of YouTube legal reserve
By Eric Auchard
SAN FRANCISCO, Nov 7 (Reuters) - Google Inc. (GOOG.O: Quote, Profile, Research) Chief Executive Eric Schmidt on Tuesday denied a widely circulated rumor that his company had set aside $500 million to settle copyright claims by media companies as part of its deal to acquire video-sharing site YouTube Inc.
Speaking to more than 500 Internet industry insiders at the annual Web 2.0 Summit, Schmidt said an anonymous blog post asserting YouTube has reserved $500 million for legal claims, out of the $1.65 billion takeover price, was “not true.”
Web and sports entrepreneur Mark Cuban, an outspoken critic of the Google-YouTube deal, late last month posted a claim from an anonymous blogger that he had inside information on the secret reserve plan.
The blogger claimed to be a digital media industry veteran with inside knowledge of the deal. Cuban introduced the rumor on his Blog Maverick site, saying he had not verified the details, but that the rumor “rings true” and he trusted the source.
The rumor was circulated around the Internet by blogs and picked up by technology industry publications Cnet and ZDNet and a top Google-watching site, Search Engine Watch.
Schmidt was interviewed on stage at a session of the three-day Web 2.0 event by conference organizer John Battelle.
In a two-part question, Battelle asked whether Google’s deal included a secret reserve for legal claims and, secondly, what progress Google was making in striking licensing deals with media companies to avoid threats of legal action.
“The former is not true,” Schmidt said in response to the question of whether “a very large sum of money was set aside to buy peace” between YouTube and big media companies.
“The latter is,” the Google CEO continued. “We have visited as many media companies as we can” to reach copyright licensing deals that can insulate both YouTube and Google, he said.
Television and video producers, along with music labels, are angry that pirated versions of their copyrighted programming are frequently posted by users to YouTube’s site and have become a prime attraction of the video site.
The original rumor was posted at http://tinyurl.com/yemv57/. Cuban became famous in 1999 for selling Broadcast.com for $5.7 billion to Yahoo Inc. (YHOO.O: Quote, Profile, Research).
CNET just launched their new blog, Webware.com. They’ll be revealing everything about the newest, hottest, Web-based applications. Rafe Needleman and Elinor Mills are here at the Web 2.0 Summit blogging about the Launch Pad companies launched during the conference.
Dan Farber has posted a foursome of stories–many more to come, I’m sure:
- Google CEO Eric Schmidt: We would never trap user data
- Inside the mind of the Net generation
- The invasion of Enterprise 2.0 software
- Updated: Intel to front Web 2.0 business suite
John Battelle and Tim O’Reilly kicked off the industry heavyweight portion of the Web 2.0 Summit with a few remarks about Web 2.0 and the theme of the event, disruption and opportunity.
During a session at the Web 2.0 Summit, author and consultant Don Tapscott shared results from a research project on the Net generation, the first humans to grow up digitally.
Blogger and stock analyst Paul Kedrosky introduced the topic of Enterprise 2.0 at a morning workshop at the Web 2.0 Summit by trying not to define the concept, calling the definitional discussion a masturbatory exercise.
Later today Intel will announce a suite of Web 2.0 business applications at the Web 2.0 Summit, according to Socialtext CEO Ross Mayfield.
Over on The Bubbling Point, Rachel Rosmarin has posted a couple of entries:
- AOL May Have A Clue. No, Seriously.
- The New, Old Thing
The same month that Time Warner’s AOL unit dealt itself the worst public relations blow in its history–in August, it unintentionally let loose the personal search queries of 650,000 subscribers–the veteran Internet company made a very promising move. AOL acquired Los Angeles-based startup Userplane and set in motion a plan to upend its legacy as a subscription-based Internet service provider and turn itself into an open platform…Jones’ new boss, Marcien Jenckes, AOL’s vice president of instant messaging, said Tuesday morning at the Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco that he hopes Internet companies of all sizes will choose to build their business models around AOL’s technology platform.
Internet company professionals who were awake for the last five years should be suspicious of overused tech buzzwords–remember “mindshare” and “new economy”? But attendees at the Web 2.0 Summit this week will hear and use many of these terms again–without irony.
Another article from Juan Carlos Perez, this one featured in Macworld UK:
As industry leaders meet this week at the third annual Web 2.0 Conference, the internet sector faces rotund challenges and exciting opportunities.
The event, considered the ultimate conclave of internet movers and shakers, will be held in San Francisco from Tuesday to Thursday at a critical time for the web. Depending on how internet executives and investors play their cards in the next 12 months, the internet economy will either continue its rehabilitation or end up punch drunk and enveloped in a bursting bubble.
