Web 2.0: The 24 Minute Documentary

August 8th, 2006 at 2:56 am

Nice set of information and guests.

The green backdrop worked well.

BUT, this video has quite possibly the most annoying and distracting music layer I have ever know. At the start it was nice, like it was “bringing us in” to the documentary. Then it should have stopped! It got to the point that I could not focus on what they were saying as the music was making me feeling like I was waiting for everything to get interesting.

If you do another, scrap the music and perhaps intersperse a few screen caps etc of anything being talked about or stats etc.

All in all, great video, good word, kill the music and you are on to a winner!..

GuinchoGuy.com

August 8th, 2006 at 3:20 am

Good job. I think it’s interesting to hear from some of the hot start-ups that are pushing web 2.0

I think it would be really interesting to see if you can get some interviews with old media leaders to compare this to… I’d love to hear how much larger, slower companies would tackle the same questions. I’m guessing there would be a lot of “user participation is great… under the right circumstances, where we control the outcome”

One thing that gives me a lot of confidence is that most of these guys have humility and don’t present as cocky as the paper millionaires from five years ago… go back and look at the very telling “startup.com” movie or one of the other myriad documentaries on web startups… those CEO’s were over the top and acted more like spoiled children than businessmen.

Good work, turn it into a podcast and make it a series.

http://cleaningupmylife.blogspot.com

August 8th, 2006 at 3:47 am

I second Don’s comment…make it a podcast series

August 8th, 2006 at 4:04 am

Google and Apple were both started by two guys, Microsoft by three.

August 8th, 2006 at 4:31 am

Re: Kevin
Kevin, the trick with the bubble is that when everybody believes that we *are* in a bubble - there’s no bubble actually.

So, what we call a bubble exists only if only few suspect it’s out there.

Regards, Denis

August 8th, 2006 at 5:11 am

Re: Denis/Kevin

Alternatively, a bubble can only be determined by looking backward in time- we won’t/can’t know until later if we are in a bubble now.

-Ben

August 8th, 2006 at 5:16 am

*EDIT* Michael - is there anyway I could get a hold of a high quality version of this, I’d love to show it to my students when I talk about Web 2.0 (sorry for the previous message - hit submit without thinking)

August 8th, 2006 at 5:46 am

They talk about a website called something like “You Too” - what is that? Do you guys have an URL?

In fact, they mention a lot of websites, has anyone compiled a list of them? :- )

August 8th, 2006 at 5:53 am

.. dismiss my last comment, I think I’ve heard of youTUBE before ..

* Anders goes looking for a bridge to jump out from ..

August 8th, 2006 at 6:03 am

Excellent video… I would have liked a little more discussion on actual working business models as opposed to just saying that they have to exist. Thanks for getting together.

August 8th, 2006 at 6:08 am

Enjoyed the video. Nice to see a lot of disagreement about business models. That must show things are healthy, IMHO. Pity it had to be filmed with one camera, since a little more interrogation would have been a good thing. Maybe do that for Web 2.0 documentary 2.0…

August 8th, 2006 at 6:30 am

BTW, since this is on Photobucket, I assume it’s OK to reproduce this on my site? Let me know if it isn’t.

August 8th, 2006 at 7:08 am

Very amusing guest list. Doubt that any of these companies has a lucrative exit (say $200 MM+). You might want to interview CEOs of promising web 2.0 companies–or are they too busy executing to sit down for the interview?

August 8th, 2006 at 7:15 am

Couldn’t make it past the first 3 minutes. Sorry, I really really wanted to. Something about listening to these unbelievably smug wannabe-CEOs made me want to physically gag. It’s too bad, because I’d like to actually post about this and dissect all the comments on my site, but it just gets me too riled up, and I haven’t had enough coffee today.

Had I been invited, however, my answers were:

What is Web 2.0? It is a label that is all-encompassing of new Internet startups. Predominantly, the label applies to ‘companies’ with little-to-no business models but seem adamant that they ‘aren’t just like all those dot-coms that had no business models’. No, they are worse, because they didn’t LEARN from the dot-bombs.

Are we in a bubble? YES. Jobster @ $50mil. Nuff said.

