• superficial

    Web 2.0 Summit video panelists make tech reporter's worst-dressed list

    An online-video panel at Web 2.0 Summit proved so free of insight that reporter Scott Raynovich took a turn playing Mr. Blackwell instead, savaging all of the panelists' outfits. Only moderator Xeni Jardin got off easy, winning praise for her "peach-colored suit." We would have dinged her for that: Jardin always looks best in intergalactic silver. [Contentinople]
    11/06/08
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  • web 2.0 summit

    Web 2.0 Summit returns to Web 1.9 roots

    Can you believe that last week's Web 2.0 Summit was the fourth such conference? Its humble beginnings were barely in evidence, as venture capitalists, corporate biz-dev types, and M&A scouts seemed to outnumber the startup founders they were trying to hunt down. Friday afternoon was a return to the old school, however, with Flickr cofounder Stewart Butterfield and LiveJournal founder Brad Fitzpatrick among the presenters. Sadly, John Doerr, the expert inflater of the first dotcom bubble, did not cry. Check the photo gallery for the conference's final, terrifying orgy of schmoozing. Some participants were so exhausted that, by the closing cocktail party, they were making deals with their eyes closed. More »
    10/24/07
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    Comment by ChiefCynic: I hope she uses her maiden name, or is it really Michelle Battelle? Do tell. Be well. And go to... more » | Other threads

  • geeks gone wild

    A strip club brings data nerds to the yard

    The Web 2.0 Summit attracted the Valley's elite to the swanky Palace Hotel, but Oracle's OpenWorld conference, scheduled for November 11-15 at the Moscone Center, draws the far nerdier enterprise IT set. How do database dorks spend an evening in seedy San Francisco after a long day of conference sessions? A Market Street strip club knows. They're not interested in wining and dining networkers in hopes of attracting VC millions. No, they go straight to the city's many strip clubs to blow off steam accumulated from many hours in back office server rooms. The Market Street Cinema posted the above signage upon the conclusion of the Web 2.0 Summit anticipating a stampede of sex-starved database administrators. (Photo by ChannelWeb Network)
    10/22/07
    1,248
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  • wireless

    Confirmed! There is no Googlephone

    I've been saying it for ages: There is no Googlephone. Last week, at the Web 2.0 Summit conference, I finally got confirmation that Google's not getting into the cell-phone business. How? I overheard a rep from Foxconn, the Taiwanese electronics manufacturer, chatting up a vice president at Google. Now, I know this particular executive is utterly guileless; she wouldn't lie. And when the Foxconn rep tried to pitch her on getting a contract to make the Googlephone, she replied, flat-out, "We're not making a Googlephone." More »
    Feature Feature
    10/22/07
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  • rumormonger

    Google to tell you WhatsOpen?

    Is Google looking to acquire WhatsOpen.com? A tipster tells us she overheard a young executive and his VC patron discussing the "secret local search engine" with Google cofounder Sergey Brin at the Web 2.0 Summit last week. Our tipster writes, "Sergey said the 'plans' looked good and not to say anything further about it in public." Right! Let's go with that. Is Google about to buy yet another unproven startup? And what about its technology has Brin so excited? Share what you know. (Photo by decadentyou)
    10/22/07
    4,056
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    Comment by John123456: They said in January that they will release withing 60 day, has anybody seen anything? more » | Other threads

  • nerdspotting

    Ron Jeremy at Web 2.0

    What was porn star Ron Jeremy, pictured above, doing at the Palace Hotel for the last night of Web 2.0 Summit? Or, more importantly, who was he doing? Somehow we doubt he was there for the panels, since his career as a tech blogger seems stillborn. He hasn't posted a new "Techsmart with Ron Jeremy" video on his Heavy.com channel since May. No wonder the porn pioneer had nothing better to do than play the John Doerr drinking game. All we know is that he did indulge us when we asked for a picture with some Web 2.0 Summit paraphernalia. Have any dirt on his presence? Please share.
    10/22/07
    1,685
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  • newspapers