Eric Auchard and Scott Hillis have collaborated on this article:
Intel Corp. has formed a partnership with top Internet software makers to create a set of Web tools for office workers to share information with colleagues, the companies said on Tuesday….The announcement was made in San Francisco at the opening day of the Web 2.0 Conference, an annual event that attracts the Internet industry’s biggest movers and shakers to debate the future of Web trends.
Another article from Natali T. Del Conte:
Intel announced on Tuesday their endorsement of the Web 2.0 era with SuiteTwo, a combination of several Web 2.0 applications designed to operate on PC-based hardware. SuiteTwo was announced at the Web 2.0 Summit. It is designed for small to medium-sized business customers and will cost between $175 and $200 per user per year.
“3-Day Conference Will Have Latest From Start-Ups, Mainline Firms,” is the headline of Constance Loizos’ piece:
If you’re a tech news junkie, you’re in for an exciting week. The third Web 2.0 conference gets under way in San Francisco today, and the three-day event, credited with coining the term “Web 2.0′’ and expected to draw 1,000 participants, is being used as a forum by start-ups and more established companies to announce new initiatives.
Dan Fost’s Tech Chronicles post covered one of today’s workshops, “A panel discussion at the Web 2.0 Conference, (sorry, Summit) this morning addressed the notion of how the shifting landscapes of law and technology can often create thorny and confusing situations.”
Launch Pad participant oDesk made an announcement today:
“oDesk Economy” Data Visualization Site Displays Global Trends in Contract Programming
Today oDesk (www.oDesk.com), an online marketplace for remote work, and O’Reilly Media announced a partnership to publish data and trends on the economics of the global programming workforce. An early beta version of the “oDesk Economy” website will be demonstrated at the Web 2.0 Conference this week in San Francisco, and a production version will launch in early 2007.
Over at IDG News Service, Juan Carlos Perez has filed a report, picked up by Macworld:
Adobe will contribute source code to the Mozilla Foundation as the two organizations aim to establish a standard scripting language that developers can use to create interactive applications for Adobe’s Flash Player and Mozilla’s Firefox browser.
The plan calls for Adobe to hand over source code from its ActionScript Virtual Machine, the scripting language engine in its Flash Player, the organizations will announce Tuesday at the Web 2.0 Conference in San Francisco.
Don’t forget, even if you’re not there in person, you can still be a part of the conversation at the Web 2.0 Summit, now underway in San Francisco. Answerbag.com is providing live Q&A throughout the conference. An Answerbag representative will be in the audience submitting questions in real time on the Web 2.0 wiki during the onstage conversations with John Battelle, Tim O’Reilly, and other speakers–so no matter where you are, if you’re following the Q&A, you can ask questions, discuss and rank the answers, and ask additional related questions.
“The annual Web 2.0 Conference starts this Tuesday,” writes Dion Hinchcliffe, “and with it comes an important update of the vision of the next generation of networked applications.”
Web 2.0 Summit sponsor hakia has raised $11 million in funding since the company was founded, according to today’s press release:
hakia, the Web’s new meaning-based search engine, today announced the company has raised $11 million since its founding. hakia uses a radically new infrastructure which already functions with more human-like intelligence than today’s index-based search.
Natali Del Conte has published a couple of pieces in PC Magazine:
- Can You Be Competitive With An Open API?
If all Web 2.0 developers worked together, how would they compete? - Startup’s Outlook Plugin Hopes To Make Scheduling Easier
TimeBridge, a new scheduling tool, has come out of stealth mode, just in time for the Web 2.0 Summit
At the Web 2.0 Summit this week, O’Reilly is releasing a new publication, Web 2.0 Principles and Best Practices. An excerpt is available for download, and Tim O’Reilly has written a Radar post on the report.
For those of you arriving onsite today confused by the Web 2.0 “Summit” signs, not to worry - you’re in the right place. Today, O’Reilly Media, Inc. and CMP Technology today jointly announced that the Web 2.0 Conference has been re-named “Web 2.0 Summit.” Registration for the upcoming Web 2.0 Expo in April 2007 is also now open at http://www.web2expo.com/. Read more here.
Writes Martin LaMonica:
Hundreds of technology executives and investors will congregate this week to take the quickening pulse of Internet entrepreneurship.
At the third annual Web 2.0 Conference in San Francisco, dozens of industry players will gather to break down topics like Internet infrastructure, Net neutrality, mashups, data protection and the future of video. Among those on hand at the city’s Palace Hotel will be Amazon.com CEO Jeff Bezos; Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg; Lotus Notes creator Ray Ozzie; and Marissa Mayer, vice president of search products and user experience at Google.
Evan Prodromou writes:
Outside the 650 area code, you might be able to go out for dinner without overhearing three Web 2.0 conversations, but new web technologies and business methods can still help your business. In our coverage of the upcoming Web 2.0 conference, we’ll look at what the social networking, web services, open collaboration, and powerful browser features.
