Web 2.0: The 24 Minute Documentary

Nice set of information and guests.

The green backdrop worked well.

BUT, this video has quite possibly the most annoying and distracting music layer I have ever know. At the start it was nice, like it was “bringing us in” to the documentary. Then it should have stopped! It got to the point that I could not focus on what they were saying as the music was making me feeling like I was waiting for everything to get interesting.

If you do another, scrap the music and perhaps intersperse a few screen caps etc of anything being talked about or stats etc.

All in all, great video, good word, kill the music and you are on to a winner!..

GuinchoGuy.com

I watched the first few minutes. Can’t believe just about everyone thinks that we are not in a bubble right now…

Good job. I think it’s interesting to hear from some of the hot start-ups that are pushing web 2.0

I think it would be really interesting to see if you can get some interviews with old media leaders to compare this to… I’d love to hear how much larger, slower companies would tackle the same questions. I’m guessing there would be a lot of “user participation is great… under the right circumstances, where we control the outcome”

One thing that gives me a lot of confidence is that most of these guys have humility and don’t present as cocky as the paper millionaires from five years ago… go back and look at the very telling “startup.com” movie or one of the other myriad documentaries on web startups… those CEO’s were over the top and acted more like spoiled children than businessmen.

Good work, turn it into a podcast and make it a series.

http://cleaningupmylife.blogspot.com

1 CEO is over 40….bubble!

I second Don’s comment…make it a podcast series

CEOs:) of what? these are 2 to 10 man companies…

bubble it is!

Google and Apple were both started by two guys, Microsoft by three.

What’s with the annoying music? It sounds like a low-budget UFO conspiracy theory program you’d see on some local cable channel.

I’m not sure that “bubble or not” is the right question to be asking about Web 2.0. Given the fact that no one outside of the TechCrunch readership would even recognize any of the names of companies and/or the people interviewed, clearly the question should be, “Is Web 2.0 relevant to the general public?” The folks that you interviewed seem to think that adding an “r” at the end of a company name will get them more funding (which is similar behavior to the 1.0 bubble).

Re: Kevin
Kevin, the trick with the bubble is that when everybody believes that we *are* in a bubble - there’s no bubble actually.

So, what we call a bubble exists only if only few suspect it’s out there.

Regards, Denis

This is sort of ok, but it is so culturally narrow. I like Californians but they are sort of like strong coffee; if you drink too much you get diarrhoea.

Anyway, thanks for the vid. It’s ok

Re: Denis/Kevin

Alternatively, a bubble can only be determined by looking backward in time- we won’t/can’t know until later if we are in a bubble now.

-Ben

Anyone know if there is any way to get a high quality copy of this? I would love to show it to my students this fall when I talk about Web 2.0

*EDIT* Michael - is there anyway I could get a hold of a high quality version of this, I’d love to show it to my students when I talk about Web 2.0 (sorry for the previous message - hit submit without thinking)

speaking of ‘what is web 2.0?’ - what is/are tags? is there a spec/rfc somewhere for what a tag is - yes, i googled/etc.

i have some concept, but it seems so amorphous (correct word?) as to be nearly useless. my google feed reader (beta) said this post had no tags and then offered a list of 5 or so tags - one of which was ‘web2.0′ and another which was ‘web 2.0′ - with the space.

can there be multi-word tags? is there any syntax to suggest semantic meaning?

danke.

tags: -clarity web2.0 web 2.0 web_2.0 web-2.0 web20 +confusion what?

They talk about a website called something like “You Too” - what is that? Do you guys have an URL?

In fact, they mention a lot of websites, has anyone compiled a list of them? :- )

We are definatly in a bubble.

First bubble = launch an IPO.
This bubble = Pray to god someone will buy you.

It’s funny, they both share one common factor.. 18 months from now,

.. dismiss my last comment, I think I’ve heard of youTUBE before ..

* Anders goes looking for a bridge to jump out from ..

We are definatly in a bubble.

First bubble = launch an IPO.
This bubble = Pray to god someone will buy you.

It’s funny, they both share one common factor.. 18 months from now, less than 5% of the companies profilied on this site will actually exist.

Excellent video… I would have liked a little more discussion on actual working business models as opposed to just saying that they have to exist. Thanks for getting together.

