This week the ReadWriteWeb team was in force at the Web 2.0 Summit, an annual event that covers the state of the Web industry. This year’s theme was ‘Web meets world’. ReadWriteWeb had access to video coverage of the event, via TechWeb (one of the producers of the event along with O’Reilly Media). We’ve got a widget below that has links to all of the main sessions, with a few more probably to come over the next day or so. In this week’s Weekly Wrapup, our regular newsletter, we provide a summary of our posts and video.
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Oh and There Was the U.S. Election…
Of course the Web 2.0 Summit wasn’t the only thing of interest to happen this week. Barack Obama was elected to be the next President of the United States. Check out our slideshow of the election as seen on the Web.
Also much has been said about the masterful use of social media by the Obama campaign. The people working for the President-Elect were by far the more active – and the more savvy – of the two US Presidential candidates in terms of understanding and effectively employing social media as a way of engaging and motivating voters. Regardless of your political leanings, the numbers speak for themselves.
But was it just a means to an end? Or is this personal engagement – embracing social media as a new way of communicating with the masses – something we should expect Obama to use throughout his presidency? Check out our post Obama’s Social Media Advantage, Act II for more details.
Lance Armstrong on Politics, Ego, and Twitter
Cancer survivor, seven-time Tour de France champion – with the potential for more now that he’s announced he’s coming out of retirement – and Internet entrepreneur Lance Armstrong took to the stage with John Battelle at TechWeb/O’Reilly’s Web 2.0 Summit on Wednesday. The topics ranged from Barack Obama and his new administration to Twitter to the power of ego, mind, and body.
A Word from Our Sponsors
We’d like to thank ReadWriteWeb’s sponsors, without whom we couldn’t bring you all these stories every week!
- WildApricot is Membership Management Software.
- Crowd Science gives you detailed visitor demographics.
- Glue enables you to connect with friends while browsing.
- Strands provides real-time recommendations of products.
- Direct Media Exchange is a solution for managing ad networks.
- Rackspace provides dedicated server hosting.
- SmartyPig is Simple. Smart. Savings.
- Quintura is a visual-based search engine.
- Eurekster is a custom social search portal.
- MediaTemple provides hosting for RWW.
- SixApart provides our publishing software MT4.
Cloud Computing Panel
An all-star panel took a closer look at the implications of the current shift towards cloud computing and discussed the possible business models around it. The panel featured Adobe’s CTO Kevin Lynch, Salesfore.com’s CEO Marc Benioff, Google’s Dave Girouard, and VMware’s CEO Paul Maritz. It was moderated by Tim O’Reilly.
Has Current Solved the User Generated Advertising Mystery?
At the Web 2.0 Summit this week Current.tv co-founder Joel Hyatt told the audience that his video site and TV channel has landed multiple multi-million dollar advertising deals with giant companies, based on non-professional commercials created by fans. That’s something that a whole lot of companies have been trying to do, unsuccessfully, for years.
Hyatt was joined on stage by Twitter co-founder Evan Williams, who once again repeated the “wait and see” answer when asked about his monetization strategy. Side-by-side with Current’s success, Twitter’s continued stalling seemed more unsatisfying than ever – but success in general felt more possible when we saw what Current has done.
Yahoo’s Jerry Yang at Web 2.0 Summit
Yahoo is obviously going through a rather tough period in its history right now. John Battelle interviewed Yahoo’s CEO Jerry Yang and asked him about Microsoft’s takeover bid, Google’s decision to pull out of its advertising deal with Yahoo, and the persistent rumors of a possible acquisition of AOL by Yahoo. While Yang acknowledged Yahoo’s current problems and stated that he would still consider selling the company to Microsoft, his overall outlook for the company was quite upbeat.
Mary Meeker at Web 2.0 Summit: There is Hope
One of our favorite parts of the annual Web 2.0 Summit is Mary Meeker’s rapid fire data deluge about the Internet economy. You can view her PDF slides here. She started off by discussing the recession, which she said was “a long time coming” – but wondered “how long will it last?”. Meeker noted that advertising and technology spending is closely tied to GDP growth. From 2000 to 2002, USA spending fell 27%. Unfortunately, Meeker thinks that the current pattern looks a bit like early 2001. In 2000-2003 tech spending was flat or negative, however Meeker’s presentation included some rays of hope for entrepreneurs.
For a related Summit video, check out this discussion with Kleiner Perkins VC John Doerr:
That’s a wrap for another week! Enjoy your weekend everyone.
