Web 2.0 + 1

I spent three days this past week at the Web 2.0 Conference in SF.  For the most part I felt like it was a waste of time (and $2500).  The time spent in the halls was great, seeing people I know and connecting with interesting people.  I didn't need the conference to figure out that Video is the new Black. The content of the Conference was mostly homogenized, pasteurized, and commercial. I guess it reflects a mainstreaming of the idea of Web 2.0 and a move to extract value from the mainstreaming by the conference organizers and the bigger Internet companies. I don't blame them.  I'd do the same.  I just need to look elsewhere for innovation.  Innovation doesn't happen in the mainstream.

I figured I'd hold this opinion to myself -- until I saw John Markoff's article in the NYT today.   He's reflecting the same conclusion and showcasing Semantic Web companies as the next vanguard of the Web  -- Web 3.0.  I'm ecstatic that he chose one of my companies, Radar Networks, as an illustration of where the Web is going.  I'm a little disappointed, though.  We don't plan to raise a Series B until early next year; so this visibility is a bit too early for us. Well, better too early than not at all.

(John, in case you read this, if you think Radar is interesting, take a look at Teqlo, too.  What Radar is to content, Teqlo is to applications. And Teqlo's going alpha next week.  The Recombinant Web is coming. Web 2.0 + 1 and that 1 is You.)

Comments

[IncrediBILL]

Hopefully these Semantic Web companies you're investing in get authorization from their future customer base as the onslaught of crawlers is causing more and more webmasters to block everything except the top search engines and I suspect the days of every new web crawler on the horizon trying to mine sites without permission is quickly coming to an end.

FWIW, I see Web 3.0 as the Democratic Web, where webmasters OPT-IN to new services that might mine their data as the days of the entitlement mentality where a startup can do whatever they want with anyone's content are drawing to an end. ;)

[Peter Rip]

Actually, this is a pretty interesting point. Crawling is quickly being obsoleted by RSS feeds, at least in commercial content. The world class web crawler may soon be an obsolete strategic advantage, replaced by the world class metadata store.

[IncrediBILL]

Yes, but many RSS feeds are partial feeds, not containing complete content so they'll never be able to make a complete search from that content.

Then there are the rogue RSS readers that attempt to automatically pull down the full post referenced from the feeds, which my software stops cold, and has been stopping on one of my sites (not the blog) for quite some time.

I think the problem you overlook is people want to get paid for their efforts, and the world class metadata store you speak of attempts to replace the authors site with their own site. This in turn bypasses the authors monetization efforts, which in turn results in less information on the RSS feed or the authors go offline when it becomes unprofitable.

I think there's a lot more to think about with the grand scheme for a Web 3.0 than meets the eye, which is someone needs to pay for the creation of the content that drives the system.

Otherwise, this whole scheme melts down and implodes like the dot com bubble that burst and left everyone holding toilet paper formerly known as stock and stock options a few years back.

[Joe Duck]

Guess I was right to go to Startup Camp instead, and thus I *saved* the $2500 and got to see some innovative ideas. Not a lot, but some of the new companies seemed to have good twists on "old" (ie >1 yr) online stuff.

[innonate]

I've been enraged recently at the absurdity of ringing in a 3.0 era when most normal web-using people -- the people who will one day, but not yet, contribute the real data that will make the web meaningful and worth anyone's dollar or time -- have yet to even get their toes wet in a Web 2.0 world.

What's del.icio.us? (2.0's darling baby)
Why should I use BackpackIt?
Who's O'Rielly?

This 3.0 buzz is the result of an out of control geek-circle-jerk which makes products *and conceptualizations of the future web* FOR GEEKS/BY GEEKS, but never for normal, hardworking, minivan driving, soccer practice going, Friday night football loving people.

These people -- normal people -- are still using Web 1.0, with the exception of Google or MySpace or Facebook (for some), and have not really started using any of the real group intelligence benefits of 2.0.

And that will be 3.0...
When the usability for everyday people that's found in 1.0 reaches the group intelligence technology 2.0, then we will have 3.0

1 + 2 = 3

[Dick Deluxe]

I find it kind of funny and disingenious that folks get all worked up about labels-i.e. 2.0 , 3.0, etc. While I personally think it somewhat quaint to use "versioning" (all but disgraced in desktop circles) for describing the web in the end who cares?

What is fun, exciting and inevitable is the emergence of the semantic "era" for lack of better term. And an AI enthusiast who has had to put up with 10 years of crap about what a failure AI is I am quite confident I will be "vindicated". For that matter if more folks knew what the hell I was talking about or I could explain it better-I'd already be in the clear!

Thanks for the tip on Teqlo-I'll be checking to if my objects like their objects!

[Adam Lindemann]

Peter. Firstly congrats on the new job. My partner in Mind Fund, Galen, sent me the link to the NY article before you wrote this post and I thought of you. When you have a neuroscientist and a computer scientist working on a mainstream semantic web application as we have with Imindi you can see why I am excited. Are you still doing series A deals? Not do I look forward to showing you Imindi but also can`t wait to allow you to plug her into your blog.

[Peter Rip]

Thanks, Adam. Of course. Still doing Series A.

[Megan Cunningham]

Hi Peter - I second that congratulations. Been meaning to contact you - it all sounds very exciting.

RE: your comments on the conference lacking any real breakthroughs, isn't that the way with every annual event that gets hyped to this degree? Mainstreaming = dilution of innovation, by definition. Sundance used to be the only place for real discovery in the film world. Once Soderbergh's Sex, Lies and Videotape crossed over (putting Steven on the Hollywood Directors' map and Harvey Weinstein in grocery store gossip rags), the festival was littered with consumer-brand swag.

To some in the original community, it lost its "insider" edge. But to this day, the insiders still attend every year. Why? Beneath the Timberlake/Paris Hilton entourage, the authenticity of the Sundance brand persists. It remains the only annual event (in north america) where the powerhouse networkers and the undiscovered co-mingle. It's undeniably more competitive to find truly new ideas --but the potential for discovery remains.

I would argue that the difference today is the speed with which innovation is overtaken by the mainstream --in part, b/c of the cultural obsession over tech and media industry trends. (Best demonstrated by the fact that a wonky book like Chris Anderson's is a best-seller.)

I was in the Bay Area last week, but not for this event. I was a judge at the Vloggies, where there was tremendous potential for discovery...where insiders-breaking-out --like Kevin Rose and the Rocketboom crew-- hung with many emerging voices, like AskaNinja, Alive From Baghdad, and Ze Frank. The following day, I was shocked to discover NYT Magazine's fullcolor spread of many of Vloggers who I would consider "emerging..."

What's shocking about this? The window of opportunity to discover/exploit unknown could be as short as 24 hours. Hurley and Chen fundamentally understand this, as YouTube was merely an idea in Jan 2005. Acting quickly is the key. -Megan