“We think the Palm Pre is by far the best product we’ve ever shipped and I am very happy with how we are managing the launch,” CEO Jon Rubinstein said on an earnings call Thursday, though he refused to disclose actual sales numbers. “We are successfully ramping supply to meet demand that is strong and growing.”

Rubinstein gave strong emphasis to Palm’s new operating system. “The most important indicator of our success is that customer response has been simply great, especially to Palm webOS. Just as Palm pioneered PDAs in the 90s, we believe it has now pioneered the mobile operating platform for the next 10 years and beyond. WebOS integrates information and services from the cloud and offers a true multi-tasking environment. We feel it takes better advantage of the benefits of Web 3.0 than any other mobile platform available today.”

Quite a claim, especially given the incumbents in the market and Palm’s history. The company has never been strong on execution, and while it’s done a great job of bringing the Pre and webOS to market, it has clearly stumbled a bit. Thanks to supply constraints, Palm may be leaving some sales on the table. And it hasn’t done itself any favors by delaying the release of the webOS software development kit.

WebOS won’t be the “the mobile operating platform for the next 10 years and beyond” unless developers are actually, you know, writing applications for it. And there are far too few of them doing that right now because Palm has, so far, restricted access to the SDK.

Rubinstein says that will soon change, though. “We are eager to expand access to our SDK but we need to do so in a measured and methodical fashion, so we can be sure we are providing a great development experience,” he said Thursday. “Over the next few weeks, we expect the program to grow from hundreds to thousands of developers and our goal from there is to make our SDK available to everyone by the end of this summer.”

OK. So Palm would rather do things right than too quickly. That’s understandable–especially if it has more products in the pipeline, as it most certainly does. Given the rivals against which it must compete, the company cannot afford even a single misstep. If it is to truly to revitalize its brand, it must execute, as Rubinstein well knows.

“My highest priority is execution,” he said. “That means delivering world-class products and customer support. Operational excellence in our supply chain management. Strong carrier relationships. Great sales and marketing. Strong back-office functions….Palm already has a foundation in all of these areas. We’ve been in this business for years. We have long-established industry relationships and we’ve successfully brought mobile products to market for over a decade. This footing can create a real advantage.”

But only if it’s managed well. So far, so good. We’ll find out how Palm’s really doing next quarter, which will more fully reflect the impact of the Pre.

You’ll find more notes from yesterday’s call here.

Yesterday, The Wall Street Journal did a special Technology Report section, made up of excerpts of selected interviews from the seventh D: All Things Digital conference.

It includes sessions with Microsoft (MSFT) CEO Steve Ballmer ringing in Bing; Yahoo (YHOO) CEO Carol Bartz trying to find a reason to curse at BoomTown; Roger McNamee and Jon Rubinstein of Palm (PALM) introing the Pre; Twitter Co-Founders Biz Stone and Evan Williams saying “we do not know” was the microblogging service’s mantra; entrepreneur Mark Cuban talking smack about the Internet; cable legend and Liberty Media (LMDIA) Chairman John Malone cracking wise; and NBC Universal (GE) head Jeff Zucker doing the Hulu.

As the event’s hosts and interviewers, Walt Mossberg and I also did a mini-essay about the event, in which we continued to jest about various goofy names that digital eras had been given.

As we wrote:

“Before the seventh D: All Things Digital conference, which took place last week in Carlsbad, Calif., we declared—with our tongues firmly planted in our cheeks—that Web 2.0 was over and Web 3.0 had begun.

While we were poking fun at Silicon Valley’s incessant need to stick a hyped-up catchphrase on each and every development, the use of such jargon was actually important, because we think that the digital sector is now moving full bore into an entirely new cycle of profound change.”

We decided to focus in on smart phones and the mobile platform as critically important in the next era, although what we were talking about was the complete integration of computing into every part of our lives in a way that is seamless, ubiquitous and, ideally, dead simple.

As we also noted in the essay:

“From using easy gestures to grab any piece of information from the Web to having powerful computers in the palm of your hand to being able to quickly dip into complex social networks to getting real-time information from across the globe as it happens, this is an era when computing could become as integrated and invisible as electricity and just as important.”

