One test: Google tried adding more results to the front result page. Traffic dropped by 20%. (A "holy hell" kind of drop.) Marissa realized what was happening: Users getting 30 results instead of 10 were getting their results half a second later. "What users really wanted was, 'Give us more results in the same amount of time.' Speed is a huge component of what happens."

2:30: A Google search runs through many machines between the user query and the result page. The ISP, the index servers, load balancers. But all that happens in a quarter-second.

Google launched a "diet version" of Maps, much smaller and quicker-loading. Traffic jumped by two digits.

Instant feedback = steeper learning curve
Running results faster makes users become experts faster.

Google Video: Instead of instantly showing you your uploaded video, they showed an hourglass notice (rolling balls, actually). Upload traffic boomed when they switched to showing users their video.

Speed
Break up a big interaction into small, fast interactions.

That's why Google released Web Accelerator. "What's good for the Web is good for Google." (And vice versa, Marissa?)

This is also why Google Maps on mobile still doesn't really work.

2:13: The topic: What Digg's learned over the past two years and what happens behind the scenes. (This is where we learn it's just a monkey drinking Heineken.) Calls Rumsfeld "Rumsfield." Notes that the story about Rumsfeld stepping down hit the front page of Digg in 5 minutes after the first published announcement, Reddit in 3, Google News in 25 minutes.

Most of the users who glommed onto this story early, found it on Digg's Swarm and Stack tools.

2:17: Digg is also working on giving these tools to web publishers, giving dugg writers info about who's digging their story, what's going on. Digg's building a flash toolkit for this.

Gaming Digg
Kevin: Users are trying to game Digg — groups like Spike the Vote. But they don't know what Digg is doing behind the scenes to stop this. Digg looked at patterns, watching stories as they were being dugg. He shows graphs of diggs over time.

"We can get an idea of a healthy digging pattern over time." Are they being dugg from upcoming pages? Are they being dugg by people referred from other sites? "If a lot of diggs have no referrer, we can tell someone's trying to game Digg."

Another graph shows some stories with strange activity, which stand out from a dark pattern formed by the many similarly dugg stories. Same-source digging, high percentage of anonymous proxies — these are signs of fake diggs.

2:22: Digg is starting to create profiles. First, it shows users who are good or bad diggers. Second, it'll help Diggers socialize. "There are users that we internally call prescient submitters...they have a knack for what is cool and what will become popular." These are not the top diggers.

Kevin shows a flash module — "This is dumb so we won't launch this" — like the Digg swarm feature, but with bees buzzing toward flowers. Looks cute, but easy to see how it's basically a skimmed swarm.

To his credit, Netscape is still ahead of other social news sites like Reddit — for a couple more months anyway.

Netscape vs. Digg vs. Reddit vs. Wink vs. Newsvine [Alexa]

How much did he cost? One conference-goer guessed (based on other rates he's seen) that six songs would be at least $70k, maybe as much as $300k for a full set; other sources tell me anything from $15k to $100k, depending on Reed's availability.

However much it cost AOL, you can watch for free:

Lou Reed at Web 2.0 / What's Good [AOL video]

• Zimbra founder/CEO Satish Dharmaraj: $15 million from Benchmark, Redpoint, and others. They "haven't touched it...we didn't want to position ourselves for a buyout as the goal of the company. When the capital was available at an attractive valuation, we took it in." As Battelle notes, the venture capitalists may care a bit, no?
• Veoh founder Dmitry Shapiro: $14.75 million.
• Wink founder/CEO Michael Tanne: Didn't hear a number from him. Survey says $6.2 million.

Aaaand panelist Jason Calacanis from AOL has something to say about that. Surprise surprise.

Oh my God, I <3 the Bubble. All the excess, the vanity, the frivolousness, it's so great. What else could explain a conference opening party featuring a candlelit jazz corner, free massages, an oxygen bar and the chance to hustle engineers with your billiards prowess? Not to mention the complementary drinks and fancy deserts, branded schwag and, oh, did I mention that there was an OXYGEN BAR?

Yahoo! sponsored the After Hours Lounge & Progressive Suite Party last night at the Palace Hotel, home of the Web 2.0 (TM) Conference Summit. It was easily crashable - I snuck in by merging with a group of nametag-clad attendees and avoiding eye contact with the worker checking credentials.

