Graeme Thickins' Takeaways

Great post over at ReadWriteWeb regarding Web 2.0 Technologies. I've copied pretty much the entire article and have made some comments below:

Web 2.0 Is Going Beyond the Consumer Market: There's no doubt these technologies will be increasingly applied within enterprises, and that's a good thing. The big vendors see this and were all over this venue - exhibiting, presenting, and otherwise.

• It's about time. I've always wondered why companies had not internalized sites such as Dells outward facing idea site. I wonder what type of value could be derrived from internal Web 2.0 sites. Is it time a company like Facebook got into Enterprise group stuff?

The VC Investment Model for IT/Software Is Changing: Because new Web 2.0 ventures don't need much money to get going, the VC business is being somewhat disrupted. A new style of early-stage VC firm seems to be gaining. It's becoming obvious that the big funds don't fit in here. These days, a mere $250-750K is all that's needed to prove assumptions, one VC said. And angel investors are newly energized.

• Does this mean they can now invest 750K and sell for $1.65 Billion? Will this limit new startups that would otherwise require more cash (see anything over 750K as something MSFT or GOOG should do)? YCombinator!!!!!!

We Are Not a Market: One of the best quotes I heard at this event was by one of this new brand of VCs, Josh Kopelman of First Round Capital: "The TechCrunch audience and this group here is not a market (for a startup). Success in this group might be necessary, but it's not sufficient. The real world doesn't understand this stuff."

Marketing Is Rising: And one of the next best quotes I heard was in that same panel, from VC Jeff Clavier of SoftTech: "We need to start seeing real money spent on marketing." The signs are good. Everywhere at Web 2.0 Expo, I saw evidence that a large part of the conversation, and in fact the event's program, was about marketing. Kudos to the producers for that!

SEO Is Rising: A corollary to the above is that SEO, far from declining as one noted blogger/entrepreneur posited recently, is becoming a major focus in the marketing world - hand-in-hand with skills in social media. This is the new sandbox for marketers; and that is exciting. Widgets are emerging as well - another important and related marketing medium.

• Will be interesting to see how widgets affect the digital advertising market. Wonder if Ads will become generic placeholders where content is positioned after or on page load (EX// company purchases spot and can control their ad at runtime).

Another Reason Not to Get Cocky: Lest we think that we as Internet users are so much in control today, consider this: there are only one billion PC users, while two billion people worldwide use mobile phones. The Web is far from universal yet and certainly it will be some time before the advances that we call Web 2.0 become widely used worldwide - on desktops, $100 laptops, cell phones, or whatever. Maybe next year's Expo should be in China or India?

• This is not news to me. I don't understand how people can focus on the below when there are millions of mobile phones to tap. This is where my money is - the extension of social networks to mobile phones.

Offline Web Apps Are a Next Big Thing: The demo of Apollo, by Kevin Lynch of Adobe, was awesome - even though it is still in alpha. And Etelos, another event sponsor, had a great way to position their new offline offering: "Apps on a Plane." Who wouldn't like that?

• I really hate to say this to people: Microsoft was pushing RIA's back in 2000 and it is now news because of all these JavaScript sites. Anything that allows you to code an interface in HTML / Flash could be considered an offline web app. We built these types of things 6-7 years ago and people slept on the technology. Why will this be any different? How will this be any different?

Parts of this story were reposted from ReadWriteWeb!