    Wealthy suits snub FeedBurner

    "No one reads newspapers anymore" was a line I heard over and over at this week's Web 2.0 Summit. "Did you see that one session where that one guy asked people to raise their hands?" Talk about a skewed data set. Buried in Valleywag's gloating over a tiny dip in print ad revenues at The Wall Street Journal was a more telling stat: The paper's print readership went up 8 percent in the past year after its publishers cut subscription rates. Average income for the Journal's two million-plus daily readers is around $200,000 a year, their average net worth over $2 million. Sixty percent are classified as "top management." If the wantrepreneurs packing Web 2.0 don't read the Journal, here's another way to look at it: Maybe they should start. (DISCLAIMER: I freelance for the WSJ. It always makes me laugh when Om Malik tells friends I don't have a real job.)
    10/20/07
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    Comment by Bricked: The young rebels practicing groupthink? That's unpossible! more » | Other threads

  • web 2.0 summit

    John Battelle has left the building

    WEB 2.0 SUMMIT — At this conference's closing cocktail party, organizer John Battelle noted that Valleywag had stopped using our favorite photo of the George Hamilton-lookalike online-advertising magnate. So sorry, John! Consider this your fond farewell to all the moneybags who paid $3,595 to mix with a handful of geeks and hacks. "Now I'm going to get blotto," said Battelle. In case you want to join him, check out this weekend's Valleywag Calendar.
    10/20/07
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  • john doerr

    Google board member hates party animals

    WEB 2.0 SUMMIT — Kleiner Perkins partner John Doerr is on stage, getting interviewed by conference organizer John Battelle. His explanation for why he invested in Google? Larry and Sergey were "really nerdy" and had no social lives. There's something to that. Does that mean Doerr will start selling his still-extensive Google holdings, now that Sergey seems to be comfortable taking the night off? We can only imagine what he thinks about anyone prone to playing the John Doerr drinking game. More »
    10/19/07
    1,476
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  • web 2.0 to english

    The "semantic graph" reads Wikipedia

    WEB 2.0 SUMMIT — Twine, Powerset, and Freebase are all doing dense demonstrations about the "semantic Web" — basically, improved search. I'd swear I've heard all three startups say that their systems analyze Wikipedia to understand connections between terms, a phenomenon one calls the "semantic graph." The short version? These startups read Wikipedia so you don't have to.
    10/19/07
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  • party report

    Sergey watches Web Bowl peanut-butter fight

    WEB 2.0 SUMMIT — Late last night, conference organizers assembled the "sharpest wits, biggest names and brightest lights of the Web community" for its first-ever Web Bowl, a nerdy game-show inspired trivia contest. The contestants were divided into two teams, with Digg CEO Jay Adelson, AOL founder Steve Case, angel investor Ron Conway, Yahoo "peanut butter memo" author Brad Garlinghouse, and Morgan Stanley's Mary Meeker on the "Ask Kickers" team. On the "Bubbles!" side was Microsoft techie Gary Flake, About.com founder Scott Kurnit, Ask.com CEO Jim Lanzone, AOLer Ted Leonsis, and New York Times scribe John Markoff. SpikeSource CEO Kim Polese was a lifeline for both teams. John Battelle hosted while Tim O'Reilly judged the answers. Lots of names up on stage. But the real star? Hidden in the audience. More »
    Feature Feature
    10/19/07
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  • geeks gone wild

    The John Doerr drinking game

    WEB 2.0 SUMMIT — Kleiner Perkins venture capitalist John Doerr is the last scheduled speaker of the Web 2.0 Summit. He starts in 45 minutes. 5:05 on a Friday? Who stuck him with that slot? Anyway, it's just in time for happy hour, we say. Make his lecture fun by printing out this page and playing along with our John Doerr drinking game. Before you head into the hall and take your seat, fill your flask and bring a box of Kleenex. That and our cheat sheet will help you power through the end of the conference. More »
    10/19/07
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  • web 2.0 summit

    Scenes from a conference

    WEB 2.0 SUMMIT — Highlights and photos from yesterday's conference program: More »
    10/19/07
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  • yahoo

    "It's out there." — A Web 2.0 Summit participant on a panel of ordinary baby-boomer Web users, on Yahoo's lack of a brand identity. Her main impression of it? "They just eliminated their photo storage." Guess Flickr hasn't made much of an impression with middle America.
    10/19/07
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  • web 2.0 to english

