Thursday, November 9, 2006
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.
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