The Sunset Court, the large foyer connecting the different conference rooms, was bathed in purple light and the glow from flat-screen TVs showcasing Second Life excerpts and clips from Beck's concert at Yahoo Hack Day. Since the party started at 9:30, the food available leaned towards the sweet side of the palate. At one table, a man served s'mores on fine china. The next station had melted Ghirardelli cascading down a four-tiered fountain with plates of strawberries, cake, and sliced pineapple available to dip in the chocolate. It was fantastic.

Attending the Web 2.0 Summit must be highly stressful work, because the theme of afterparty was extreme relaxation. Level 3 Communications turned the Marina suite into an upscale massage parlor, offering back rubs and reflexology to tired attendees. If you wanted to unwind with a game of pool, you could check out the Sea Cliff suite, where there were two tables set up by About.com. The Presidio suite became a virtual make-out room, dark, cozy, and lit only by candles, featuring a three-piece jazz ensemble with sponsor Etelos's President & CEO Danny Kolke on the keys.

These parties are never about the entertainment, though, are they? It's always about the people and the networking. Walking through the crowd, I met Dan from Fox Interactive, who told me that MySpace Tom skipped the conference to go to Tokyo for the Launch of MySpace Japan, a choice I assume was not a difficult one. Also seen out and about were Tailrank founder Kevin Burton, Mashery President & CEO Oren Michaels, Valleyschwag procurement officer Tara Anderson, Jason and Patrick from software company Cambrian House, Robert Pazornik from LicketyShip (a familiar face from STIRR 1.7), and People Aggregator's Marc Canter (and his lovely wife Lisa) who invited me (I declined) to smoke a joint in one of the conference-provided hotel rooms upstairs.

Above and beyond, the most bizarre thing about the evening was the oxygen bar in Intel's Pacific Heights suite. Plastic tubes emerged from a clear case containing four "flavors" of some sort of liquid, one of which bubbled up depending on the lever you pushed. The woman running the bar gave out individual nasal cannulas to attach the tube, and you were just supposed to sit there and inhale. The end result was twelve people sitting, vacant eyed, breathing heavily through their nosepiece. (It reminded me of Nursing Home Night at Foxwoods, except you changed flavors instead of pulling the slot handle and no one was smoking a Newport out of their trachea hole.) As for the oxygen, it was ethereal, slightly energizing, and, okay, fine, I didn't feel a thing from it, but other people said they did so I lied and pretended I could see the Emperor's clothes, too. One thing is certain, though: the Bubble smells like Citrus Zen.

He's lost every single motion he's charged against us. It's like when Mike Tyson kept trying to win this fight, and the guy kept getting up, and Tyson kept knocking him down.

It's kinda sad...two years before we bought the company, they kicked him out. For a guy who got $40 or 50 million from the sale, I mean...life's too short.

[Spoken onstage at Web 2.0 Summit]

"Rumsfeld has resigned." Applause. "I don't know why I knew you guys would enjoy that..."

"Also, in the Senate, Montana has gone to the Democrats, with Virginia undecided. And the House, as you know, is won."

Applause.

"...by the Democrats."

Then FedEx VP Robert Carter gave a talk about "atoms and bits" — combining access to info with access to quickly moving goods. Upshot: I'm not sure. All the FedEx guys have tablet PCs now?

His presentation would make futurist Bruce Sterling blush — a string of quotes like "We are in an age where we do not see the present until it has already faded" over time-lapse video of traffic and sunsets. It felt like watching Deep Thoughts by Jack Handy.

Right, next up is Windows Live and Cyworld.

At the Web 2.0 Summit, host John Battelle is moderating a debate between Internet god Vint Cerf (pictured; he invented the main protocol used on the Internet) and Cisco exec and former FCC adviser Bob Pepper over Net Neutrality. Battelle has introduced the debate by explaining how hard it was to find anyone who's against net neutrality.

9:45: Bob Pepper starts. Not to make fun of two older guys, but this looks like a really calm fight between Gandalf and Saruman. Pepper says, "We have this dichotomous false choice: tyranny vs. chaos." Says the government isn't the best entity to help.

9:48: Pepper talks about a broadband consortium that listed rights of Internet users.

"Networks are managed. It's not black-or-white." In other words, the Internet as a network shouldn't be fully regulated or fully chaotic, but managed.