    Social networking for dummies

    WEB 2.0 SUMMIT — Brad Fitzpatrick and David Recordon, the nerdy duo working on programming standards for opening up social networks, are presenting a thoroughly less nerdy version of their usual presentation. I chatted with Fitzpatrick, now an engineer at Google, who said he realized he needed to dumb it down for the audience of people wealthy enough to afford the $3,595 ticket price at this conference. The simple metaphor they came up with to explain the problem of closed social networks? Instant messenger. "If Brad is on Yahoo and I'm on AOL, we still want to talk to each other," explains Recordon, who's now at Six Apart, Fitzpatrick's old company. The social graph? "Who my friends are," Recordon sums up. OAuth, the network-ID standard Recordon and Fitzpatrick are championing? "The valet key for the Web," says Fitzpatrick. I can just hear the rich guys in the audience thinking, "Great, kid. Go park my car already." (Photo by CottonCandy)
    10/19/07
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  • valleywag calendar

    Tonight, and this weekend, celebrate the end of the Web 2.0 Summit with a blackout.

    10/19/07
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  • online video

    Is YouTube a business?

    WEB 2.0 SUMMIT — Current.com CEO Joel Hyatt — yes, the guy from the lawyer ads — is rambling about "the magical elements of the Internet." He's bragging on, of course, his website-cum-cable channel's supposedly fantastic library of loser-generated content, and the me-too social-network features on its relaunched site. And then Hyatt lays this zinger on the audience: "YouTube isn't a business." Joost CEO Mike Volpi, also on stage, immediately disagrees, pointing to YouTube's "$20 CPMs" — the high rates the Google-owned site is able to charge for video advertising. Hyatt has no response to that. One wonders what rates his video site is able to charge. And what Current.com partner Al Gore, a senior advisor to Google, thinks of his YouTube jab.
    10/19/07
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    Comment by gildorn: @sample032: The guy might know a thing or two about the politics of the Internet. One could imagine this might... more » | Other threads

  • quincy smith

    CBS Web chief bored when not buying startups

    WEB 2.0 SUMMIT — In an interview with former Business 2.0 editor Josh Quittner, Quincy Smith, the frenetically dealmaking CBS Web chief, looks so bored. So bored. As Quittner rambles on with a long, involved tale about his mancrush on awesomely geeky GigaOm blogger Om Malik, Smith is scanning the audience and jotting down notes, as if he's plotting, mid-panel, which startups he's going to buy at the show.
    10/19/07
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    Comment by GorgeousGeorge: Quincy Smith is a bright guy with a lot of ideas that are 100% on-point and correct. Unfortunately, he needs... more » | Other threads

  • web 2.0 summit

    AT&T just wants to be loved — but it hasn't really changed

    WEB 2.0 SUMMIT — "You're sort of unflappable, aren't you?" says conference organizer John Battelle. He's repeatedly needling AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson about Google, but Stephenson's not rising to the bait. That is, I believe, part of a calculated charm campaign by the monstrously large telecom. "We all want this Internet thing to flourish," he says. Stephenson plays dumb when Battelle asks about "net neutrality," and later, he actually gets applause from the skeptical crowd when he inveighs against government regulation. He means "regulation not written by AT&T's lobbyists." Not a bad performance. But still a performance. More »
    10/19/07
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  • web 2.0 to english

    How soon can I Google my date's DNA?

    J. Craig Venter is the scientist whose startup beat the government-funded Human Genome Project to mapping a single person's entire DNA. Whose DNA? Duh, Venter's! On the last morning of the Web 2.0 Summit, Venter brought the audience up to date on the faster-than-Moore's-Law advances in reading and writing genes. More »
    10/19/07
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    Comment by elvenjewel: I think people read Scoble's blog for the same reasons they watched "Hey, Paula!" -- sheer entertainment value. more » | Other threads

