Beating the Bezos blahs

SAN FRANCISCO--I've always been underwhelmed by the promise--you might call it hype--surrounding Web 2.0, but judging by the early turnout at a three-day conference here given over to the topic of all things 2.0-ish, the gold rush fever shows little sign of breaking. The event kicked off today and it's jammed. So much so that yours truly was banished to the cheap seats in the Moscone convention center, which is the venue for the event. I'm watching Jeff Bezos, who is one floor up, on the big screen. That's what you get for not showing up early enough. As the late, great Kurt Vonnegut would have put it, so it goes.

Bezos, who delivered the opening keynote, is using his "post-game" interview to give a company commercial for Amazon.com's Web services. It's the classic blah, blah, blah self-promotion you found during the Web 1.0 days and probably will encounter when Web 3.0 get-togethers begin to dot the horizon. The big announcement: Amazon's S3 on-demand storage service now holds more than 5 billion objects. Oh joy.

I think the folks sitting in the nearby aisles must be as bored as I am. I've already had to turn around to shush the guys behind me who were chattering away at top decibel. Lots of people reading their PDAs and checking their e-mail. No disrespect to Bezos--he's only responding to the questions posed by host Tim O'Reilly--but Amazon's CEO bored 'em silly today. Maybe next time he can consult a good book on the subject. I can even point him to a good book retailer if it's hard to find one online.