Gag. Whats with everyone being from California? Maybe you could use some of your $40K/month from your ad revenue to actually get a balanced view from CEOs all over the country. A SF-area only circlejirk doesn\’t represent an industry. Some of the most successful (and, gasp, profitable) web companies (feedburner, 37signals, threadless) are in the midwest and on the east coast (too many to name, but we all know the list). If you want to see if there\’s a bubble you need to get out of your own bubble.

Enjoyed the video. Nice to see a lot of disagreement about business models. That must show things are healthy, IMHO. Pity it had to be filmed with one camera, since a little more interrogation would have been a good thing. Maybe do that for Web 2.0 documentary 2.0…

The Star Wars comment by Aaron Cohen is great! I guess that means that Web 2.0 (MySpace) is a failing Republic who has been slowly infiltrated by the Emperor (Rupert Murdoch)! Who will be Anakin? Mike, you?

Who gets to be Yoda? Tim Berners-Lee? Or Tim O’Reilly?

BTW, since this is on Photobucket, I assume it’s OK to reproduce this on my site? Let me know if it isn’t.

how many of these CEO’s have profitable businesses, or even a business model that approaches profitability? I agree with an earlier poster in that you need a much broader group of interviewees. All these guys basically said the same thing: They kinda sorta think there may be a bubble, but they all damn sure hope they get acquired soon!!

This is like asking Paris Hilton to tell us how to increase longevity in one’s acting career.

Very amusing guest list. Doubt that any of these companies has a lucrative exit (say $200 MM+). You might want to interview CEOs of promising web 2.0 companies–or are they too busy executing to sit down for the interview?

Web 2.0 is sooo last month. Let talk about Web 3.0 and how it’ll kill web 2.0.

Couldn’t make it past the first 3 minutes. Sorry, I really really wanted to. Something about listening to these unbelievably smug wannabe-CEOs made me want to physically gag. It’s too bad, because I’d like to actually post about this and dissect all the comments on my site, but it just gets me too riled up, and I haven’t had enough coffee today.

Had I been invited, however, my answers were:

What is Web 2.0? It is a label that is all-encompassing of new Internet startups. Predominantly, the label applies to ‘companies’ with little-to-no business models but seem adamant that they ‘aren’t just like all those dot-coms that had no business models’. No, they are worse, because they didn’t LEARN from the dot-bombs.

Are we in a bubble? YES. Jobster @ $50mil. Nuff said.

What are the business models that will work on the web today? Advertising, subcriptions, charging services, and selling stuff. Oh, that’s the same model that worked before. Surprise surprise surprise.

What is the role of publishers in a user generated world? One word: quality.

How important and how big is the early adopter crowd? Depends entirely on the space. In social networking it could be millions. In useless browser plugins it could be dozens.

How about you guys do this again without all the softball questions? I’d be happy to help…

You’ll know if we’re in a bubble if a ‘remix’ or satire of this video appears on YouTube within 24 hours

MOose asked about web 3.0… That’s still just a gleam in marketing’s eye, but Web 2.5 has made it to the design phase. More at http://web2dot5.blogspot.com/

Could you please post a downloadable version? Some of us like our video “To Go”

Haaaa,

You guys are genius, this is some of the best mocumentary comedy ever! How did you find actors that could play CEO smug so well? And a script that full of buzzwords deserves an award.

That Arrington character is my favourite!

Well done!

A bubble is pretty easy to define in commercial terms. If you can’t prove (using your businesses’ actual financials) an ROI of 8-10xprofit, or 2-5xrevenue, then the investor is taking an unsubstantiated bet. Invest your own money in your own company by all means, but when you start investing money in other people’s businesses in this way hey, congratulations, you’re part of an economic bubble!

Good job on the video and interview technique; it can be a tricky process.

All around, a lot of good input from some key players in the industry (and some not so key).

In response to some of the poopoo-ing going on- these guys might be huffy CEO’s and things, but they do bring a certain authority and impact to the table that helps set the terms that have become trapped in this “bubble” into stone. It’s like history being written.

I’m *very* interested in what the term ‘Web 2.0′ encapsulates because it’s a very big hint as to what is NOT in Web 3.0 and therefore gives us kind of a base to build upon.

