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Quick Takeaways, Web 2.0 Summit

Had a great time at the Web 2.0 Summit, good crowd, well-organized, truly interested in lots of the content. I thought I’d quickly bullet out the key takeaways and new tidbits of information I gleaned from the event and share with you, in case anyone’s interested:

  • Sean Parker is on the verge of launching “Airtime,” which is going to go up against face-to-face screen communications from Color, Apple, and other players. The “Chatroulette vibe” is alive and well.
  • eBay runs most of its sales through fixed-time sales (not auctions) and makes a good deal of money from PayPal, and will now be experimenting with Facebook.
  • Try to find the video of Benioff, he gave incredibly candid opinions on a range of technology companies and personalities.
  • Deb Roy, the guy who used sensors to record how his child learned speech over 2 years, is behind Bluefin Labs, which is looking at the intersection of social blogging/tweeting and real-time TV, and it looks amazing.
  • Watch the Michael Dell interview, he was quite reflective and talked about his childhood playing with Apple computers.
  • Mary Meeker created an interesting research report but it was hard to digest, so I summarized it here.
  • Pandora is going to see huge growth in telematics and other newly wired areas of life.
  • Flipboard’s McCue had one of the best soundbites of the data-focused event: To make a breakout, emotionally-driven hit, one may have to step away from the data and go on instinct, design.
  • MC Hammer is launching a search engine. No comment.
  • Milk released their first app, “Oink,” to rate what’s inside places, which will sort of compete with Ness Computing.
  • Google+ “brand pages” are coming soon, and that will put pressure on Quora to respond.
  • Both founders of Quora were interviewed together, which was rare. That might mean something about some moves by the company, as only one of them usually goes out into the wild. Perhaps they are raising Series B?
  • Reid Hoffman detailed how the venture firm where is a partner, Greylock, is transforming by adding more operational, scientific, hiring, and talent horsepower to their team, both to help current portfolio and also help evaluate deals.