So read all about online and in print (if you saved a copy) and you can also watch video highlights on this site too.

But, best of all, All Things Digital be posting the full video of all the sessions on this site soon.

Oh, Scooby-Don’t…

You could not be more wrong in your post last week–titled, “Why Kara Swisher and Walt Mossberg are wrong about naming Web 3.0 ‘Web 3.0′”–about Walt and I being wrong about naming Web 3.0 “Web 3.0″ in an essay we posted at the start of our D: All Things Digital conference, which took place last week.

I know writing “Kara Swisher,” “Walt Mossberg” and “Wrong” is well-nigh irresistible, but your solution of calling the digital era we are in the “2010 Web” is equally confusing and incorrect.

So, since you know I love to do translations, let me try to take apart your entire piece paragraph by paragraph:

What Scooby-Don’t wrote: Can we just head this trend off at the pass? It seems that Kara Swisher and Walt Mossberg, at their “All Things D” conference announced the beginning of the Web 3.0 era.

And I’m not the only one to think so.

BoomTown response: Walt and I simply wrote an essay in which we said we thought mobile and smart phones were super important as the next platform and represented what we thought Web 3.0 innovations, such as social networking (which we also think is important, by the way) would pivot around.

We didn’t “announce” anything, although that does sound awfully grand.

But so what if we did, because it happens quite a lot?

Dan Gillmor, for goodness sake, declared it Web 3.0 in 2005. His take was different:

“The emerging web is one in which the machines talk as much to each other as humans talk to machines or other humans. As the net is the rough equivalent of a computer operating system, we’re learning how to program the web itself.”

And in 2007, Tim O’Reilly weighed in on it, responding to Web 3.0 theses by Jason Calacanis and Nova Spivack, and also noting Stowe Boyd’s thoughts on the subject.

You get my point, Bobby? Lots of folks have opinions about what is Web 3.0, much as they will when we start arguing over what Web 4.0 is.

At Web 5.0, of course, a self-aware Google (GOOG) will have begun its inevitable war with the human race, sending back a cyborg to terminate you before you wrote that post, thereby making this rebuttal moot.

But, I digress!

Scooby-Don’t wrote: Short aside: It’s interesting that neither Kara nor Walt show up very often on friendfeed, which is the best example of the 2010 Web right now. Kara Swisher has made a total of five comments there. Walt is even worse, doesn’t bring any items in there, and only has six comments. How can you know what the 2010 Web is, if you don’t use it and don’t participate in it?

BoomTown response: The fact of the matter is that neither Walt nor I like to use FriendFeed as much as you do. I daresay that no one likes to use FriendFeed as much as you do.

Thus, hinging a larger point to this, just because we don’t play in a particular sandbox you like to play in, feels a little too much in the digital weeds to me.

Just because you have chosen to be the unofficial spokesmodel for the very laudable service–about which I have done a very lovely reported post on complete with video–I am not clear why you need to accuse Walt Mossberg and I of not being social because we don’t use it as much.

We both just happen to prefer Twitter and blogging as our social outlets.

I have done 3,255 updates on Twitter since I started last year, for example, which is certainly not as much as your 21,224. But–and I think we can all agree–as blabby as I am, I am simply not as blabby as you.

So, let’s try to make this as clear as possible.

We. Don’t. Use. FriendFeed. Regularly.

As I said, we use Twitter, we use Facebook, we use SMS, we use blogging and we use a whole lot more. In fact, between us, we try out pretty much everything.

While I appreciate that FriendFeed seems to be your home planet of the moment, it is not the only place to realize your term, 2010 Web, and it feels very Web 1.0 to say so.

Scooby-Don’t wrote: The Web does NOT have version numbers. Naming what was going on in the last eight years “Web 2.0″ did us all a large disservice (Tim O’Reilly did that, mostly to get people to see that there was something different about the Web that was being built in 2000-2003 than what had come before).

But by naming it a number, I believe it caused a lot of people and businesses to avoid what was going on and “poo poo” it as the rantings of the new MySpace generation (which was just getting hot back then).

