Web 2.0 2011

Overview

Recently, I had the pleasure of attending the Web 2.0 Conference in SF. It's a small conference (500 people or so) where a lot of web industry leaders get together and discuss the state of the industry and the next big thing. In fact, the term "Web 2.0" was first coined in 2004 at this very conference.

Each year there is a theme, and this year talks and sessions were concentrated around Big Data. There are amazing facts floating around about how there is more data produced in the last year than all of human history because of the internet, and a lot of people are trying to figure out how to better utilize all of this information. Facebook has 800 million users sharing massive amounts of data each day, and the wealth of information in those shares can be used to learn, advertise, target, understand and comprehend things that were never possible before. Google sees so many searches about such a wealth of information it can track trends, emotions and political uprisings like never before possible.

I've included some interesting facts, themes and quotes from the conference below. I hope they are as compelling to you as they are inspirational to me.

Mobile

• Pandora doubled their traffic overnight with the iPhone. They became an anytime, anywhere service.

Big Data

• Omniture does 1.25 Trillion Transactions a Quarter
• 40 Million business run Google Apps

Anti-Big Data

Mike McCue – Flipboard

• When you are going to make some truly revolutionary, you need to ignore data
• Prius - best drag coefficient - but boring compared to the jaguar
• Soul of the Prius designed out by the data
• We as industry have gotten good at making it maximally efficient for clickthroughs
• But, we've lost the soul of the content – we need editors to create a story

Commerce

John M Partridge president of Visa, Dan Schulman of American Express

• 16% of all Visa transactions happen online, 20% of all American Express
• 50% of all transactions touch online. Companies like Visa and American Express see the convergence of mobile, social, and physical point of sale all as commerce.
• Typical commerce in US/Europe and most first world countries: Cash > Checks > Plastic > Online. In the rest of the world, people will leapfrog checks and plastic

eBay

Sells 2000 cars per week from their iPhone app

Trial Pay

Company thinks that transactions themselves are worth more than the fees they take. The information in those transactions can pay for the fees.

General Internet Trends

Mary Meeker

• 81% of internet users are not US based
• There are 4 billion blue tooth headsets – the next big thing is "sound" on the internet
• Mobile commerce has lifted off, no longer a question of its success
• Magazines now realize you need click to buy. No longer just about products.

Interesting Facts

• Canned foods were invented in a contest in France, where Napoleon asked normal people to solve food spoilage problems soldiers faced.
• Coca-Cola serves 1.7 billion servings a day