Web 2.0 a yawn
So I got a free exhibit pass via the Mobile Monday yahoo group and decided that Tuesday was my day to visit the Web 2.0 Expo event.
The event was a bit of a yawner if you ask me. I don’t see the paradigm shift that many people are talking about; it just seem likes a new branding of the same all stuff; some of it will make money and most of it will burn out in a flame of dust.
In the am. I sat through all the presentations. Not much to say about them. I had seen 2 of the 3 launchpad companies already Tellme and Vidoop. I did get the special invitation to signup for Vidoop at their booth but haven’t had a chance to do it yet. Their thing is a secure login using visuals rather than keystrokes. Tellme was just acquired by MSFT and they do voice search services that are pretty good. Eric Schmidt talked about Google’s acquisition of Double Click - ho hum.
The exhibits were open in the pm. It was difficult to tell what a lot of the companies were really doing. There were several booths showing corporate Wiki applications and they all looked the same to me. I agree that Wikis can be a great corporate groupware tool; but is that all there is to Web2.0?
And some of those companies need real marketing help — one booth only had the company name with no indication of what they do and no one really interested in telling me about it. Lots of the booth signage was really not informative.
Another interesting note - I haven’t seen so many free t-shirt giveaways since the height of the dot-com boom. And there were fun giveaway toys at a lot of booths. An ominous sign.
Unfortunately I was not at the event on Monday so I missed the opportunity to boo and walk out on the Spock demo - unbelievable that MCPs are still willing to show their stripes in SF these days; but there is no accounting for cluelessness among the supposed-Digerati.
I never heard of Spock but apparently they won the voting for the best Launchpad for Monday. Imagine that. On Tuesday the realtime voting count was available but not on Monday so they announced it on Tuesday. That was when I first heard the name but no one was talking about the demo, as far as I heard.
Later I heard about it from the 2 women at the Women 2.0 stand. My first encounter at their stand was with a Frenchman who was trying to understand why there would be a need for such an organization and claiming that there wouldn’t be a need in France (which I quickly corrected for him, having worked at 2 french companies in my last 2 jobs)
After he walked away, the Spock demo came up. I told the women that this was a perfect explanation for why we need organizations like SFWoW and Women 2.0 and they should be talking about their disgust at the demo and how it simply strengthens their commitment to their organization.
Next up for me is NAB in Las Vegas, its bound to be more interesting.
