Excursions

SAN FRANCISCO--Two of the most commonly heard words in Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg's talk at the Web 2.0 Summit on Thursday were "iteration" and "evolution." Facebook, he repeatedly emphasized, is a company that attributes much of its growth and innovation to going through small changes and expansions.

The site launched in 2004 as a feature-light networking tool for students at Harvard, where Zuckerberg was an undergraduate at the time. It then gradually expanded to other colleges and then corporations before finally opening up to the public. Photo- and video-sharing was added. The &… Read more

SAN FRANCISCO--In a panel at the Web 2.0 Summit, Twitter co-founder and CEO Evan Williams wouldn't concretely answer one of Silicon Valley's biggest unanswered questions: how the company plans to make money.

But he gave some strong indications. Hint: it's not advertising.

He spoke obliquely of a possible business model that we've heard whispers about before, corporate accounts for businesses that want to use Twitter. Twitter is a communication channel, he said, and what it can do is "charge the people who want to use that communication channel commercially."

He named companies like … Read more

SAN FRANCISCO--This hasn't been the best year for a lot of people in the tech industry. But nobody can argue that Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang hasn't had a particularly rough time.

"Jerry Yang has had a tough nine months," Web 2.0 Summit host John Battelle of Federated Media said as he introduced the CEO for a talk at the conference here on Wednesday, and went on to list some of his company's much-documented woes. Yang, in a blue blazer and white checkered shirt, slouching a bit in his chair, replied, "That's quite … Read more

DANA POINT, Calif.--When the economy heads south, anything involving beaches and luxury resorts is a terrific recipe for guaranteed bad press.

That's why there was a fine line to be walked at the WebbyConnect conference, the second annual retreat-slash-ideafest organized by the directors of the annual Webby Awards. In the diverse vegetable patch of media conferences, this one is the organic arugula. The venue was the Ritz-Carlton Laguna Niguel resort, a sprawling beachfront complex and occasional filming spot for MTV's haute-reality soap Laguna Beach, just down the road from the St. Regis hotel where American International Group … Read more

DANA POINT, Calif.--For an event populated with digital media's self-styled futurists, there is a whole lot of talk at the WebbyConnect conference about a defunct television network.

Marketers, ad gurus, and production types alike showed a notable level of interest in TheWB.com, a video site launched by Warner Bros. this summer as a digital replacement for the youth-oriented television network that it shut down in 2006. Available on the new site are archived Warner Bros. shows like Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Dawson's Creek, as well as new just-for-the-Web series like Sorority Forever, which stars Jessica … Read more

DANA POINT, Calif.--Could the Information Age's fast-paced news overload be a boon to the old-media companies that it was supposedly going to force out of business?

That was one of the suggestions brought forth by Arthur Sulzberger Jr., chairman and publisher of The New York Times Company, at his keynote address at the WebbyConnect conference here Wednesday morning.

"Our 21st-century news cycle, with its trials and tribulations, feels even more immediate because of our access," he said. "It is reasonable to ask: Do we need all this news and information? Do we want all this … Read more

LONDON--These are tough times for Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg. The economy is in the tank, Madison Avenue still doesn't have full faith in the social network's ability to generate ad revenue, and entertainment-industry analysts estimate that in a few years the 24-year-old CEO could be in danger of losing his title of "world's youngest billionaire" to pop singer Miley Cyrus.

But Zuckerberg lucked out on Friday with his keynote "fireside chat" at the Future of Web Apps conference. Interviewed onstage by conference organizer Ryan Carson, Zuckerberg wasn't subject to any particularly difficult … Read more

LONDON--A lot of hands in the audience went up at the Future of Web Apps conference when Facebook senior platform manager Dave Morin kicked off his talk at the conference with the question "How many people have built something on Facebook Platform before?"

Fewer went up when Morin then asked the crowd how many had used Facebook Connect, the company's new data-portability initiative. It's live now, he said.

Facebook unveiled Facebook Connect in May amid a flurry of other companies' data-portability announcements, like Google's Friend Connect and MySpace's Data Availability, which has partners like … Read more

LONDON--On Thursday afternoon at the Future of Web Apps conference, I had to make a choice: Was I going to blog about a talk hosted by Six Apart engineer David Recordon, talking about the "open social Web," or a talk by Ben Huh, the "Chief Cheezburger" of goofy "lolcat" meme site ICanHasCheezburger.com?

Recordon's talk would invariably be an insightful look into issues like OpenID and OpenSocial, which have faded from the headlines in recent months but are still a hot topic in the developer community. But the talk could prove to be … Read more