What are the business models that will work on the web today? Advertising, subcriptions, charging services, and selling stuff. Oh, that’s the same model that worked before. Surprise surprise surprise.

What is the role of publishers in a user generated world? One word: quality.

How important and how big is the early adopter crowd? Depends entirely on the space. In social networking it could be millions. In useless browser plugins it could be dozens.

How about you guys do this again without all the softball questions? I’d be happy to help…

August 8th, 2006 at 7:31 am

MOose asked about web 3.0… That’s still just a gleam in marketing’s eye, but Web 2.5 has made it to the design phase. More at http://web2dot5.blogspot.com/

August 8th, 2006 at 7:46 am

Haaaa,

You guys are genius, this is some of the best mocumentary comedy ever! How did you find actors that could play CEO smug so well? And a script that full of buzzwords deserves an award.

That Arrington character is my favourite!

Well done!

August 8th, 2006 at 8:04 am

Good job on the video and interview technique; it can be a tricky process.

All around, a lot of good input from some key players in the industry (and some not so key).

In response to some of the poopoo-ing going on- these guys might be huffy CEO’s and things, but they do bring a certain authority and impact to the table that helps set the terms that have become trapped in this “bubble” into stone. It’s like history being written.

I’m *very* interested in what the term ‘Web 2.0′ encapsulates because it’s a very big hint as to what is NOT in Web 3.0 and therefore gives us kind of a base to build upon.

Do we care what will happen in the next bubble? Most certainly. I don’t know about everyone else, but for me it’s about two things- The thrill of new technologies blossoming with activity and money.

I may be stating the obvious here but judging from the video, that’s mainly what we’re doing here.

Oh yeah, and I agree with Jay; I’d be much more interested to see the minds behind the promising companies than the already-established companies– they are less smug and much more firey, I think.

Also, I think it’s funny that the Dead2.0 guy left a comment despite being left out of the interview. Hah. You definitely should’ve included that guy.

I’m out.

August 8th, 2006 at 8:27 am

David: Except that no business can ever “prove” ROI. Especially if neither IPO nor aquisition are a given (and, yes, VC’s still need an actual exit more often than not).

Even if you took an online service, baselined income per user, took the last 8 months of user growth, averaged future growth based on the discounted last 6 months and applied the low range of advertising to it… It’s conservative but it isn’t proven.

And for sevice, B2B or eyeball plays it’s even more difficult to “prove” revenues, nevermind ROI.

I’d also tend to agree with Paul Kedrovsky that bubbles are an inherent part of the VC world, can be very healthy and shouldn’t necessarily be feared. What should be feared is over-exuberance on the part of analysts, journalists, retail investors, etc. That’s when things get shaky and dangerous.

Otherwise, as long as VC’s are hitting their IRR’s, businesses are largely succeeding, and funding is flowing in a relatively sane way (ie: not 80% of a billion dollar fund into video sites) it should all tend to balance out.

August 8th, 2006 at 8:50 am

If there are so many Web 2.0 jobs, please send some more to Austin, TX.

August 8th, 2006 at 9:07 am

auren hit it right on the head… maybe a bit of a financing bubble, but not a liquidity bubble (altho perhaps not a huge # of acquisition / liquidity exits). perhaps 10-20 Flickr-size deals a year, 2-3 Shopping.com deals, and maybe 1 Skype deal. enough to keep angels & VCs putting money into it.

August 8th, 2006 at 9:17 am

you web types should stick to writing about the net and leave video work to the professionals.

green might work on a site but as a backdrop….. yuck!!! and what is up with that guys tan? the guy from Browster or whatever it was called!!

and the other posters are right, lose the cheesy muzak!!!

August 8th, 2006 at 9:27 am

Emma: The green wasn’t that bad, but this was pretty poorly (hastily?) edited video. You need to tell your viewers who they are looking at more than once–it is easy to forget when you’re not looking at someone everyone knows by site (David Sifry is not Elton John or Bill Clinton), and it sort of jumped around at times–the whole Firefox discussion sort of came out of nowhere, for example (which reminds me, no one uses Safari? I thought it was tres cool to use a Mac if you owned a Web 2.0 start up? ;)). And finally, everytime Mike Arrington laughed, it would echo over the next speaker for a second or two–what was that about?

