Web 2.0: It’s a wrap

A few highlights from the Web 2.0 conference today:

Pay per appearance

Factoid I learned from Bob Wyman of PubSub tonight (which should have been disclosed in some way during the conference, in the interests of transparency): You know those 13 cool start-ups that were unveiled as part of Web 2.0’s Wednesday afternoon Launch Pad? They each had to pay $5,000 for their 6 to 8 minutes of fame. That’s the price of buzz today, I suppose.

A question for Michael Powell

Thursday afternoon, Jeff Jarvis stood up during the panel on the Future of Entertainment and made the compelling point that the discussions on stage all revolved around big media content in the blockbuster economy, when we should be discussing conversation and sharing and experiences around social experiences. Agreed.

Next, I asked a question of Michael Powell, who had just been waxing eloquent about the opportunities that digital technologies will bring about. There was a glaring lack of pushback about some of the actions he took during his tenure as chairman of the FCC, so I rose and made the point that in “Darknet,” Howard Rheingold and I criticized some of the FCC’s actions during his tenure, particularly the broadcast flag mandate. But those policies contrasted sharply, suggested, with the forward-looking vision he raised during the panel.

I asked, are you will to participate in helping out organizations that are devoted to open source media and open source software, now that you’re free to choose your own path? (Left unsaid: You’re no doubt weighing offers of perhaps a million dollars or more from corporate interests. What about participating in a public-spirited endeavor for no money, but one that will help you sleep soundly every night?)

Powell responded that he didn’t think penance was called for — the FCC’s media rules cover broadcasting but not the wider mediasphere — but he said he’d look into it.

I spoke with him afterward — he’s a warm, engaging, incredibly bright and charismatic figure — and gave him a one-page fact sheet about Ourmedia. I hope we’ll hear back from him soon.

Google co-founder’s surprise visit

Google co-founder Sergey Brin made a surprise visit to the conference this afternoon. John Battelle pointed out that Barry Diller, Terry Semel and Jonathan Miller all spoke about their portal companies’ content plays. Brin responded by saying that Google is not in the content creation game . “Our philosophy is really quite different. … We’re not about keeping people on google, we’re about sending them off.” He noted that you can go straight to Yahoo Financial or Yahoo Maps straight from Google search results.

Brin also talked about video search and said, “People underestimate the quality of the information present in video. “

He pointed to the Discovery Channel as an example of primo vetted content. “You look at the credits and there are a hundred people who worked on something. ” No mention of citizen video.

Teens make the day

Five teenagers strolled onto the stage and talked about their experiences with new gadgets. One said he spent $50-$60 a month in ringtones. (Are we raising a generation of ringtone junkies?) At that, the audience went, “Whoa!”

Some brilliant moments, like when 17-year-old Jake said he watches Fox News “because you have to know your enemy.”

And when 18-year-old Sasha confessed she had 1,500 songs on her iPod and paid for only 10 of them. “I never buy music anymore.”

17-year-old Sean copped to using BitTorrent to download copyrighted materials. And he liked online comparison shopping. “Froogle is awesome!”

When the moderator asked the kids at one point, “Where would you go to buy a CD player?,” they all looked at him like he was from Mars. (Portable CD players are so yesterday.) The audience ate it up.

Supporting the public interest

eBay founder Pierre Omidyar, who’s worth a few billion, outlined the Omidyar Network, a $400 million mission-based investment fund. The network plans to spend that amount over the next five years, chiefly to for-profit public-spirited companies (but also to nonprofits). Last year, they paid out $30 million to nonprofits, $10 million to for-profits, he said.

Omidyar : “We’re about fostering individual, social or political self-empowerment” — putting tools in people’s hands to give them an opportunity to have an impact on society.
“Business can be a force for good.”

Final thoughts: On the whole, another first-rate conference, one of the most important of the year. John Battelle’s dry wit was very much in evidence. I wish we’d seen Jason Calacanis on stage, though, discussing AOL’s purchase of Weblogs Inc. Not enough emphasis placed on emerging media forms like videoblogging, podcasting and aggregation sites like Ourmedia and NowPublic.

Final photos coming this weekend. Saturday, I’m moderating a panel at the annual Digital Storytelling Festival.

JD Lasica, founder of Inside Social Media, is also a fiction author and the co-founder of the cruise discovery engine Cruiseable. See his About page, contact JD or follow him on Twitter.