Fireside Chat at Web 2.0 Berlin
I'd forgotten I'd done this video interview during the Web 2.0 Expo in Berlin last month until Paul Andrews sent a link to my brother, with the comment: "Tim is always so refreshing because he can be so candid. Did you see this great wide-ranging video? Nobody else is pointing this stuff out because it might cost them a VC or market point."
Intruders.tv talks to Tim O'Reilly about social media, OpenSocial, Microsoft and Google market dominance, Facebook, genomics, Bubble 2.0 and, of course, the iPhone.
Yes, it's true that I said in the interview that Web 2.0 is a stupid name, that the companies trying to exploit the social graph are going about it all wrong, and that we're entering a period of consolidation where the big players are going to start trying to capture more value than they create. I had a bad cold, so I was perhaps a little more dour about the prospects for the future than I normally am. But I also talked about the potential still ahead of us -- in applications built on the social graph (as soon as they give the users real control over their own data), in genomics, and in the re-engagement of computing with the physical world.
The interview really was a "fireside chat," in a fabulous supper club in Berlin, at a party hosted by Felix Petersen of Plazes, Tariq Krim of Netvibes, and Rodrigo Sepulveda of Vpod.tv.
tags: facebook, google, web_2.0
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[12.20.07 09:37 AM]
Hi Tim,
Thanks for the video its excellent. But I was wondering about what you said at the end of it about the telephone companies. Your suggestion is very interesting and in my opinion it would definitely work. My only problem is whether you are recommending the phone companies to lock users in by creating the very same walled gardens around the data and not let the users own their own data?
thanks
[12.20.07 11:58 AM]
Shayan --
I always feel that I'm walking a knife-edge between describing market dynamics and making recommendations. When I say "data is the Intel inside," I'm always walking this line. But I figure that if I make this clear, people will be aware of the risks, at the cost of advertising the lock-in more widely. It's a bit like publicizing security vulnerabilities.
That being said, I think that this kind of "lock in" isn't necessarily bad. Amazon gets a kind of network effect lock in on being the best global book catalog by having so many comments. But that's still good for the user.
Similarly, if phone companies give us more access to our data, they will become stickier.
The key is to always make sure that you create more value than you capture. Allowing data portability and export is a good way to ensure this. If people can walk, you can only keep them by delivering value.
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Greg Tallent [12.19.07 10:09 AM]
Hi Tim, just watched your excellent video and picked up on "social graph and services that build on that". I agree, we really are at the early stages of social networking. And the key is to provide everyone with an easy way to move across networks. However, there is one more thing that should be mentioned, and that is social networks need a focus, if they are to be really useful. We've put a few up:
www.HelpWorldClimate.com, www.HelpWorldPoverty.com, www.HelpWorldPeace.com, www.HelpWorldWildlife.com