BoomTown response: Let me see if I can get this straight. You can call it 2010 Web, but we cannot use version numbers, such as Web 3.0?

Hey, we’ll call it Britney Spears if we want!

Actually, I like naming the next era of the Web after the always volatile entertainer. She’s mobile, ever-changing, ubiquitous and always entertaining! Also, there are several eras of Britney: Sweet, Timberlake Lady, Federline Lady, Young Mom, Nuts, Nuttier, Nuttiest, Hospitalized, Medicated.

My main point remains: Who died and made you Boss of Pointless Internet Catchphrases?

Scooby-Don’t wrote: See, the Web changes EVERY DAY and a version number just doesn’t do it justice. Think about today, we saw Microsoft (MSFT) announce a major new update to its search engine, named “Bing,” that turns on next week and is already getting TONS of kudos. Seriously, in the rental car shuttle today a guy I met said the demo he saw at Kara and Walt’s conference was “awesome.”

Also today was Google’s Wave, which caught everyone by surprise and which sucked the oxygen out of Microsoft’s search announcements. Check out all the reports that I liked from around the world this morning.

BoomTown response: The Web changes EVERY DAY? You’re kidding! We had no idea! Thanks for that critical morsel of info!

Earth to Robert: Walt has spent a large part of his life writing about the panoply of new devices that have come out in an unceasing flow and I have written at least 10,000 news stories and two books about the Web since the early 1990s.

Pretty much all we write about is how the Web changes every day. Actually, every second.

Scooby-Don’t wrote: But, back to the theme of this post. There IS something going on here. I covered it a few weeks ago.

7. Hybrid infrastructure. At the Twitter Conference this week lots of people were talking about how they were using both traditional servers along with cloud-based approaches from Amazon (AMZN) and Rackspace (RAX) to store, study, and process the sizeable datasets that are coming through Twitter, Facebook, and friendfeed.

BoomTown Response: We had folks on stage at our D7 conference discussing all this last week. In fact, we covered a whole lot more than that, which you can read about if you click on through.

While I think all yours are also interesting ideas, I am still not clear why you need to get your knickers in a knot, since we happened to think mobile platforms and smart phones are more important trends at this juncture.

Also, could please explain how Google “caught that wave big time Wednesday when it handed Android phones to everyone at its IO conference.” Google is innovative because they give free swag to folks?

We gave free swag to folks this week at D7, so I guess that makes Walt and I 2010-Web-worthy!

Scooby-Don’t wrote: So, why doesn’t a version number work for these changes? Because they don’t come at us all at once. A lot of these things have been cooking for years. The Internet makes iteration possible. Tomorrow will be better on the Internet than today. In the old world of software you’d have to wait for the compilers, then you’d need to distribute tons of CDs or disks. That no longer needs to be done.

Same with the Web. Calling it the “2010 Web” puts an urgency into what’s happening. If your business isn’t considering the latest stuff it risks looking lame or, worse, leaving money on the table. Just like driving a 1994 car risks looking lame or, worse, breaking down a lot more often than a newer car.

BoomTown response: Actually, I would have to say that your year numbering system is deeply confusing and I am not sure we can treat Internet development like some auto or, even, say, fine wine.

Ah, that 1995 Web was saucy with a smooth Netscape IPO finish, while 2001 had a disappointing popped-bubble tone, due to the excessive tannins of Pets.com. Now, the 2009 is still very young, but it has a frothy Twittery taste, which goes surprisingly well with brie.

Scooby-Don’t wrote: Is the year metaphor perfect? No, I’m sure there are a few things wrong with it. For one, if you want to host a conference based on the “trend” you’ll have to change your conference name every year. That costs money, which is why conference companies like to have more stable trends that they can exploit for a few years, at least.

BoomTown response: D1, D2, D3, D4, D5, D6, D7. So far, changing the number has worked out well for us that we’re going to go for D8!

