This was Liz Gannes’s rundown of this year’s Web 2.0 conference:

If you were looking to learn something new, this week’s Web 2.0 Summit was not the place to be. However, if you were planning to catch up, make contacts and swap business cards, then the Palace Hotel’s grandiose hallways were where all the action was. It was rare to chat up anyone at Web 2.0 who had anything positive to say about the official content or news. The consensus seemed to be same old, same old; the reason to break out the checkbook and skip out on real work was to mingle.

Compare that to what I wrote last year:

Overall, I’ve found the conference to be a bit too insular, the San Fran/Silicon Valley “in crowd” talking to each other about, well, each other. And, talking about products directed at each other and not my sisters or my friends or whatever. Established companies and startups looking for cash all telling us how cool they are without talking much about how interesting the space is becoming. What’s missing is how we move from where we are today, where Web 2.0 is almost blasé, to real conversations and what the implications are of tagging and open APIs and whatever.

I can’t think of one session from last year that wowed me from a technical standpoint. There was NOTHING new last year, so I’m surprised at the disappointment from folks this year.

Update: More from Read/WriteWeb.

Update 2: Oops, didn’t notice that Om didn’t write that piece even though it’s at his blog. It was written by Liz Gannes.

One of the weirdest presentations at Web 2.0 was given by the folks from Second Life, a game that had essentially created a second world for its users to develop and modify and improve. The world has tools that allow real users to create virtual objects, buy and sell land, and establish businesses inside the virtual world. Think massive multiplayer role playing games (MMORPG) with an open story.

In case you were curious what the game looked like and wanted more information on it, Rocketboom is featuring it in one of their recent video blog (vlog) posts. Rocketboom is pretty interesting generally anyway, so if you’re looking for video blogs to subscribe to, this might be one to try.

The founder of Ebay, Pierre Omidyar, is on stage right now talking about a new fund he has created called The Omidyar Network. He’s started the fund with over $400 million of his own money with the goal of fostering business that “does good” in the world. He wants to fund businesses and non-profit and policy enterprises that have as a direct result of their business model the direct empowerment of individuals. This could be in terms of economic empowerment (a la Ebay), social empowerment, or anything else.

It’s an interesting idea. While I’ve been turned off by the whole VC frenzy around here, this one makes me smile. Business can do good, business does do good, and anything that can encourage businesses that do actually do good, well, I’m all for that. It’s a very progressive thing.

They do want to actually make a return on their investment and it’s not a charity in the traditional sense (though I’m not sure how it can’t be for “policy efforts” or non-profits). It will be interesting to watch this grow and proceed. I hope it works…

The panel on the stage right now at Web 2.0 consists of a number of teenagers and an analyst from Piper Jaffray, Safa Rashtchy. The interesting thing so far is that they ALL use MySpace, recently acquired by Fox Interactive Media. I didn’t get MySpace.com and still don’t, really, but since all of the kids up there mentioned that they spend a LOT of time on that site, I guess it was a good purchase for FIM.

The only college student on the panel did say that it’s not as important once you get to college, apparently because Facebook.com takes over. Just thought you’d want to know…

Update: I forgot to mention that one of the kids said he spends $50-60 a month on ringtones. On ringtones. Can you believe that?

Kareem just passed on this reaction to the conference so far. I agree with most of it, and it’s rather disappointing. This conference, including the mingling and networking going on around here are focused on monetization and investment. Which is fine, but it isn’t what the conference was billed as.

The most interesting session so far was the tagging workshop early and the various little “Show Me” sessions. As I complained yesterday, the big names are cool, but they aren’t interesting. We haven’t done enough to discuss any of the bigger issues coming up with the new APIs. Might’ve been interesting to talk about how big companies like ESPN.com or CNet or CNN can participate in this space, but maybe I’m being a bit selfish. Of course, I find it telling that CNN.com, one of the biggest content portals/sites only sent one guy.

Overall, I’ve found the conference to be a bit too insular, the San Fran/Silicon Valley “in crowd” talking to each other about, well, each other. And, talking about products directed at each other and not my sisters or my friends or whatever. Established companies and startups looking for cash all telling us how cool they are without talking much about how interesting the space is becoming. What’s missing is how we move from where we are today, where Web 2.0 is almost blasé, to real conversations and what the implications are of tagging and open APIs and whatever.

Some areas I wish we had covered more in official conference sessions: opening tagging to the wider community (to non-techies/non-bloggers)… what functionality would we like to see in browsers to augment Web2.0? What are the characteristics of a Web 2.0 app this year vs. last (a workshop on this topic isn’t enough).