“Tomorrow morning I’m traveling to San Francisco for next week’s Web 2.0 Conference,” writes Richard McManus. He continues:
I attended it last year and thoroughly enjoyed it. Read/WriteWeb’s coverage of the 2005 conference is here - and needless to say I’ll be pumping out the posts again this year.
In association with the conference, a new Web 2.0 report has been published by O’Reilly Media - written by my friend John Musser, with Tim O’Reilly and the O’Reilly Radar Team. Called ‘Web 2.0 Principles and Best Practices’, it is an insightful overview of the tools and trends prevalent in this current era of the Web.
“A new breed of technologists envisions a democratic world improved by the Internet,” writes Dan Fost:
Behind the random silliness of YouTube videos and the juvenile frivolity of MySpace Web sites lies a powerful idea: Everyday people are using technology to gain control of the media and change the world.
At least that’s what a new breed of Internet technologists and entrepreneurs want us to believe. The new Internet boom commonly referred to as Web 2.0 is really an exercise in digital democracy.
Dubbed Digital Utopians by some, and Web 2.0 innovators by others, this latest wave of tech gurus champion community over commerce, sharing ideas over sharing profits. By using Web sites that stress group thinking and sharing, these Internet idealists want to topple the power silos of Hollywood, Washington, Wall Street and even Silicon Valley. And like countless populists throughout history, they hope to disperse power and control, an idea that delights many and horrifies others.
Tim O’Reilly is the founder and chief executive of O’Reilly Media in Sebastopol, a tech publisher and event organizer who hung a name on the movement with his Web 2.0 Conference, which will be held this year starting Tuesday in San Francisco. In his manifesto on the movement last fall, O’Reilly wrote glowingly about “the wisdom of crowds” and the “architecture of participation.”
Another article on Amazon’s aims:
Amazon.com is turning its expertise running the world’s largest online store into a kind of utility business that supplies Web logistics services to companies.
In a series of projects, some announced and some in public trials this year, the company has assembled the pieces of a strategy that positions Amazon to supply underlying computing, data storage and other services to Web businesses.
Jeff Bezos, Amazon’s chief executive, plans to detail his vision for this emerging business at the Web 2.0 Conference in San Francisco next week.
Foldera, one of our Web 2.0 Conference sponsors (thanks!) has just issued a press release about the service they’ll be launching next week:
Foldera(TM), Inc. will provide the first public demonstration of the latest milestone release of the company’s information organization and collaboration service at the third annual CMP Technology-O’Reilly Media event this week. The new release will be rolled out to an expanded community of beta testers later this month.
Rob Hof’s cover story in BusinessWeek is an excellent primer for some of the issues to be addressed the Web 2.0 Conference, which will roar to life on Tuesday:
Yes, Amazon founder and Chief Executive Jeffrey P. Bezos, the onetime Internet poster boy who quickly became a post-dot-com piñata, is back with yet another new idea. Many people continue to wonder if the world’s largest online store will ever fulfill its original promise to revolutionize retailing. But now Bezos is plotting another new direction for his 12-year-old company, which he will lay out on Nov. 8 at San Francisco’s Web 2.0 Conference, the annual gathering of the digerati creme. Judging from an advance look he gave BusinessWeek on one recent gray day at Amazon’s Seattle headquarters, it’s so far from Amazon’s retail core that you may well wonder if he has finally slipped off the deep end.
Web 2.0 sponsor (thanks!) and social knowledge platform Answerbag.com will be providing live Q&A during the Web 2.0 Conference next week. What’s cool is that not only will conference attendees be able to ask and answer questions online, but interested folks from anywhere in the world can join in, extending the audience for the discussions.
The Web 2.0 Answerbag site is available on the Web 2.0 wiki now, so users can ask questions in advance of the event. Once the conference begins, an Answerbag representative will be in the audience submitting questions in real time during the onstage conversations with John Battelle, Tim O’Reilly, and other speakers. At any time, anyone at the conference or following the forum can respond to these questions, discuss and rank the answers, and ask additional related questions. So, got Web 2.0 questions? Ask ‘em on Answerbag!
Read the press release for the official scoop.
Web 2.0 Expo
Writes Rachel Wimberly:
It was a long, hard road, but dot-commers who stuck around to give the Web another shot have flocked, along with some newcomers, to the Web 2.0 Conference for the last few years to celebrate the second wave of Internet success.
The demand for the conference prompted two of the organizers, O’Reilly Media and CMP Technology, to announce the launch of an expanded version, the Web 2.0 Expo, April 15-18 at Moscone West in San Francisco.
“The timing is right,” said Eric Faurot, CMP Technology’s senior vice president. “The market can support a larger and more cohesive event.”
- November 16-19, 2009
- New York, NY