Scooby-Don’t wrote: Also, there are some clear “eras” in the Web, so I could see wanting to suggest that we’re in the third era of the Web, but I’ve been studying this for the past eight years and calling the second era “Web 2′ actually held us back because mainstream users didn’t think anything was happening in the past few years and Web 2.0 became a useless phrase anyway.

BoomTown response: You must know that mainstream users don’t pay one bit of attention to any and all of the dumb terms Silicon Valley comes up with.

And, with all the obviously massive change that has happened in the past few years in tech and the Internet (iPhone, Kindle, Facebook, Twitter to name a few), it seems odd to say that anything has been held back.

Frankly, it would be nice if tech innovation took a breather once in a while.

Scooby Don’t wrote: Anyway, can we use year numbers to describe the Web now? It’ll make it easier to evangelize the modern world to businesses. We’re entering the 2010 Web, that’s what I’m exploring. Calling the Web a version number is for people who don’t really understand, or participate in, what’s going on here. Kara and Walt, you gotta do better here.

BoomTown wrote: What’s in a name?

Well, it’s dang easy to attack, of course, instead of actually discussing the actual premise that we were outlining in our essay, titled “Welcome to Web 3.0.”

As we wrote:

“So what’s the seminal development that’s ushering in the era of Web 3.0? It’s the real arrival, after years of false predictions, of the thin client, running clean, simple software, against cloud-based data and services. The poster children for this new era have been the Apple (AAPL) iPhone and iPod Touch, which have sold 37 million units in less than two years and attracted 35,000 apps and one billion app downloads in just nine months.”

So, if you want to just focus on the name, then you gotta do better here.

Until then, you say 2010 Web, we say Web 3.0 and let’s call the whole thing off.

Meet the Internet’s It Boys: Twitter co-founders Evan Williams and Biz Stone. A year ago their “micromessaging” platform was unknown outside of a small circle of digerati. Now the service has broken through to the mainstream, or at least to the mainstream media (thanks, Oprah!). But while Twitter has no problem generating attention, it’s still unclear how the company will actually generate revenue. Or maybe it doesn’t need to do that: Last year Facebook offered to buy Twitter for $500 million in cash and stock, and the service could presumably garner a much higher price today–perhaps from Microsoft (MSFT) or Google (GOOG). Or at least that’s what its investors may be hoping for.

Session Highlights

Live Blog

• After Kara Swisher assists Jill Sobule with a song penned for (and about) Rupert Murdoch, Walt Mossberg joins her on the stage and they thank the audience. “We double-mean it this year,” says Walt.
• Walt and Kara explain their “Web 3.0″ thesis, which you can find explained in detail here. They also plug the new All Things Digital iphone app (which is excellent!) and run through a series of less helpful iPhone apps–less helpful because they don’t exist. The Carol Bartz app gets some applause.
• Walt: It’s all about apps. Apple (AAPL) dominates that business but we will show some other great stuff at this conference. Kara: Normally we start out with big-company CEOs, but instead, we’re going to bring out the company that everyone is talking about. Here are Biz Stone and Evan Williams of Twitter.
• Kara shows off a video that depicts her mother’s low opinion of Twitter. Well worth watching.
• Walt: We also have real data about people’s opinions re: digital media, commissioned by an actual polling firm–Penn, Schoen & Berland. For instance, only 51 percent of Twitter users are on the service once a month. What’s the deal with that?

• Evan: That’s fair. We know it’s in its infancy. There are lots of ways to fix the adoption curve that we know how to do.
• Evan explains the history of Twitter. He sold Blogger to Google, hired Biz, started Odeo, a podcasting company. Walt: “Which got crushed by Apple.”
• Biz: I followed Evan to Odeo, and we started working with Jack Dorsey, who had this idea that just involved IM-like status updates that could update via mobile. To Ev’s credit, as CEO of Odeo, he sent us off to work on that.
• Evan: A few months later, at Odeo, we just didn’t see a bright future for that. Generally, if I’m not personally invested in the product, and don’t use it myself…
• Biz: I started playing with Twitter and I started laughing at Evan’s posts and thought that was a good sign.

