The Vicarious Web 2.0 Conference: Day Two

• Richard MacManus continues his heroic efforts at blogging from the conference. Numerous articles have been posted for Day Two alone including Discussion: Open vs. Closed Models, Bubble or Bubble-let, Mary Meeker talk, Yahoo CEO Terry Semel conversation, Flurry of Web 2.0 Business Activity. This last one is especially interesting and covers AOL's recent Web 2.0 acquisition, the fact that SocialText is returning to open source, and that Flock is expanding their beta. He notes Zimbra and Orb are currently getting the most overall buzz at the conference. Richard is one of the leading figures in the Web 2.0 space and his stuff is the one to watch.
• Jonathan Boutelle recently posted Web 2.0: Welcome to the bubble, a day two coverage piece that notes there is a definite perception of a disconnect between the Web 2.0 topic and the messages from the iconic CEOs that are present, which tend to be disjoint. Jonathan also talks about how VCs are become more like real estate agents than investors since startups are so cheap in this space. They are appropriate more for dealing with the delicate negotiations amongst potential suitors. Jonathan also points out that using open source is now the standard choice and a "decision you can't get fired for." Many would agree with this and certainly this new post from OSDir.com made from the conference takes this view as well.
  
• Jeffrey McManus just posted some rough notes of Jon Battelle's conference interview of Yahoo's CEO, Terry Semel, where Terry says they will always be more open than Google. Most interesting tidbit: Terry says supporting user generated content is an utmost priority at Yahoo!
• Alex Muse, Web 2.0 VC extraordinaire, keeps his conference posting up and talks about the big Web 2.0 party being held tonight at SWIG in SF. Mostly newsworthy due to the extensive sponsor list of Web 2.0 firms: Flock, del.icio.us, Flickr, Odeo, Technorati, wink, and Wordpress.
• Sean Bonner is also continuing his posting from the conference and has some nice gems from things he saw this morning. A few interesting things on Skype, including it's growth is enormous with 54 million registered users. North America is also not home to a lot of interesting trends, showing that many cutting edge developments are truly a worldwide phenomenon these days and are not lead by one or two industrial nations any more. He also just posted a piece about the Web 2.0: Open vs. Closed Models session where Tim O'Reilly asked some of the big players what kind of value proposition they have from a user ownership perspective.
  
• Mainstream media is still churning out the conference coverage with a couple of major highlighted articles. Wired has an article today titled Are You Ready for Web 2.0 while the San Francisco Chronicle finally weighs in with Internet glitterati gather in S.F.
• WSFinder is doing a terrific job with the sustained micro-blogging on Web 2.0 conference sessions. Keep it up!
• Unified Studies posted a few good quotes from the conference including O'Reilly saying that "if you have to advertise, it's probably not Web 2.0" and a del.icio.us executive saying "if you're not embarassed by your 1.0 release, you waited too long."
• And of course, ZDNet's erstwhile and prolific journalists Berlind and Farber have kept up their posts, though noticeably flagging a bit. Their latest is Yahoo 2.0: Time spent = more money.
• Also, eWeek has opened up an entire Web 2.0 section on its site and has some interesting articles, but the conference coverage seems primarily relagated to yawners like the new Flash products announced. Hopefully they'll get some real coverage soon.
• Jeff Clavier just posted coverage of Jeremy Allaire's announcement of BrightCove for Web 2.0 that provides "distribution services for content producers, consumer services to search and access content, and monetization services (Adversiting, Premium Content, Syndication)."
• Dare Obesanjo is keeping up his excellent quality yet amazingly lengthy posts from the conference including Web 2.0 Conference Trip Report: Web 2.0 Dinner - A Conversation with Microsoft and Web 2.0 Conference Trip Report: Mash-ups 2.0 - Where's the Business Model?
  
• Update: Lawrence Lee posts from a session at the conference and talks about the Zoundry toolbar, an ad hoc user participation mechanism for the Web 2.0 generation.
• Update: Paul Miller is powerblogging his way through the conference with an impressive series of posts about today's Web 2.0 con events. Be sure to check it out.
• Humorous And True: BusinessWire recently put out a press release that SF Mayor Gavin Newsom has proclaimed that October 5th is Web 2.0 Conference Day for the City and County of San Francisco. If that doesn't feel like a bubble forming, I don't know what does.
• Update: Ian Davis just posted about the 37signals talk at the conference about Jason Fried's 5 ways to do more with less for the purpose of "constraining you to produce more quality."
• Update: Paul Mooney has a short riff on Mary Meeker's SFO (Search, Find, Obtain) and the doing more with less meme.
• Update: The venerable ComputerWorld magazine directly addresses the question that many are thinking: Can Microsoft really survive as a dominant player in a Web 2.0 world? In their just-released article (with a little coverage of the Web 2.0 conference), the title of the piece says it all, Microsoft adapting to Web platform, execs say. Nothing unexpected but it does show what the biggest significance of the conference is to observers in the mainstream media.
• Update: MacManus updated his stellar ZDNet blog, Web 2.0 Explorer with the latest from day two of the Web 2.0 Conference. His take on the highlight is Yahoo's CEO and he does quote some insightful material including how he "mentioned the 3 different types of content that Yahoo! is focused on: user-generated, professional, and the future of what content may be. On that last point, Semel said that Yahoo! will try to take a leadership position in designing the future of content." I question what they can on that last point but he's absolutely correct that Yahoo! needs to develop such abilities into leadership skills.
  
• New: Virtual Memorial has a neat discussion of PubSub.com's newly announced Structured Blogging software that allows user to create XML structured content that is easily consumable to build new applications. Announced at the Web 2.0 Conference, Structured Blogging is an open source initiative that looks pretty interesting. Getting it into the mainstream consciousness may be another matter entirely though but PubSub has fast gaining credibiilty in the blogging space due to their excellent tracking engine..
• Fresh Meat: Scott Anderson has a new post that is pretty evocative of the Web 2.0 Conference scene (and I do feel he's right about the blow-by-blow blogging, it's certainly happening.)
• Update: Will Pate has some detailed coverage of the The Web 2.0 Conference: The Future of Entertainment session. Best Quote: "Asking 16-18 year olds to spend $15 on a CD with maybe one good song doesn't make sense."
• Hot: Om Malik 's 10 Things about the Web 2.0 Conference. Funny, charming, interesting. Check it out.
• Update: David Beisel posts some well summarized notes about the conference. David particularly points out that Web 2.0 ideas work much better when incremental adoption is possible.
• Cool: Jeff Jarvis has a pretty excellent special report from the Web 2.0 Conference over at LifeHacker.com. Jeff really gets down to brass tacks and discusses specific Web 2.0 products being announced or undergoing major changes at the conference including: Zimbra, Zvents, Consumating.com, Socialtext, the first social browser, Flock, and the blog analysis service, MeasureMap. Well-written and worth some careful reading, check it out.
• British Coverage: Yes, Web 2.0 is everywhere, even in the UK. The Register just posted a terrific and hilarious article entitled Six Things You Need to Know about Bubble 2.0. It's actually a brilliant, insightful, and a completely and totally irreverent look at our favorite subject and the conference in San Francisco. Most riot-inducing quote: "But the Web 2.0 kids desperately want to write system apps on their "global operating system" - only they don't have the cojones to do system level thinking."
• Update: Knowing when the RSS feeds you care about are updated in real-time would be a neat trick indeed but PC Magazine says KnowNow might just be able to do it. Check out their article from the Web 2.0 Conference.
  

links: del.icio.us