  • microsoft

    Ballmer outlines plan to consume entities small and large

    Ever catch a Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer speech in person? He's the kind of speaker to make you wish you sat at home watching the webcast. It's not just the spittle. It's the feeling he might just reach out and consume you. Turns out, he might. Yesterday, he told the Web 2.0 crowd Microsoft plans to acquire 20 companies a year for the next 5 years. He said Microsoft is willing to spend $50 million to $1 billion on each company to do it. Take note, startup entrepreneurs, unless you're ready to move to Redmond and get assimilated, avoid the front row. You'll stay drier that way, too. (Photo by Aaron Wagner)
    10/19/07
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  • quotable

    "This is like a Southwest flight!" —A Web 2.0 attendee on the cramped seating arrangements at the conference. [Portfolio]
    10/19/07
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  • lazy valleywag

    John Battelle's million-dollar ad deal

    WEB 2.0 SUMMIT — At a panel discussion about making money in online video, Federated Media VP of sales Chas Edwards said he'd pulled checks "from a million dollars down to $10,000" for video ads on Federated's network, which includes the popular shows Diggnation and Ask a Ninja. The burning question: Who paid a million bucks to Federated, run by Web 2.0 conference co-chief John Battelle, and for what? We were unable to tackle any of Federated's execs at the jam-packed conference Wednesday. Somebody get Edwards or jbat to spill the details, and send it to us. Otherwise we'll wonder if Edwards wasn't actually referring to Microsoft's non-video advertorial deal for which Federated bloggers wrote ad copy. Why? Because Edwards also said the biggest dollars come from selling "host endorsements" rather than separate advertiser-produced spots.
    10/19/07
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    Comment by ScalaWag: Plus 'pulled checks' could mean some bulk sale into the future, not any particular ad campaign. Way to inflate revenues... more » | Other threads

  • brian mcandrews

    Microsoft ad-sales chief singled out

    WEB 2.0 SUMMIT — Is Brian McAndrews the odd man out in the online-ad industry? In a four-person panel, Microsoft's new advertising chief was sitting off by himself, while executives from Yahoo, AOL, and Openads shared a couch. "You won't have a dominant player," says McAndrews of consolidation in the industry — consolidation that he helped along by selling his company, aQuantive, to Microsoft for $6 billion. aQuantive, like Microsoft, was based in the Seattle area, far from the office parks of Silicon Valley and the skyscrapers of Madison Avenue.
    10/18/07
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  • web 2.0 summit

    Yahoo's sales guy is nice, but his job is not

    WEB 2.0 SUMMIT — Yahoo ad-sales executive Dave Karnstedt is very nice, we hear. If by "nice" you mean "ineffective" and "over his head," his sniping critics say. We'll stick with just "nice," though, judging from his demeanor at this conference's online-advertising panel. He's so nice, in fact, that his voice keeps cracking during the panel as he talks about how Yahoo's going to grow traffic on websites it owns. (Funny, I thought traffic was dropping.) Yahoo has, it's true, been able to squeeze more revenue out of existing sites. But without substantial growth in its traffic, it's not clear how Karnstedt is going to make his numbers look, well, "nice."
    10/18/07
    1,143
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  • web 2.0 summit

    John Battelle wants to hike his rates

    WEB 2.0 SUMMIT — Is preternaturally tan conference organizer John Battelle, who runs online-ad network Federated Media, here to interview top industry executives — or cut some deals of his own? "There's this idea that you can sprinkle some pixie dust on all this inventory and make more money," he observes, speaking of the mass of Web ads sold at bargain-basement rates. AOL's Curt Viebranz says that ads sold on Tacoda — the startup he just sold to AOL for a reported $275 million — sell at a $4 cost per thousand viewers. When he hears that figure, Battelle raises his eyebrows and asked Viebranz to talk to him after the panel.
    10/18/07
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    Comment by eze: owen, could you please link the phrase "preternaturally tan," above, to this earlier valleywag piece? [valleywag.com] maybe i'm a george hamilton fan. more » | Other threads

