Web 2.0 Summit 08: Mark Zuckerberg (Facebook), John Battell

Web 2.0 Summit 08: Mark Zuckerberg (Facebook), John Battell
John Batell is a take-no-prisoners interviewer. Seen here is the interview with Mark Zuckerberg the CEO of Facebook, the world's youngest billionaire. He asks a few tough questions on the 15 Billion Microsoft handed to Facebook. Mark is a tough kid to scare. He speaks of Facebook's two revenue channels, brand direct and online advertising. He says that revenue is in the 100s of millions.

Batelle continues to question him on the Microsoft deal. Mark Zuckerberg mentions that the Microsoft deal is a smaller part of the revenue. He does mention that they are working of late on search and that Microsoft is a good partner for Facebook.

Is Balmer happy with the price, Batelle asks and Mark evades the question.He goes on to say that Facebook will not go public for a few years and feels no pressure to justify the 15 B.

Facebook has more than 700 employees says Mark. They continue to hire great technical people and expanding the sales force, he adds.

Facebook Connect has been announced for a while and now the closed Beta is going to be opened says Mark.

Bartelle then asks Zukerberg about facebook being a walled garden that is not jumping on the Open Source bandwagon. There is a transition from closed to open system and Facebook was one of the first to provide a development API, counters Mark.

Microsoft's claim to fame was its opening up its software to several hardwares says Mark. Facebook is now faced with the challenge of getting people to share their information online.


There is no way for Facebook to serve all the ways people share information concedes Mark. Over time people will have websites and use the Facebook platform to make it more decentralized, says Mark.

Facebook and connect are evolutions, says Mark. As poeple add applications, a new ecosystem has evolved. Now the model is more feed based, he claims. One example is the election conversations in the system..

Read more...

John Battelle , Jerry Yang (Yahoo! Inc.)

John Battelle , Jerry Yang (Yahoo! Inc.)
This interview of Jerry Yang by John Battelle is important for many reasons. The two that come to mind are that this event served as a precursor to the end of Yang's tenure as CEO of Yahoo and the fact the 'Jerry Yanging' actually became and expression.

It is surprising that Yang refers to the year as being 'extraordinary' for Yahoo. I would have used different words but then, that's just me. Battelle is a 'take-no-prisoners' interviewer who asks Yang all the questions.

He asks Yang if it was an ego issue for Yang in rejecting Microsoft's offer of $33 per share for Yahoo. Yang goes on to say that they did go back to Microsoft with the latter's offer but this time Microsoft walked away. Yang realizes that he may be blamed for this supposed blunder, possibly forever.

Yang says that despite this debacle, he respects Balmer and that none of it is personal.

Batelle next questions Yang on the Google deal which also went south. Monetizing assets at yahoo via Google were estimated at a 100s of millions. Yang said that as they were meeting with the Dept of Justice to convince them that this deal was good for the market. It would benefit users and advertisers said Yang. Google walked away from the deal.

He goes on to say that Yahoo search engine was still good. He point out that the government did not, in this case, look into Yahoo's History.

Batelle asks Yang about Yang's comeback as CEO after making money and whether he was the right guy? Yang stepped back in 2007. He was a joint CEO with David Filo.

Yang says that he does not take his position lightly. There has been a lot of change and he is proud of what Yahoo has become, a great platform company. He has no regrets, he says.

The vision for Yahoo: Yang says that Yahoo is a consumer brand that allows people to get what they want in the Internet in the way only Yahoo can. He says that people are returning to Yahoo, despite all the criticism. Yahoo is the consumer starting point.

Yahoo OS now allows 3rd parties build apps. It also allows social network applications. He speaks of the ad revenue model wherein an advertiser can monitor their sales on many websites through the Yahoo platform.

Is Yahoo going to buy again? Yes says Yang. It is an important part of growing talent and working with the start up community. He makes no comment on buying AOL.

When asked about the search competition with Google and the fact that Google is spending a lot more on research than Yahoo, Yang says its a question of how well capitalized they are in the search market. He goes on to say that Yahoo is well capitalized. He believes that Search is innovation based rather than capital based. Yahoo is not in maps like google and Microsoft is, which is capital based.

Yahoo is also in the cloud computing arena. It takes a certain amount of capital to compete in both search and display. They may be the only company to build data centers in this economy.

For Entrepreneurs:
Yahoo came out of a similar economic environment. He says that he would not have done things differently. Think Long term in this environment where share holders want things short term.

Yahoo is still changing the game, says Yang.

Read more...

Web 2.0 Summit 08: John Battelle,Tim O'Reilly

Web 2.0 Summit 08: John Battelle (Federated Media Publishing), Tim O'Reilly (O'Reilly Media, Inc.)
Tim O'Reilly and Batelle use Obama's theme of 'Yes we can' in using technology to solve complex problems. Many people dismiss Web 2.0 as advertising driven startups.

If you paid attention, it was about the network as a platform. This platform gave new potential to look at problems in new ways, harness data and the potential of users.

• Cloud computing, mobile apps are becoming part of the ecosystem, new opportunities, reinventing Government and the power grid.
• If there is no silver-lining in the down turn, we will remove the clutter.
• When Google can on the scene, most people had dismissed search.
• We are at those inflection points again.

The rest of the presentation is about the speakers in the summit.

Read more...