Tuesday, Noon

Just wrapping up Keynote with Eric Schmidt, CEO of Google, and John Batelle... Headed to lunch...

(Very) Quick Notes

- Announces Docs and Spreadsheets
- "Not competitor to MS" (yeah, right) – not about all features/functionality
- Built on web 2.0 framework
- arch transition of old to new tech
- isn't this exceedingly threatening to others in space?
- so many folks use small percentage of word/office – pay lots to use little
- this is free, arguably, all you need
- $3bn for Doubleclick
- what about Google ad tech + Doubleclick
- art vs. science of advertising; google brings the science, Doubleclick, the "art" (read: people, - not algorithms)
- Isn't this dangerous?
- Irony of MS and AT&T crying monopoly
- $1.65bn for Youtube
- "Safe Harbor"
- Viacom suit a "negotiating tactic"
- Google CYC (Claim Your Own Content) - to ease burden of copyright holders from having to monitor their content
- On Jeff Bezos and S3/EC2 – "good start, right principles, google same thing, diff way, we’ll see"
- single co. won’t dominate
- Small playing field handful of co.s can do these deals
- Where's the telcos? Partners not competitors
- Mobile, mobile, mobile – 3g/4g
- Apple? They have desktop type apps
- Eric on Apple Board

Next up...

Session
Social Networking Winners & Losers: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

Charlene Li, Forrester Research
Gina Bianchini, Co-founder and CEO, Ning
Matt Cohler, VP Strategy & Business Operations, Facebook
Reid Hoffman, Chairman and President, Products, LinkedIn
Mike Speiser, VP Community, Yahoo!

Track: Marketing and Community
Date: Tuesday, April 17
Time: 1:30pm - 2:20pm
Location: 2002

What is the secret to building successful social networking services? How did sites like Flickr, YouTube, and MySpace become so popular other large web portals had to acquire them? And why did others like Friendster and Orkut miss the mark? This session will discuss the winners (and losers) in social networking, and how social networking techniques are now being applied to online communities in news, finance, sports, and other categories.

Update: This was lively. I particularly enjoyed Gina's newcomer (at least on this panel) frankness, smartness, and a bit of playfulness, too. Reid of LinkedIn was refreshing as well. Mike of Yahoo held his ground but did suffer a bit of scrutiny from the crowd as well as the panelists, being the "big company" of the group (good comment about how tech isn't always the solution; a fixation of silicon valley). Nice insights from Gina and how Ning really is different in several ways, from really opening up the technology to truly internationalizing by handing control to users.