Web 2.0 is a phrase coined by O’Reilly Media in 2003 and popularized by the first Web 2.0 conference in 2004. It refers to a new generation of Internet full of social-networking sites, wikis and folksonomies. Given the successes of 2.0 from companies like YouTube, MySpace, and Facebook, it is understandable that people want to jump ahead of the game, catching the next wave, even by speculation. There is an interesting diagram worth noticing, called 2007 Web Trend, which includes Web 2.5 applications.

Fortunately, our seasoned speakers shed lights on the 3.0 myth.

• Internet was created to connect people together, which has been carried on as the fundamental base from Web 1.0, 2.0, to 3.0.
• Internet connectivity is important. Watch out for technology advances, better availability, and policy improvements. For example, 2.0’s success is partially based on broadband network.
• Web standards are important. More importantly, who will drive the adoption of standards? Obviously, open source society will play a major role.
• Web technology will further expand into everyday life, which will largely change social behaviors of human society. Apple iPhone could be a good start.
• Browsers and browser like applications will prevail with enhanced security capabilities as they control both content delivery and application delivery.
• New business models and new ecosystems will be created for 3.0, just as Google Adsense and virtual currency from online gaming and virtual worlds for 2.0.
• Web 3.0 is still in its infancy. The judgment call will be made by Internet users. As a good example, there are 400 copycats of YouTube in China. Only the ones that satisfy the end users the best will eventually survive and prosper.

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Here are my notes:

• It is expensive to run a company in US, but the return is also more lucrative.
• Generally speaking, labor cost is cheaper in China but not true for skillful engineers.
• Successful business models from US Internet companies form a good start point for their Chinese siblings but that’s far from enough.
• Google AdWords is a good way to lure customers to the site but it is not the only way, and it is not necessary the best way. Most time, it is not.
• Chinese companies face more challenges to keep company secrets.

The moderator was Richard Lim, who is a veteran VC. He felt pity that Google Adsense came out too late. Otherwise, one of the companies that his firm invested could be saved during bubble bust since the company had fantastic page view growth. In that sense, Google’s eco-system helped Web 2.0 boom.

Overall, it is an interesting panel discussion for these that have strong entrepreneur spirits in their bones to enjoy!

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in 1999 as a B2B trading company, Alibaba survived the Internet dark age, and becomes a leading Internet player in the world. In 2003, Alibaba launched consumer ecommerce site Taobao, which eventually became the dominant C2C platform in 2005, surpassing eBay China. In August 2005, Yahoo! Inc. paid $1 billion in cash for a 40 percent stake in Alibaba, along with its China assets. In 2007, Alibaba entered business software service area by announcing Alisoft.

John Wu, full of wit and humors, gave us a deep inside look at Alibaba’s successes.

• Be cost conscience: Alibaba was among the earliest to cut cost in 2000 with the bubble bust on the horizon. Being local, they started to leverage Chinese high-tech workforce long before outsourcing became a hot topic in Wall Street.
• Be adaptive: Localization is the key to the success of international companies while, most of the time, it is easy to say than get done correctly. It is fatal to be ideological. The success of Alibaba’s B2B and C2C platforms are deeply rooted in its understanding of Chinese culture.
• Think out of box: When Alibaba entered C2C market in 2003, Eachnet (or eBay China) conquered more than 90% of the market. Out of the box, there were more Chinese who wanted to trade via some Internet C2C platform and who were not on Eachnet yet.
• Stay paranoid: In IT industry, only paranoids could survive. It is important to stay ahead of competitors. Through the Yahoo-Alibaba deal, Alibaba could leverage Yahoo’s technologies to support its further growth.
• Catch the China wave: Given its population and growth rate, China’s potential is still not fully fledged. A rich China means more ecommerce. There are bigger waves coming.

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About 99 percent of Google’s revenue comes from advertising. …… Not only does Google depend on ads, it relies on one source—AOL—for about 12 percent of its AdSense revenue. If AOL terminated its contract, Google would feel some pain and its stock price could take a significant hit. …… For a company that depends so much on a single type of revenue, Google has stretched itself awfully thin.