I think it is safe to say the producers were more concerned with the content than the presentation, though.

August 8th, 2006 at 9:33 am

Hi. I wanted to post a comment making a slight amendment to my previous comment. I don’t really know any of these individuals at a personal level, and I shouldn’t have called them any names. While I *do* feel they come across smug in the video, that could just as well be the fault of the video editor, and hey, maybe they were just nervous.

Didn’t mean to offend any individual, and I think that crossed a line. My bad.

ScottW - thanks!

August 8th, 2006 at 9:58 am

I saw smoke from the california hills, first I thought it is fire (as it is fire season), but then slowly i see a letter “b” in the smoke.It must be “bubble2.0″ ,it is slowly cooking…

On a serious note, there is both innovative and bubbl’ish material in today’s web 2.0. YouTube,MySpace,Digg,Delicious,Wikis,meebo etc., all these are definately innovative but why do we need a 1000 companies doing what these few companies are doing.We have one google for search,not 50 companies doing the search. Many of these startups compete directly among themselves, their technologies are not complementary,I see this the main problem. We need more innovators come on to the field and do brand new things, rather than simply paint the same concept with diferrenct color.

August 8th, 2006 at 10:13 am

30, Greg:

http://vid108.photobucket.com/.....24mins.flv

You can play it with FLV Player:

http://www.martijndevisser.com.....er-updated

August 8th, 2006 at 10:18 am

Meebo is not innovative, it is a bunch of nerds in a rental house, who also work on other not innovative web 2.0 crap.

Bunch of incest if you ask me

August 8th, 2006 at 10:30 am

The video is down (Bandwidth exceeded) Too funny. Here’s the transcript:
http://digbig.com/4mggc

August 8th, 2006 at 11:08 am

I am really surprised there were no application examples - although Im familiar with most of the panel’s work. Pouring from the empty into the void is all well and good….

August 8th, 2006 at 11:55 am

Scott Milener is a joke. If it wasn’t his idea he wouldn’t of been in the video because his company sucks. Wonder if he runs his company like he did with Evoice

August 8th, 2006 at 12:40 pm

man, please kill the sound loop and break this into smaller chunks.

August 8th, 2006 at 1:08 pm

Is it hip and trendy to call it Web “Two Oh” instead of “Two Point Oh” now?

August 8th, 2006 at 2:36 pm

Has anyone here tried Browster? I uninstalled after a few days. Just wondering if others had the same experience and if so that does not bode well for this widget based business.

August 8th, 2006 at 4:53 pm

Thanks for putting this together. There are several gems and soundbytes here like: “Web 2.0 is removing friction from the process.” True true true.

My skin also crawls when I hear the word ajax.

I know there are several people out there that want to “Kill Web 2.0″, but if you look at the characteristics of a web 2.0 solution, they’d understand that it’s more of a categorization more than a movement.

If you were to categorize a solution as web 1.0 or web 2.0, especially with VCs, you’d likely opt for Web 2.0. But what do you base that on? A combination of user control, technology, platform, audience, visual design? There’s a lot of controversy here and even a site that claims to validate whether your site is or isn’t (http://web2.0validator.com/). I don’t think VCs know what specific requirements they base the labeling of Web 2.0 on, but the business model supporting your own characterization is likely your best bet at winning them over….

Sherwin… I’ve heard it’s cool to refer to it as web2….

August 8th, 2006 at 6:38 pm

i really like the philosophy of “removing friction” from a process for the end user when describing principles/elements of a successful web 2.0 site. terrific report & good job!

August 8th, 2006 at 8:49 pm

There is nothing wrong in having bubble.It is part of the natural process of innovation.

First innovation,then too many people try to copy or enhance the idea,too many people trying to make quick cash,adding the bubble to stretch beyond threshold levels, finally the bust. Only real innovations survive, all the copycats, greedy bunch will go away, and will resurface for bubble 3.0.