• Evan: It was so simple. “It didn’t look like a real thing. The simplicity turned off some of our engineers. It wasn’t obvious at all.
• Walt: How many users do you have? Biz and Ev won’t comment.
• Evan: We wound down Odeo, returned the money to investors and made them whole and went off to focus on Twitter.
• Walt points out that most users don’t use the Twitter.com interface. Biz: We have at least twice as much usage via the open API and other clients as we do via Twitter.com.
• Walt: Is that good thing? Evan: Yes. Very much so. We’ve never built an iPhone app, but there are at least a dozen of them. You can’t win by trying to corral everything in. We have all these people adding value. We can’t build all the stuff people want with 45 people.

• Biz: Openness, open platforms are a big deal. We’re seeing lots of this. And people communicating on these open platforms is a big deal. It’s not just with communication. It’s with open-source software, transparency at companies, etc. People are building a ton of value this way.
• Evan: This openness helped create Summize, the search engine we bought a year ago. That couldn’t have happened if we weren’t open with our data. Turns out there’s a huge opportunity with search, and we hadn’t foreseen that.
• Walt: Will future projects and developments happen on Web pages or on clients/apps?
• Evan: We’re interface-agnostic. We’re more concerned about what the data is and that it should flow to all clients. I don’t think we’ll build a desktop app, but we will tweak the Web site a bit.
• Kara: Everyone’s talking about real-time search. But what kind of real business opportunity is available there?
• Evan: Real-time search means different things on different platforms. On Google, it’s Web search. On Twitter, it’s Twitter search. It’s different from what other people are talking about when they’re talking about real-time search. One of Twitter’s properties is that it’s low-latency, and speed is important in information dissemination.
• Kara: So what’s the value in that? What’s the advertising premise for that?
• Biz: When I think about search, I think about a box and a button. When I think about Twitter, I zoom out a bit, and I think of discovery.

• Walt: Is there a way to sell that?
• Biz: Pfft….There’s a way to make introductions to people, to tell them that things and people are available on Twitter, and there’s certainly money in that.
• Walt cites another piece of polling data: 30 percent say they’d be willing to see banner advertising on Twitter. Does that work for you guys?
• Evan: I think it’s probably the least interesting thing we can do.
• Kara: So you’re least interested in doing it?
• Evan: Yeah.
• Walt: 24 percent say they’d pay for power accounts. Do you think that’s a good idea?
• Evan: Yes, I think it’s a good idea. We’ve talked about it for a long time. Here’s how it might work: Lots of commercial users are on Twitter already. That’s not odd, and it’s happening successfully already. But we could give those users tools to make it better. For instance, here’s how P&G (PG) might sell Tide…Wait that’s a bad idea. How about The Wall Street Journal? No, they’re a media company; that won’t work either. How about Dunkin’ Donuts? People like Dunkin’ Donuts. They have an affinity for that, and they’re already following Dunkin’ Donuts. So one thing we can do is tell new users that the Dunkin’ Donuts account on Twitter is actually Dunkin’ Donuts. To verify that.
• Walt: OK, what else could you do with that?

