Web 2.0 Watch

Web 2.0 Expo Buzz – Part 3, Companies to Watch

After leaving a conference my adrenalin is always very high. I’ve taken in so many new ideas in a short period of time that I feel like I’m suffering from information sickness (coined by Don DeLillo in “White Noise”). And yet I am not anxious to see it soon part. I’m eager to incorporate all the data and make sense of it as fast as I can. 

So was the case this past week in San Francisco as a fairly broad community gathered for Web 2.0 Expo. Here’s how I’m making sense of it all in 3 parts.

Part 3 – Companies that are doing interesting things. 

In keeping with the purpose for starting this blog, here are some Web 2.0 companies to watch (I have no affiliation with any of these companies). 

• Sprout (www.sproutbuilder.com) does for Flash what Front Page did for HTML, only better. It brings Flash development to the masses. 

• Beeweeb (http://www.beeweeb.com/mwt/) is a Rome-based engineering and design company that builds mobile applications for large mobile carriers. I’d say they are akin to Ideo but with a very heavy coding pedigree. I shared a lunch table with their president and was amazed with the kinds of things they have already built for mobile phones: mapping, video and music players. 

• Blist (www.blist.com) promised to bring databases to the masses. Their UI is very slick. 

• LiveMesh (www.mesh.com/web20) from Microsoft connects all of your devices (not mobile yet) together so you can easily get at our files. Many people have tried to solve this problem such as WebOS and Groove which is now part of Microsoft. LiveMesh is clearly leveraging features from it. They have not yet made it possible to run applications from any of the devices – that would be a killer feature. 

• BigString (www.bigstring.com) offers self-destructing email, instant messaging and chat rooms. From what I can tell, they do this by converting text to an image which can then be deleted off the server. 

• SpringNote (http://springnote.com/en) comes from Korea. If it was my call I’d position this product to go after the technical documentation market. Take a look and you’ll see why.

Web 2.0 Expo Buzz – Part 2, Ideas

After leaving a conference my adrenalin is always very high. I’ve taken in so many new ideas in a short period of time that I feel like I’m suffering from information sickness (coined by Don DeLillo in “White Noise”). And yet I am not anxious to see it soon part. I’m eager to incorporate all the data and make sense of it as fast as I can.

So was the case this past week in San Francisco as a fairly broad community gathered for Web 2.0 Expo. Here’s how I’m making sense of it all in 3 parts.

Part 2 – Ideas: here are some memes that were spreading around the conference. 

• OpenID protocol eliminates the need to create a new account on every new site or service you signup for. There are many companies subscribing to this idea including AOL, Yahoo, WordPress, Technocrati, Verisign, France Telecom and the pioneer MyOpenId. Every time you use your OpenId to access a site accepting this protocol, the accepting site redirects you to a verification page. For example if I try to login using “openid.aol.com/Anshu”to Springnote.com, Springnote.com will send a verification request to AOL to confirm that I am really the one accessing the site. Read more at: http://janrain.com/openid/ .

•  Open Social API from Google promises to allow any Web site using it to let apps work on their Web site. In other words the benefit for developers is create your app/widget once and run it across all participating social network platforms. It’s very early (released late last year with fanfare and much commentary) but spreading so rapidly that it’s worth keeping up wiht. See this presentation on implementation by Hi5: http://en.oreilly.com/webexsf2008/public/asset/attachment/2291

•  Twitter is being used in some very interesting ways. One moderator asked the audience to twitter (or is it “tweet”?) him questions for the panel or comments and many did which he then put up on the giant presentation screens. Two other presenters spoke about how Twitter is helping consumers (Comcast, T-mobile) organize and get better customer service. Read more: http://getsatisfaction.com/tmobile/topics/t_mobile_shuts_down_twitter_service_for_good

Web 2.0 Expo Buzz – Part 1, Presentations

After leaving a conference my adrenalin is always very high. I’ve taken in so many new ideas in a short period of time that I feel like I’m suffering from information sickness (coined by Don DeLillo in “White Noise”). And yet I am not anxious to see it soon part. I’m eager to incorporate all the data and make sense of it as fast as I can.

So was the case this past week in San Francisco as a fairly broad community gathered for Web 2.0 Expo.
Here’s how I’m making sense of it all in 3 parts.

 

Part 1 – Presentations worth sitting through.

•  10 years ago page load time was all important. Smart marketers, page designers and HTML coders were obsessed with finding ways to reduce bloat on pages. Well, a decade later the focus is back. Steve Souders (http://www.stevesouders.com) gave a very clear presentation on ways to reduce page load time. You’ll be surprised, as I was, to learn that most of the wait (avg. 70%+ on top 10 sites) happens on the front-end, i.e., during the browser loading elements, not on the backend. He suggested many techniques to have JS loading not prevent other objects from loading in parallel (a big culprit). He has made available 2 tools on his site: YSlow and Cuzillion.

•  After a several years of the paid search alphabet soup (PPC, PPA, SEM) taking top spot in headlines thanks to Google’s intoxicating effects on the media, the ugly cousin, natural or organic search is back. Why ugly? Here’s 4 reasons: 1) it involves more moving parts than just bidding to have your ads listed; 2) it’s a process that never ends; 3) it takes smart marketer who understand their market working with smart Webmasters who understand how search indexing agents read pages; and 4) you can’t outsource it to an agency (to understand why see 1-3). There were multiple presenters talking about search engine optimizing; of particular note is the presentation given by Stephan Spencer (http://www.stephanspencer.com).

 
BTW, I believe most presentations will be made available as a public service at: http://en.oreilly.com/webexsf2008/public/schedule/proceedings . If you don’t find it there, try emailing the presenters directly.