However, Adam missed an important point, which is that online ad revenue is growing faster and faster, from 25% in 2007 to ~40% this year. As the market leader, Google could enjoy the growth even without doing anything.

The second article — Google love waning: Has Google peaked? — is from Donna Bogatin at ZDNet and is published in October 14th, 2006. Obviously, Donna missed the fact that Microsoft’s financial success is based on its monopoly position. If Google behave as bad as Microsoft, Google will do very well financially in the next few years. Every company would behave like Microsoft when they have monopoly positions. which has been approved by the history. That’s why we have anti-trust law. Donna is right that Google is not the Good Witch. As its position secured, it starts to play evil.

Google’s biggest problem is on its own success. First, it grows too fast. According to its own public data, it has grown from 682 in 2002 to 9,378 in Q3, 2006. Any company growing that fast could have management issues in the long run. The company could end up lack of necessary processes for a sustainable long-term growth. We had Gmail Disaster near the end of 2006, which caused the loss of user emails. The good news is that the fast-growth issue is not only for Google, but also for Microsoft. Techcrunch has a good article about it.

Second, Google needs to upgrade adsense to 2.0. The problem for the current version of adsense is that it requires that one homepage ONLY contains one topic. Otherwise, the homepage wouldn’t be classified correctly. Thus, I keep getting useless ads on this blog site.

All the above concerns are for the long-term. Google’s near-term future is very bright. Its stock chart shows that it will break through in this year, at least reaching $600. What’s your bet?

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I have the following plugins installed:

1. Adsense-Deluxe+: This is for Google adsense and Yahoo publisher network.
   
2. CaptCha!: This helps avoid spams.
3. Gallery2 Integration
4. Inline Google Maps
5. Snap Preview Anywhere Plugin: This generates pop-up snapshot of web pages.
6. Social Bookmarks
7. Spelling Checker

I will keep blogging!

Update: I have replaced Adsense-Deluxe+ with Adsense. I have added WP-Amazon. I turned off visual rich editor.

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Finally, I choose Captcha! since it is easy to install and my web host has GDlib pre-installed. In order for the plugin to work, one needs to download some twisted TTF fonts freely available from this site.

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Staying focused is one issue; that’s the problem of information overload. The other problem is information underload. Being flooded with information doesn’t mean we have the right information ……

What we need is intelligence in the Internet age, which, IMHO, contains two faces:

One aspect is presented by a good article from CNet. Technologies make knowledge much easier to access and make collaboration across the world much easier. However, it still depends on human beings to make things happen. The partial answer to it includes social network web applications, which enhance collaboration among people across the whole world. There are plenty of successful stories already: digg.com, youtube.com, del.icio.us, and flickr.

The second aspect is still on the technology side. We need a smart information aggregator, which, based on our daily behaviors, crawls and mines information automatically. It would like our personal secretary, helping us focus on the right information and/or the right communication. I believe that search technology is only the start of the wave, and more will come, which will form the core of Web 2.0.

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Due to the recent cold weather, I lost the Internet connection from Comcast, which gave me a good opportunity to enjoy life without the Internet. Amazingly, I had much more time to read books, to exercise and to think about the true meaning of my ow life. Then, I realized that how much time I have wasted everyday through the Internet.

The real problem is that we are lack of tools to help us rate homepages, filter out junk information and find what we want. One good comparison is between Internet news (Google news and Yahoo news) and normal newspapers. Newspapers have opinions while Internet news are still lack of. Yes, you can do a search based on key words but you cannot get what you want. In the real world, you have the basic ideas of what you get when you open Washington Post or New York Times. Then, we end up doing a lot of editing job by ourselves.

Let’s see how far Web 2.0 will go!

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Fundamentally, its PE value is way high at 50 while its competitors seem to be more humble: 20 for SBC and less than 10 for Dish Network. Its Q4’s earning estimate is 3 cents short compared to the same quarter last-year, which means that its stock could fall in the short term. Further, price pressure from DSL would cut into its profit. It has already offered discount to lure new customers. DSL providers are catching up quickly. Overall, Comcast’s long term image is not as bright as its TV commercial shows.

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