August 9th, 2006 at 12:51 am

Bubble or not, it’s clear that our culture is changing and that’s what I take away from this vid. Sure most of these “Web2.0″ companies will be gone within a few years (or months), but that’s not the point. The point is that we’re in the midst of a very important paradigm shift and I for one am very excited about it. Kudos to these CEO’s that have the balls to push the boundaries of both technology and business in the hopes of creating viable markets that didn’t exist mere months ago.

August 14th, 2006 at 9:45 am

Read this.

http://www.bit-tech.net/column.....2_privacy/

Why Web 2.0 will end your privacy
Published: 3rd June 2006 by Wil Harris

We all know the plushy, rounded, pastel-coloured faces of Web 2.0. MySpace. Digg. Flickr. The achingly trendy Silicon Valley startups that are selling for millions to big media conglomerates and making their founders into stars. Tom Anderson. Kevin Rose. These are the pinups of the Web 2.0 generation - but little do they know the monster they’ve created.

My firm belief is that the net effect of the Web 2.0 movement will be a marked loss of privacy on the internet, one which leads to big business knowing more about you than it ever did before. This is why.

Defining the genre
Let’s start by examining what exactly we mean by Web 2.0. It’s a buzzword, a catchphrase - a candy-coated way of glossing over a core set of principles and technologies. Most people will take Web 2.0 to mean the rise of bloggers. The growth of social networking. The invention of tags and the contribution of end users to the final product. It means freedom to connect and share with your friends. It means desktop-like applications on the web. Whilst an exact definition escapes even the brightest, this can be taken as a fairly close approximation.

“Web 2.0 is also about the evolution of online businesses”

Let’s take some exemplar applications. Digg.com is a brilliant example, since it combines many of these Web 2.0 facets. Unlike a traditional news publication, end users write the news that appears on Digg. News they’ve written, and news they like, is linked to their profile. Their profile is linked to the profiles of their friends, so that social groups can check out each others’ recommendations. There’s some funky programming and some blogging thrown in with it.

Then let’s take MySpace, the ultimate social network (and now owned by Rupert Murdoch’s NewsCorp). Users can share music, thoughts, pictures and words and can meet new people and discover new interests through their online links. If MySpace tells you that your friend likes The Super Arctic Guitar Axe Nirvana Marsupials, well, you might too.

Web 2.0 is also about the evolution of online businesses. Google is turning from a search engine to an advertising company. Email is being sidelined into a business niche by instant messaging. Outlook and Office are becoming increasingly redundant as PIM applications are being Ajax’d. Getting everything online has never seemed so important.

Benefits to the users
And why not? The more this ‘movement’ grows, the more the web evolves, the better for the end user, right? Already, Digg has taken a hatchet to traditional publishing, with users proving pretty good at finding stories that satisfy their own demographic - and its popularity is a testament to that. MySpace has enabled teenagers everywhere to escape the dastardly clutches of their parents and do what teenagers do best - namely, skulk around, making awkward social contact with the opposite sex and opining over the latest bands and fads.

Flickr has provided free photo hosting for millions. Thanks to some great coding, sharing photos with other people has never been easier. The integration of Larry Lessig’s Creative Commons licenses even means that Flickr has some stick-it-to-the-man indie creds too, to attract otherwise sceptical washed out hacks and code monkeys. Google Mail and Calendar make Outlook redundant for many - why pay Microsoft when you can do everything you want online, for free? With the growth of networks worldwide, as well as cellular internet connectivity, you’re virtually never without a net connection.

Web 2.0 sites provide some of the best functionality and fun on the web. Isn’t that pretty neat?

The calm surface
But for all this user coolness, the benefit to the companies involved here is minimal. I mean, so minimal, it’s what convinced me to look under the surface in the first place. Take Flickr, our last example. Bought out by Yahoo for millions upon millions of dollars, it makes next to no money whatsoever. Look at the site. What is on there that makes money? Sure, you can have a premium membership, but I bet you can count the number of users that have paid for that on the fingers of the hands of the millionaires that Flickr’s sale made. Yahoo is burning money at an alarming rate to keep Flickr online.

Digg recently took $1m in venture capital to grow its business. Its sole source of income appears to be adverts at the top of the page, provided by Google - not exactly raking it in. Digg has been remarkably slow to roll out new features and to show its hand when it comes to raking in cash. The only features that have been put in have been to allow users to connect better with other users and to allow them to see what other users are doing.