  • great moments in journalism

    AP commits first mainstream media screwup at Web 2.0

    An informant reports that high-energy Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer's early morning razzle-dazzle outpaced one reporter:
    They [the Associated Press] ran the story on Ballmer this morning, got the facts all turned around. Did you hear his talk? He used an the analogy of MS Search being a 3 yo basically playing basketball with the big kids, the 12 year olds. Great analogy, really worked for him and got big laughs. Rachel Konrad printed it the other way around and ran a photo that made Ballmer look like a cackling demon. OUCH. MS people were fried and demanded a "reprint". Worst part was she demanded video to prove her wrong.
    Also missed by the AP's now-corrected report: Ballmer's Starbucks beverage was a grande iced tea, the last third of which seemed to have gone warm in his sizeable right hand. He uses the long green Starbucks straw, not the short black one. Details, people, details! (AP Photo/Paul Sakuma)
    10/18/07
    1,389
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    Comment by bbucy: Another example of why people are dumb to believe the quality of journalism is somehow defined by the medium in... more » | Other threads

  • web 2.0 summit

    Scenes from a conference

    At last, I understand the vision of synergy between News Corp. and Dow Jones. It's all about Kara Swisher, basically. The abrasive, pint-sized reporter-turned blogger spent dinner at Web 2.0 Summit locked in conversation with gregarious, pint-sized megamogul Rupert Murdoch, News Corp.'s CEO, and, come December, Swisher's boss. Swisher, of course, has been blogging hot and heavy on AllThingsD about Facebook, MySpace's chief rival. She's just the starting point. News Corp. is so vast that next year, it could easily assign an army of Wall Street Journal reporters just to cover itself. Check out the photos for Swisher's encounter with Murdoch, and more. More »
    Feature Feature
    10/18/07
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  • valleywag calendar

    Who will be the Ken Jennings of Web 2.0?

    Study your trivia and get your answer buzzer ready, as there's a contest this evening at the Web 2.0 Summit. Nerdboys and geek girls, your life's in jeopardy, Web 2.0-style. More »
    10/18/07
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    Comment by mach1andy: Lots of stuff going on in NYC this week! I'm here for this and Sun's Startup Camp @ Startupcamp.org more » | Other threads

  • online advertising

    Mark Zuckerberg confirms Facebook's online-ad ambitions, hinting in an interview with Web 2.0 Summit cochair John Battelle that the company is considering providing ads both for third-party applications on Facebook and, eventually, ads to run on other sites. [eWeek]
    10/18/07
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  • google

    Google sets date for tilting at healthcare windmill

    Google's Marissa Mayer told the Web 2.0 Summit audience in San Francisco that the company's Google Health initiative will launch in early 2008. She said she's been in daily 90-minute meetings with developers on the project since she took over for the now-departed (and rumored to be Facebook-bound) Adam Bosworth in August. Mayer said parts of the Health system will be free, but expect subscription-based services and applications, too. We remain skeptical. Google hasn't bothered to hire a full-time replacement for Bosworth, whose assignment to healthcare was likely a hint to head for the door in the first place. Mayer's smart to only spend 90 minutes a day on the project, since a full-time health gig is deadly for anyone in tech. (Photo by AP)
    10/18/07
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    Comment by meowmeow: No wonder it'll take until 2008 -- the developers lose 1.5hrs/day in useless meetings. more » | Other threads

  • web 2.0 summit

    Microsoft, eBay chiefs have nothing to say

    WEB 2.0 SUMMIT — Special correspondent Paul Boutin is reporting by text message, which is fitting, since apparently this morning's keynotes from Microsoft's Steve Ballmer and eBay's Meg Whitman can easily be condensed into a Twitter. Or less. Conference organizer Tim O'Reilly, in fact, has all the good lines. O'Reilly to Whitman: "You become what you disrupt." He means, Boutin texts, that eBay is now the old guard waiting to be Napstered. That's also evident in a following exchange, where O'Reilly points out that you can't Skype people by clicking from a Facebook page or using an email address. Whitman's only response is that it's easy to look up people in Skype's directory. Meg, it's time you had a chat with Mark.
    10/18/07
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  • quotable

    "If I wanted a $14 billion advertising business, I could get halfway there by buying Yahoo right now. But that's just me. " Federated Media head John Battelle to Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer at the Web 2.0 Summit.
    10/18/07
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  • quotable