Just some ideas. Given some time to think about it, I’m sure I could come up with a ton more…

Google just launched Google Reader on Google Labs. Reader is an online RSS aggregator similar to BlogLines and NewsGator. The main thing I noticed that I really like is that they went label/tag based instead of folders, similar to GMail. If you’re used to the GMail organization paradigm (and I love it, by the way), this will make a lot of sense to you. It has some support for podcasts and enclosures, so that will be interesting to watch as well.

Update: Import doesn’t seem to work right in Safari.

I’m watching the Sxip presentation given by CEO Dick Hardt. I spoke to their marketing person yesterday and went to their little shindig up in their suite and have to say, I’m still skeptical. Very quickly, Sxip aims to create a user-centric identity system they’re dubbing Identity 2.0. The idea is a single sign-on (SSO) system that, unlike systems like Passport, puts you in control of which companies host your data, what data to share, and which data from which provider to share. So, theoretically, if you had an ESPN.com account, you could make ESPN.com the authority for one of your online identities. If you went to Amazon.com, in a Sxip/Identity 2.0 world, you’d be able to tell Amazon to use ESPN.com to authenticate you. ESPN.com would only pass on the registration data you authorized to Amazon. Sxip doesn’t have to be the solution for Identity 2.0, but of course they want to be the preferred choice.

The problem I see with this system is that it’s too cumbersome for users. The problem I have isn’t that I have multiple identities on different sites, but that I have to fill out the same email, name, address, phone number, etc. all over the place. It’s annoying. I do actually really like having multiple identities.

The system doesn’t do anything about naive users making “bad” privacy choices. Instead, if I add my cell phone, say, for a particular site to use, I might just always opt to have my authority site (home site in Sxip jargon) keep that data too. Just for ease of use, if nothing else.

What I’d rather see is a browser/computer centric solution that would allow users to store certain data on the client and then come up with a microformat-style system where the browser or a plugin could fill in the form using the hints provided in the form.

That would be simple, and easy for users to understand. Every time they add data to the local schema, it’s always convenient and it makes it more difficult for users to make “bad” privacy choices. People just read forms, see the fields that get filled in, and then can either just delete the fields they see filled in. Perhaps the persona idea from Web 2.0 could be stored locally as well. Anyway, anything that works well on the client and keeps data with me I think is better. Most users won’t know this, but will get the convenience of SSO and simplified registration. That’s all we really need, right?

Jonathan Miller (CEO of AOL) just said that they sent out a total of 660 million CDs over the years.

That’s just not right.

I’m having a good time at the Web 2.0 Conference. An observation: having really big business guys at a conference like this isn’t all that interesting. I mean, they’re smart people but because of competitive and legal reasons, they really can’t say much of anything interesting. Too often, Battelle asks pointed and interesting business questions that the business guy on the hot seat can’t actually answer. So, the entire conversation ends up being a pointless dance where the best you can hope for is an obtuse hint at some insight.

The geeks, on the other hand, especially the startup geeks, are much more interesting because people don’t actually try to ask them business questions… instead, they get asked their opinion on technology and trends which is quite valuable and actually much more relevant to the business folks in the room. Just a thought.

You should look to the ‘micro blog’ to the right for interesting companies and pages I’ve seen here or just check out my del.icio.us links tagged with web2con.

So far, my biggest takeaway is that APIs are the critical development enabling most Web 2.0 applications. True, user experience and Ajax and the various other things people talk about are important to the emerging applications, but at the end of the day the biggest change is the business change. APIs and applications like AdSense and AdWords allow business-to-business interactions on a different scale. With the right infrastructure (including Terms of Use), companies can allow the smallest company or an individual to sign up easily and create a business relationship with little effort.

Think about that for a second. When a large company like Ebay or Amazon might normally only have the manpower to do traditional deals with the top 5% of potential partners, those that will make them the most money, this model allows a small startup like Delicious Monster do an extensive integration with them.

I’m enjoying this phase of Internet development and I’m getting more ideas just being here.

Seriously, stop it! I’ve now worked at ESPN for two years but until today, I’ve never physically seen or talked to Joe Morgan or Jon Miller. My trip to San Francisco took me through St. Louis where Morgan and Miller called the Cardinals game earlier today. I saw them both hanging out at the Wolfgang Puck Express restaurant in the terminal at Lambert. I then ran into Joe Morgan again (though didn’t say a word to him) at the baggage claim here in San Fran. Apparently he was on my flight…

Anywho, the point of this missive is that I’m out in San Fran (with apparently more ESPN folks than I realized ) for the Web 2.0 conference for the next few days. Posting will be light and probably focused on the happenings at Web 2.0.