Perhaps a more extreme example is YouTube. It is reportedly burning $1m a day in bandwidth costs to serve the amount of video being put up there. How on earth are they going to find cash to cover that?

So what’s the conspiracy?
The major question therefore becomes, how do any of these businesses plan to make money? They are all burning cash, and none of them appear to have a revenue model beyond Google ads. Sure, Google ads is great - but that really only makes money for Google itself.

Why are the companies worth so much money? Why is MySpace worth over half a billion dollars without a proper revenue model? Why is Digg allegedly pitched at over $20m (at the last count) without any idea of where money is going to be pulled from?

“Digg knows what stories you’ve submitted, what demographic you’re in, how other people in your demographic react to what you post”

The answer is - data. Information. Marketing. Every detail about you and me. That is where the money is.

This is not necessarily a new argument. I’ve heard it thrown at me by various followers of the Web 2.0 bubble, who allegedly regurgitated it from some of the ‘A-List’ bloggers out there, including John Battelle.

But the argument holds weight, nonetheless. The one thing the Web 2.0 sites have in common is that they are furiously mining information about you and your buddies. What you like. What you like that your buddies like. Digg knows what stories you’ve submitted, what demographic you’re in, how other people in your demographic react to what you post. MySpace can break its users down by almost any statistic imaginable, then mine that data for more information about what it is you’re doing and sharing online, and how that relates to your friends in the same (or different) demographics.

Flickr is perhaps one of the most interesting ones. Search for ‘cat’, and Flickr will record the most popular photo clicked. By associating the colour and picture data within photos with keywords used to search, Yahoo is slowly building a database of human identification. It has often said that the differentiator between Yahoo and Google, going forward, is that Yahoo wants the web processed by humans and Google wants it done by robots. Google uses algorithms to generate anything to do with its business. Yahoo, with its acquisition of Flickr and Delicious and whatever else is on the horizon, wants people - and social networks - to define how it does business.

The EndGame
So Murdoch knows everything about MySpace. The financial gurus at Yahoo know all about your personal thoughts, pictures and bookmarks. The guys at Google know everything about your search habits, and you can bet they want to link ‘em up to your email and calendar and whatever else you end up using online. How much is that data worth? With marketing spends online going ever upwards, as more and more of the world ‘logs on’, you can bet that it’s only going to get more and more valuable.

And where it’s valuable, it will be bought and sold. Our social networks, searching habits, visual identifiers and personal preferences will be mercilessly sold to anyone who wants to get their hands on our particular demographic. And when your photos, your files, your email and your friends are all online, you’ll have to be online - and thanks to net everywhere, like the Google San Francisco project, you’ll always be able to be online. And as long as you’re online, they can market to you.

When the Web 2.0 bubble bursts - when the massive buyouts are done, the millionaires are made and the sites we love today are in the hands of big business - the innovation will grind to a halt, and what’s left will be the endless grinding of the marketeering machine.

But hey - at least you’ll be closer to your friends. And you’ll have free photo hosting, too.

August 17th, 2006 at 9:21 am

Do any of these guys have companies that do anything useful? Doesn’t look like it to me. A plug in that does a “right click-open in new window” on mouse-over? WOW

August 19th, 2006 at 4:24 am

I actually saw only one responce from Bri having followed the link you provided, Michael. Is it censure?

September 5th, 2006 at 2:31 am

Hi !
Terrific video. In case someone is interested but has trouble with language, I made a small summary in spanish at:

http://www.presionblogosferica.....05/web-20/

————————
Un video genial. Por si a alguien le interesa, tiene un resumen en español en el link anterior

September 18th, 2006 at 4:52 pm

http://unlabeled.wordpress.com.....cumentary/

October 9th, 2006 at 7:16 am

What a bunch of SoCal douchebags. These bumholes have MBS degree - Master of BullShit.

December 16th, 2006 at 1:23 am

Interesting site http://portaldiscount.com/managed-forex/

February 22nd, 2007 at 7:31 am

nice video!

from
http://nero.datadiri.com/