Oct 19, 2007 07:26 PM
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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.
The bowl was slightly chaotic, the audio was lousy, and I'm not sure the buzzer system was working properly. The questions were kind of all over the place. One asked about when Pets.com ceased operations (November 6, 2000). Another asked about the technology which runs the iTunes music store (CDDB or Gracenote, which is really just the music-identification system for ripping CDs; Apple's WebObjects software really runs it). One controversial question: How much did Facebook turn down from Yahoo? John Battelle had the answer as $1 billion. Yahoo executive Garlinghouse debated the veracity of that figure. "You weren't in the room!" bellowed Ron Conway, when Battelle relied on his answer.
The most entertaining piece was how enthusiastically Ron Conway would shout "Bullshit!" if he thought a question or answer was incorrect and how insistent he was that the organizers should provide "Chardonnay next year!" He wasn't alone in that regards. After the show, Jay Adelson made the observation that the participants were far too sober.
About fifteen minutes into the bowl, in walked Google cofounder Sergey Brin, along with Google exec Megan Smith and other guests he had been seen with at dinner earlier that evening. Brin declined to say which team he was cheering for.
While I was standing next to Brin, Powerset CEO Barney Pell came up and reintroduced himself to the Googlionaire — they apparently met a while back. When Pell started to tell Brin how his hyped semantic search startup is now in a beta testing phase, I decided to cause a stir, asking Pell "Didn't the New York Times call you guys a 'Google killer'?" Pell's eyes went wide, and he said something about how reporters will write anything. But all of a sudden, Brin seemed more interested in Pell's spiel. (For the record, I was wrong. Last winter's article on Powerset didn't use that phrase, though other publications have.)
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