SharkJumping

Just came out of our fundraising period, so there is finally a small amount of time to blog again.  I did not attend the Web 2.0 conference this week, but I spent tonight at a great VC dinner and later at the big Web 2.0 unofficial corporate party asking attendees about their impressions from what appears to be a very successful event.  The common theme at the party was debating whether the vibe of this event was more similar to 1998 or 1999 from the infamous Internet bubble era, but the good news was that confidence was high and there was a feeling that many of these companies were going to change the world.

What was interesting was how many cool companies had presented or announced themselves this week (Pluck, Flock, Ning, Platial, Shadows, etc.), but also how many conference attendees could barely remember any specific features from any of those companies - each answer was some type of "blogging meets tagging meets social networking meets video meets new user interface", which I guess is what defines Web 2.0, but it's unclear to me at this point as to what these companies usually mean for consumers. 

This doesn't mean that these companies won't succeed at some level just because almost no one can remember what they all do, but it means that I'm probably not smart enough to figure out how they succeed at some mainstream level beyond the "wife test" of many high tech executives, including myself.  Simply put, how does this service or application make my life easier or faster? - if companies can't clearly establish that within some reasonable timeframe, then it's back to the geek pool, but it doesn't seem to have affected anyone's valuation in recent fundraising rounds and it's certainly not making the hiring environment in SF any better since everyone is hiring.