9:51: Vint Cerf: "Let me remind everyone that the Internet's success has been partly because of its architecture." Incidentally, Cerf looks exactly like the Matrix Architect.

Cerf: If there was real choice in broadband, then we wouldn't need regulation. Dial-up was easy to change providers; you just changed the number your computer dialed. Cable and DSL are tougher, someone has to hook you up.

Cerf explains that customers want broadband providers to take advantage of their control over the physical layer of the Internet only to affect services provided by them — if your broadband provider handles your e-mail, you may want them to virus-scan it. You don't want them to touch your webmail and "reach into those packets." Neutrality legislation would extend this principle to outlaw broadband providers throttling speed for content providers.

9:58: Cerf: Three elements of neutrality protection: Competitive action, consumer action, and one I didn't catch.

10:03: Pepper: The best solution is a strong case-by-case approach. One of our best bragging points is that our country doesn't regulate Internet providers like phone companies. We'd lose that by legislating net neutrality, by telling providers how to handle traffic.

Cerf: "I don't think regulation will lead to price control."
Pepper: "Because you've never been a regulator."
Cerf bristles. "I have to disagree...in my current role at ICANN...I am a regulator."

10:06: Pepper uses example of "turbo-zones": video-on-demand service. Lower-bandwidth subscribers could get boosted bandwidth for a few hours, and the content provider paid BellSouth for that extra bandwidth. "It's a double market." In other words, there are cooperative services that would be banned under net neutrality.

Cerf looks uncomfortable, a touch disdainful, but appreciates Pepper's point.

10:12: Cerf: "What it boils down to is focus on a constructive effort." Everyone wants Web 2.0 companies to pursue their goals unimpeded.

That's the end, stay tuned for the next talk.

Did you notice that the people who invented Web 2.0 were having a meeting in their office today — not attending Web 2.0?

Yeah, it is a little suit-heavy over there. We'll have live updates from the summit for the rest of the day.

• A tricked-out World of Warcraft screen looks like a cockpit — it's an amazingly sophisticated interface requiring multitasking and information translation skills.
• It's social — Joi is not only part of a clan for traditional monster-killing, but also several social clubs that include characters from the warring Horde and Alliance clans.
• The social aspects of WoW don't negate the immersive property of the game, despite some theorists' objections.
• South Park. Everyone loves South Park.

After Hours Lounge & Progressive Suite Party (hosted by Yahoo!)

Date: Tuesday, November 07
Time: 9:30pm - 11:00pm
Location: Sunset Court and adjoining suites

Didn't have a chance to bump into you-know-who? No worries, the After Hours Lounge & Progressive Suite Party offers a prime opportunity to network with other attendees, speakers, and press. Yahoo! serves up desserts and after-dinner cordials, while you check out the coolest offerings from the hottest Web 2.0 companies.

Looks like this bash has sucked up all of tonight's party energy. Do you know of another good party in the Bay Area? E-mail tips@valleywag.com.

4:21: O'Reilly (owner of O'Reilly Media) looks good on the overflow screen; he lost the creepy Dov Charney look of a few months ago and now looks like a clever but distinguished gentleman. Host (and Federated Media founder) John Battelle looking like the good guy in a soap opera as always.

Schmidt should be on soon, but they still haven't turned on the sound. More updates to follow.

4:27: Got M&M's from the candy shelf. Just thought you'd want to know that. Audio's on in the overflow, the press room is still roomy (feels like the Cylon cinema scenes), HERE'S ERIC SCHMIDT!

4:29: Battelle interviewing Schmidt. Schmidt says Google wanted to be a part of video, now that it's a "fundamental part of the Internet." "The most likely scenario is that we're going to keep YouTube a separate property." "It's clear that there's a viral component...the underlying draw to see what other people are doing...is a whole new paradigm."

4:30: Battelle: Was a huge part of the purchase price actually set aside for potential lawsuits, as many said after the deal (especially after a rumor posted by billionaire blogger Mark Cuban)? Schmidt says no.

4:33: How does Google deal with paranoid YouTube users trying to "take down the man" that took over YouTube? Schmidt: "As long as we're respecting the rights of end users — which we care a lot about — then we should be fine." Says most historical big businesses neglected users, and that's what Google tries to do differently.