Do we care what will happen in the next bubble? Most certainly. I don’t know about everyone else, but for me it’s about two things- The thrill of new technologies blossoming with activity and money.

I may be stating the obvious here but judging from the video, that’s mainly what we’re doing here.

Oh yeah, and I agree with Jay; I’d be much more interested to see the minds behind the promising companies than the already-established companies– they are less smug and much more firey, I think.

Also, I think it’s funny that the Dead2.0 guy left a comment despite being left out of the interview. Hah. You definitely should’ve included that guy.

I’m out.

Steve Milener seems very optimistic about the whole thing NOT being Bubble-like. The rest of the CEO’s do seem optimistic; however, they seem to be in touch with reality a bit more.

This has inspired me to put together a list of what Web 2.0 is NOT about.

Web 2.0 is NOT…

…a business model. It is a buzzword; an idea. A business model involves selling a product, service, or ad space; that’s it. There aren’t any other ways to generate money other than stealing.

More at http://www.bumpbox.com/article.php?id=64

David: Except that no business can ever “prove” ROI. Especially if neither IPO nor aquisition are a given (and, yes, VC’s still need an actual exit more often than not).

Even if you took an online service, baselined income per user, took the last 8 months of user growth, averaged future growth based on the discounted last 6 months and applied the low range of advertising to it… It’s conservative but it isn’t proven.

And for sevice, B2B or eyeball plays it’s even more difficult to “prove” revenues, nevermind ROI.

I’d also tend to agree with Paul Kedrovsky that bubbles are an inherent part of the VC world, can be very healthy and shouldn’t necessarily be feared. What should be feared is over-exuberance on the part of analysts, journalists, retail investors, etc. That’s when things get shaky and dangerous.

Otherwise, as long as VC’s are hitting their IRR’s, businesses are largely succeeding, and funding is flowing in a relatively sane way (ie: not 80% of a billion dollar fund into video sites) it should all tend to balance out.

I interviewed a few of those featured within the video on my site nPost.com. You can read more background on them at:

Scott Milener (Browster)
http://www.npost.com/interview.jsp?intID=INT00147

Joe Kraus (JotSpot)
http://www.npost.com/interview.jsp?intID=INT00123

Gautam Godhwani (Simply Hired)
http://www.npost.com/interview.jsp?intID=INT00156

If there are so many Web 2.0 jobs, please send some more to Austin, TX.

Liked 4. CEO over 40, definitely a bubble!

I dont think this is a bubble, but I do see some silly investments.

auren hit it right on the head… maybe a bit of a financing bubble, but not a liquidity bubble (altho perhaps not a huge # of acquisition / liquidity exits). perhaps 10-20 Flickr-size deals a year, 2-3 Shopping.com deals, and maybe 1 Skype deal. enough to keep angels & VCs putting money into it.

These comments make me think that if someone created a Web 2.0 version of “This is Spinal Tap” or “Best In Show”, it’d be a hit..

you web types should stick to writing about the net and leave video work to the professionals.

green might work on a site but as a backdrop….. yuck!!! and what is up with that guys tan? the guy from Browster or whatever it was called!!

and the other posters are right, lose the cheesy muzak!!!

Only the people who realize we’re in a bubble (or something like it), and can anticipate it, will be able to survive through it bursting. Guess which of these companies won’t be around in 2 years?

We don’t (yet) have crazy IPOs shooting off every week–and let’s hope it stays that way. But the correct approach to this should be cautiously optimistic, in my opinion.

Emma: The green wasn’t that bad, but this was pretty poorly (hastily?) edited video. You need to tell your viewers who they are looking at more than once–it is easy to forget when you’re not looking at someone everyone knows by site (David Sifry is not Elton John or Bill Clinton), and it sort of jumped around at times–the whole Firefox discussion sort of came out of nowhere, for example (which reminds me, no one uses Safari? I thought it was tres cool to use a Mac if you owned a Web 2.0 start up? ;)). And finally, everytime Mike Arrington laughed, it would echo over the next speaker for a second or two–what was that about?

I think it is safe to say the producers were more concerned with the content than the presentation, though.

Ugh, that should be “sight” not “site” … I should proofread, or something.