Valleywag
web 2.0 summit
Posts Tagged “
Web 2.0 Summit
”
geeks gone wild
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)
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)
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 »
11:37 AM on Mon Oct 22 2007
By Owen Thomas
9,609 views,
21 comments
Latest by Brian Lam: @egybs: Yeah, but with no new facts to add, owen had to spin it somehow. Truth is, Owen is saying the same thing you've just said. Anyone who tracked the story with half a brain should have come to the more »
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)
nerdspotting
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.
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.
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.)
web 2.0 summit
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.
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.
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 »
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.
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 »
4:26 PM on Fri Oct 19 2007
By Megan McCarthy
1,691 views,
4 comments
Latest by Owen Thomas: @Megan McCarthy: And really, you should have searched on "Google killa" instead. more »
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 »
web 2.0 summit
Check out more photos in our gallery:
More »
Scenes from a conference
WEB 2.0 SUMMIT — Highlights and photos from yesterday's conference program:- Microsoft ad guy Brian McAndrews is singled out
- Conference organizer John Battelle's on-the-sly dealmaking
- The AP screws up a story about Microsoft's Steve Ballmer
Check out more photos in our gallery:
More »
"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.
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)
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.
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.
web 2.0 summit