4:35: Battelle mentions Google rejecting the FBI request for a week's worth of user queries. Audience applauds at the mention. Schmidt again points to end users — who would want their info shared?

By the way, this overflow room is lit by Google candles. No joke. They're vanilla scented. Do you think Schmidt uses these with his wife girlfriend?

4:39: Schmidt told Battelle backstage, says Battelle, that he didn't think O'Reilly's definition of Web 2.0 was broad enough. Not sure what's missing out of this definition — flying kittens? Magical worlds? Two girls for every guy?

4:43: Talking about networked computing through web-based apps, Schmidt gets a bit testy: "We don't call it an office suite. It's not an office suite." In other words: "We're NOT competing with Microsoft, we're NOT competing with Microsoft..."

4:44: "The focus that they [Microsoft] have is not the focus that we have." Battelle keeps pushing Schmidt like a Hardball anchor pushing Gore to say he'll run again.

4:48: Schmidt repeats his usual press line about all of Google's recent partnerships: They make them because Google was considered bad at partnerships. (In other words, they're practice for the real deals.)

Schmidt says Internet ads will remain the majority of Google's ad market, but notes that they've moved into radio ads and are now selling newspaper ads, all in the form of a bid-based marketplace.

4:53: Audience member: "Do you think it's possible to build another YouTube, playing by the rules of copyright?" Schmidt sees a presumption there — that YouTube didn't play by the rules — and disagrees with it. But if someone created something better, he says, yes, it could dominate over YouTube.

Battelle: "You run the company as a triumvirate. Who wins when you get into an argument with a founder?"
Schmidt: "They always win...I'm the one with the experience who's late. Left to their own devices they'd be early and right, but too early."

Schmidt's offstage, time for entrepreneur Joi Ito, unless they skip forward to Barry Diller since they're 15 minutes behind schedule.

• The speakers: Heavyweights like Google CEO Eric Schmidt, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, and venture capitalist Ram Shiram. They're here to prove their relevance to those enamored with Web 2.0. They also attracted the lesser-known speakers — going onstage with Bezos is like opening a concert for Death Cab.
• The attendees: Three types: starfuckers, schmoozers, and cynics. The starfuckers will take notes on Schmidt's talk. The schmoozers will call the home office on Wednesday for a refill of business cards. The cynics will open an IRC chatroom (a "backchannel") to mock the presenters.
• The venue: San Francisco's Palace Hotel. Posh, and conveniently located across the street from the House of Shields, a classic bar owned by local videoblogger Schlomo Rabinowitz and popular with the cynics.
• The local Starbucks: Line out the door all week. Suck it up and drink the hotel's coffee.
• The talks: Expect the bold names to spout vapid but quotable lines about community and the future. Expect the filler presenters to explain their products — a careful ritual, as the presenter must not admit that no one knows what his or her product — Ning, for example — does.
• The name: O'Reilly is officially renaming this from "conference" to "summit," to distinguish it from O'Reilly's "expo" coming up next spring. +5 pretension bonus.

• Overheard Podtech founder John Furrier (pictured) saying a few things at the Vloggies, an award show organized by his company: For example, "Vloggercon was too nerdy." That's a little less respect than he paid this summer's videoblogger conference when he went on stage. But I can't recall which vlogger he called "a hottie" at the afterparty. [Photo by JD Lasica]
• Today's Pictures in Slate: Cubicle drones in India's Silicon Valley. [
• Play buzzword bingo at this week's Web 2.0 conference with this card. After the conference, send completed cards to tips@valleywag.com to enter Valleywag's hall of fame. [Duck9]
• Who got the $131 million stock "gift" that Google co-founder Larry Page registered with the SEC? Maybe Larry himself. [Mercury News]
• Best headline in tech news this week: "Silicone cleavage bounces back." [Wired News]
• Techie legend #1: the data server used as a sawhorse. [Daily WTF]
• Techie legend #2: "Just remember, every time a Gaim user sends someone a file by dragging it into a conversation window, it's because I lost my wallet." [Duncan Mac-Vicar]

Ooh, kinky. "Submit. Bow to your master. Be a 'bottom.'"

FREE EXTRA PUNCHLINE: Yahoo's great at not dominating the Internet. Just ask the shareholders.

Web 2.0 Conference [O'Reilly Media]