EightBlack.

I might have been dubious yesterday about how many people are at Web 2.0, but now, I am in no doubt.

There were 6500 people (thats six and a half thousand!) at the Key Note Address in the afternoon, which was amazing just to sit in on.

Anyway, the event is in full swing and the title of the session I decided to attend first up was Media 2.0: How Web 2.0 Media is Transforming Traditional Media.

The panel was moderated by Charline Li from Forrester Research and consisted of Oliver Muoto - vFlyer, Gabe Rivera - TechMeme, Ted Shelton -The Personal Bee and Rich Skrenta - Topix (more on Rich later)

Let me go off on a tangent for a moment. The thing that strikes me for a minute is the brainpower at this event. There are some seriously smart dudes driving the internet at the moment and this panel is typcial of the advanced thinking that’s taking place.

What I sense from these guys is that there is a nervous undercurrent about the power that Google now wields (and has for some time now, but its now just more public). There’s also a healthy level of question and debate about what’s next and how to harness social networking.

There was no presentation during this session, more of a conversation between Charlene Li from Forrester and the Panel.

Unedited notes below…

A lot of people are going to be thinking of themselves as publishers in the Web 2.0 era and the fact that the brands they represent become publishers of content.

The view from Topix is that Google News doesn’t go far enough whereas Topix drills down to the local level.

Perception is that small business in America (some 6 million) find Google Adwords too complicated to use (cant be that bad since Google generated in excess of US$10 billion last year, of which 90% came via Adwords). I dont disagree with this statement though because there are a large amount of small business owners who would rather outsource the whole search engine marketing thing to a professional but they either dont know where to turn or find the existing solution providers in the market dont know a whole lot more than they do or are too expensive.

Another good question that was discussed was “How do we help big brand advertisers handle the internet?”

For TechMeme, it all comes down to the link.

Technorati is currently getting 10 million unique visits a month. Big numbers by anyones standard.

Blue Ocean was a book that was highly recommended.

Decide what you are good at when it comes to Web 2.0 media and focus on this one thing.

SEO is a great bootstrap strategy (not sure if I agree) but maybe.

Check out Yelp.

A defining moment and a defining statement made by Rich Skrenta from Topix:

“Accept the fact that Google IS the start page of the internet”

Another key message is that audience development is the biggest problem facing all of us and we need to constantly keep reminding ourselves of “What is it that our audience really wants?”

There’s a great video of Gary Halbert, one of the best direct marketers and copywriters here. Sadly Gary died last week but his content and reputation is world famous. Video is below. This is a sidebar for a moment because the statement above “What is it that our audience really wants?” made me think of Gary’s video where he talks about Human Engineering and the importance of being on target.

The panel then went on to discuss will Media 2.0 become the new way of engaging with the audience. I tend to think so. People have become fragmented micro markets. It’s not as simple for the big brands to buy old school media anymore and wait for the orders. People dont sit around a dinner table anymore at night, newspaper readership is on the decline, the iPod has changed a lot of the way we consume content, and we’re addicted to email and text.

Ted Shelton, who was the most outspoken on the panel, stated “Mobile content will put the final nail in the coffin of print media” I’m not convinced yet and neither was Rich Skrenta from Topix (but he had to say that because Topix is owned by the 3 largest newspaper groups in the US).

“Consumers have scarce attention and abundant choice” and “It’s not advertising if it’s relevant”

Summary:

I thought the session was just ok - I think Charlene Li did an average job of attempting to moderate the panel, but it was like trying to talk rationally to a group of grade 2 kids with severe ADD (which perhaps wasn’t all that off base).

These guys are smart - the one to watch is Gabe Rivera from TechMeme and Rich Skrenta is also highly regarded. I enjoyed the fact that they were all laser focussed in their mission. Rating - 6 out of 10

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, April 17th, 2007 at 10:25 pm and is filed under News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.