There were a number of great speakers the first day of the SuperNova Conference, but Chris Anderson made it most clear to the audience. The theme for the conference is “Networks are central instruments of the changes sweeping our world… and networks themselves must change to address novel demands.” The first day of this 3 day conference focused on Changing Networks: The evolving infrastructure.
Chris Anderson is the editor of Wired Magazine and well known for his book The Long Tail: Why the Future of Business Is Selling Less of More. He also has a degree in physics and has conducted research at Los Alamos National Laboratory. As he sees it, “The past decade was about finding new post institutional models on the web. The next decade will be about applying them to the real world.”
Having recently released his book Freewhich examines the rise of pricing models which give products and services to customers for free, he spoke about the democratization of tools from the web that make this possible. He talked of how 3D printers started out at about $7,000 and can now be purchased for only about $700. But he really hammered home his point that the web has been democratized and enables all kind of new possibilities when he talked of his latest company. DIY Drones works with folks that build amateur Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs). Its a company with no infrastructure, no office and when Chris was seeking a partner, the most qualified, talented candidate found via the Web turned out to be a 19 year old from Tijuana!
If you are unable to make it to the conference, you can tune into USTREAM’s SuperNova Channel or join the conversation at their Twitter Hashtag #sn09.
Chris Anderson, Speaker at SuperNova Conference
A Forum for Change in the Network Age
Founder Kevin Werbach, Bradley Horowitz of Google, Jonathan Zittrain of Harvard and Werner Vogels of Amazon
Past Panelists Robert Scoble, Nick O’Neill, Justin Smith and Dan Farber
SNAP Summit: FailCon is a MUST for this fall calendar! A full-day conference on social web development and startup culture that will be held at the Kabuki Hotel in San Francisco on October 27, 2009. And we have a 15% off for our readers!
15% Discount for Bub.blicio.us Readers!
In its fourth year, SNAP Summit was founded in 2006 by entrepreneurs Christian Perry and Cassandra Phillipps. Over 250 folks are expected to attend including independent developers, executives, investors, marketers, up-and coming startups, companies looking to get in on the next big thing and the most well known bloggers from the Web 2.0 and Social Web sphere.
This year’s SNAP Summit: FailCon is focused on startup failures, the trials faced by entrepreneurs every day and the exteremely challenging recovery from it. Hear how major players in the industry including Lane Becker, CEO of GetSatisfaction, Mark Pincus, CEO & Founder of Zynga, Kavin Stewart, CEO of LOLapps and Ron Conway, Angel and Partner at Baseline Ventures and more…Learn how they have dealt famously with startup troubles, recovered, and kept a positive, tenacious, and energetic attitude through it all. This is a must to attend for anyone considering business or web 2.0 fields as you WILL encounter these problems and make the mistakes presented at the Summit. Come join us and learn to prepare from those who have overcome them.
Benefits of a full conference pass include:
* Admission to all Main Stage, Workshop, and Demo talks
* Complimentary breakfast, snacks, and beverages
* Free wifi throughout the venue
* Nifty schwag from our sponsors
* Networking time to meet with major players in the online companies and communities.
StyleFeeder is a community-driven online shopping source that turns your shopping habits and bookmarks into feeds that can be used for personalized recommendations for others. This week the company sent out an announcement notifying the world of its profitably, something that’s rare in the web 2.0 startup scene.
StyleFeeder has only been around since late 2005, and raised $3.5 million in venture capital in 2007. With over 1 million registered users and only 6 full-time employees, StyleFeeder has remained lean in order to turn a profit in a relatively short amount of time.
A few main points to bring up regarding StyleFeeder’s ability to stay lean include outsourcing the company’s entire TI infrastructure over to Amazon Web Services. Freelancers were also brought in whenever possible in order to keep the developer staff small.
Equally as important, StyleFeeder also managed to leverage the Facebook platform just as it was emerging as a new trend. The Facebook platform enabled StyleFeeder to become much more social with less effort on building out its own social network. While StyleFeeder is essentially driven by user-generated content and has many socially-adept features that power its discovery tools among other sharing options, tapping into Facebook helped StyleFeeder delve deeper into social activity in order to grow its brand.
Even though StyleFeeder was among the lucky few to be catapulted into success thanks to the timing of the Facebook platform, there are other ways to still take advantage of Facebook’s large user base despite the decline in direct uptake or conversions through a Facebook application. A key highlight of StyleFeeder’s success through Facebook comes in the form of redistributed content spread amongst Facebook users. This can still be achieved with Facebook Connect, along with leveraging an established user base all the while.
StyleFeeder offers some good pointers on how to turn a web 2.0 profit. See here for details on Newsgator’s white paper, outlining even more ways in which to stay budget-conscious as a startup in a wary economy.
Even in this Recession, we are helping Web 2.0 companies monetize with advertising revenue. We invite you to come celebrate the good times at The Advertising 2.0 Party.
Previously:
Launch Party 2.0 at Web 2.0 Expo on April 1 at Club Six (500 guests, plus TechCrunch, BusinessWeek, Lalawag, LA Weekly, SF Weekly) — we’ve barely recovered since..
Marissa is the CEO and Co-founder of AD-Village. Ithelps website publishers make more revenue from online advertising by recommending top ads in a simple ad recommendations interface.
Today concludes our video coverage of Web 2.0 Expo with a final interview with IBM. Of course IBM is certainly not the first company you think of when you think Web 2.0, but like last year’s Web 2.0 Expo, the show was filled with many startups and sprinkled with a few big players. This year’s big companies were IBM, Microsoft, Salesforce.com and a few others. And much of the buzz was around ‘doing more with less’ through collaboration and cloud computing.
Cloud computing is all the rage these days and IBM is trying to get in on the action. At the end of last month, IBM announced an initiative dubbed “Open Cloud Manifesto” that calls for open standards to promote cloud computing. There’s a host of companies backing the manifesto, but oddly, the pioneers and leaders in cloud computing are absent.
According to Reuters, Amazon is reviewing the plan, Google has decided not to support it and Salesforce.com hasn’t publicly spoken on the matter yet. Also, Microsoft has publicly criticized IBM’s efforts.
On a lighter note, Bubblicious Reporter Jolie O’Dell spoke with Kathy M. Mandelstein, marketing director at IBM Software Group, IBM Rational Software and WW Programs, Events and Web, about cloud computing, LotusLive, and Rational AppScan. IBM’s overall theme at Web 2.0 Expo was “Smart Work” and helping people and businesses to work smarter through collaboration and collective intelligence. Hear what Mandelstein had to say:
In addition to IBM, the Bubblicious team talked with a few other companies offering social computing applications and services. If you missed any of our interviews from earlier this week, check them out: ooVoo, MindTouch, Topix, chi.mp, and our Web 2.0 Expo highlight reel.
Past Panelists Robert Scoble, Nick O’Neill, Justin Smith and Dan Farber
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StyleFeeder is a community-driven online shopping source that turns your shopping habits and bookmarks into feeds that can be used for personalized recommendations for others. This week the company sent out an announcement notifying the world of its profitably, something that’s rare in the web 2.0 startup scene.
![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](http://img.zemanta.com/reblog_e.png?x-id=8e6ec906-4f9c-439c-91fc-917db29327ee)