    "YouTube on iPhones was down for three days. Nobody noticed." Phonecasting.com founder Michael Sharp at the Web 2.0 Summit, on why he's sticking to audio for now.
    10/18/07
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    Comment by 0x6772: That's because everybody who actually uses their iPhone has long since hidden the YouTube app (and the iTunes Mobile Store)... more » | Other threads

  • web 2.0 summit

    O'Reilly's web two blows

    For a bunch of geeks, the people running the Web 2.0 Summit, organized by geek-book publisher O'Reilly Media and tech-conferences specialist CMP, don't seem to be very good at pushing around the A/V cart. A conference attendee writes us to complain that every session he's been to has had a different technical issue. Video and audio were out of sync during Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg's presentation. Marissa Mayer's presentation on Google Health was broken too. Nokia's Anssi Vanjoki had to deal with video without sound. Adobe CEO Bruce Chizen, a broken microphone. Wealthy has-been Ted Leonsis, pushed out of AOL and now pushing a new venture, couldn't get a network for his demonstration. Our bitter tipster tells us, "WTF! and the wifi completely sucks." That's why smart people like my boss bring EVDO cards, chump. (Photo by pingnews.com)
    10/18/07
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  • rupert murdoch

    It's good to be king

    WEB 2.0 SUMMIT — I followed News Corp. mogul — if ever there was one — Rupert Murdoch around the Palace Hotel in San Francisco at last night's Web 2.0 Summit. The man is a babe magnet. Good to know my male pattern baldness won't be a problem with the ladies when I build my own media empire. More »
    10/18/07
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    Comment by dula: the only girl in these pics are Dani Dudeck and Kara Swisher...both employed by Rupert. I think he's more of... more » | Other threads

  • web 2.0 summit

    Techcrunch beats Murdoch at his own game

    I hate watching people suck up to TechCrunch editor Michael Arrington. But I enjoy watching Arrington, a law-trained entrepreneur before he began posting in 2005, learn the ropes of reporting as he goes. Last night, News Corp. media overlord Rupert Murdoch's publicist circulated an advance notice to reporters. It detailed Murdoch's planned onstage announcement that night with MySpace head Chris DeWolfe at the Web 2.0 conference. Arrington did what career newsmen do: He wrote the story ahead of time. He published it as soon as Murdoch and DeWolfe took the stage. Arrington's post falsely claimed the pair had "announced some of their plans during a Q&A with John Battelle" for about 15 minutes before it actually happened. Still, TechCrunch wins! And Arrington has once again accidentally exposed another behind-the-scenes game that delivers fake "breaking news" to trusting audiences. I'm sure journalists and bloggers will lecture TechCrunch today. They're really saying: Damn, that scoop should've been mine. (Photo: TechCrunch)
    10/18/07
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    Comment by Paul Boutin: @researchzilla: What did he do that I wouldn't? I wouldn't post that Murdoch and DeWolf "had announced" in the past... more » | Other threads

  • web 2.0 summit

    Google missing from Microsoft's antipiracy announcement

    Microsoft and several large media companies — Disney, CBS, NBC Universal, Fox and MySpace, Viacom and Dailymotion — will announce plans this morning to use technology "to eliminate copyright-infringing content uploaded by users to Web sites, and block any infringing material before it is publicly accessible," according to a Wall Street Journal report. The Journal says Google, which separately announced its own automated piracy detector yesterday, isn't part of the group.
    10/18/07
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  • web 2.0 summit

    The original definition of Web 2.0

    I found the October 2003 Microsoft Word file in which O'Reilly editor Dale Dougherty proposed a new series of "Web 2.0" conferences. The one surprise is that the idea was originally much more machine-oriented.
    The first wave of the web was closely tied to the browser. The second wave extends the applications built on the web server and it will enable a new generation of specialized clients and automated web applications. (Emphasis added)
    Four years later, as the saying goes: Web 2.0 is made of people.
    10/18/07
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  • web 2.0 summit

    The conference's first "After Hours Lounge" starts now, but I'm skipping it. Only in San Francisco does an afterparty close at 11.
    10/18/07
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    Comment by BEAVERTON_HUSTLA: Only in SF does a person blog instead of go to a party. LOL. PWNED! Wait, what... more » | Other threads

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