• Evan: There’s a million ways, if you’re doing this in real time, to make this useful, and it won’t be annoying to people because if they don’t want that information, they won’t subscribe to a particular account.
• Biz on hype: We realize that this constant stream of attention will eventually go away. We have to keep concentrating on the company. “We’re one percent into Twitter.”
• Kara: You’ve raised a lot of money. You’ve had a lot of interest from acquirers. Why didn’t you sell to Facebook?
• Evan: I have a big thing about building sustainable companies. And I think that’s what Twitter should be.
• Walt: So in five years you won’t have sold this? You’ll still be running it?
• Evan: Yes. I didn’t expect to be working on this when I spun Twitter out of Odeo. But I came back to it because it was the most interesting thing I could work on.
• Kara: Do you have Zuckerberg-like control of your company, where you have the ability to control your fate and turn down a $1 billion offer from the likes of Microsoft?
• Evan. Yes. And the board feels the same way.
• Walt: You sure your board doesn’t want to sell the company within five years?
• Evan: Sequoia likes to brag about YouTube. But they also aspire to start companies like Apple and other cool companies. I think VCs like to brag about starting big awesome companies.
• Biz: When we met Bijan Sabet at Spark, I remember telling Ev that I liked him a lot. And Ev met him and said “he’s a little too nice.” Then we met the rest of the guys. [Pause]. And then we were in.
• Kara: What’s next big delta for you, the next big innovation?
• Evan. We’re not doing a TV show. We look at that like an iPhone platform that can have apps on it, but we’re not doing a show ourselves.
• Biz: I think the next big thing is scaling this company.
• Evan: Definitely scaling the company. We’re 45 people. We need to make the product better, we need to solve the awareness-to-engagement ramp. We also want to deepen the value proposition. There are lots of head-slapping things we can do to improve the product.
• Walt: I was Twitter skeptic. But I really go into it when my colleague Katie told me that this was an interesting way to keep up with news. Is that something you can build on?
• Evan: That’s the big secret for people like Kara’s mom, and we can do a better job of explaining that. Twitter disseminates information and it builds relationships. You can do one or both of those things.
• Kara: Do you need to raise more money?
• Evan: Well, we need to start building a monetizable business.
• Kara: When does that begin?
• Evan: There will be a moment when we turn something on.

• Time for Q&A: Roger McNamee from Elevation Partners begs the guys not to do midday planned maintenance outages. He also asks them to scale faster and to hire more than 45 people.
• Evan: Go to Twitter.com, and you’ll see that we’re hiring. We’re not planning on staying at 45 people.
• Q: What do you think will be key way you bring in money in a couple of years?
• Biz: You need to leave room for emergence to take place. We’re doing that in the way we structure the company and the way we hire people, etc. I’ve always said that if we described Twitter in three sentences, the first two would be about not putting too much fidelity on it, and the last sentence would be “we don’t know.”
• Q: What about an Apple-like App Store for Twitter, where you guys could sort and authenticate apps?
• Biz: I think exposing apps to people would be a good idea. I don’t know about charging for it. We know that certain apps make Twitter work much better for people, and we should promote them and point people to them. “I would like to do that right now. I don’t know how soon we’ll get to it.”
• Q: Not really a question, but a plea to not abuse the access to personal data that Twitter already has.
• Evan: We know not kill the goose. There are things that we could do that would be really stupid, and that would be dangerous, but those aren’t even the most tempting things to do.
• Q: In traditional media and marketing, we have tools to prove the value of different tools. How to tell marketing clients that they’re reaching the right audience, etc.?
• Biz: Start by typing their name in Twitter search and showing them how many people are talking about their product. They’ll immediately want to respond. That’s the easy answer.
• Q: What about looking at Nielsen-like partners to help refine metrics and tell marketers who’s looking at what?
• Biz: There are lots of interesting things we could do. I think that it will be more compelling when you’re not just following a set list of people. Twitter will be more interesting when it starts telling you things like “You go to Whole Foods a lot…maybe you’d like to know that this is on sale today, etc.”
• Evan: But it will always be recipient-driven.
• Walt: Biz, please tell me about your name.
• Biz: I couldn’t pronounce my name, which was Christopher Isaac Stone, and I said “bzzz” and that was that.

A note about our coverage: This liveblog is not an official transcript of the conversation that occurred onstage. Rather, it is a compilation of quotes, paraphrased statements and ad-lib observations written and posted to the Web as quickly as we were able. It was not intended as a transcript and should not be interpreted as one.

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]]> http://allthingsd.com/20090526/biz-stone-and-evan-williams/feed/ 3 http://allthingsd.com/20090526/welcome-to-web-30/ http://allthingsd.com/20090526/welcome-to-web-30/#comments Wed, 27 May 2009 01:30:12 +0000 Walt Mossberg and Kara Swisher http://d7.allthingsd.com/?p=186

At All Things Digital World Headquarters*, our huge staff of expert analysts** is always keeping track of two things: The latest trends in tech and media, and the latest jargon used to hype those trends.

This year, as we convene the seventh edition of D: All Things Digital, we think something major is happening at the intersection of tech and media, and we think it deserves its own new hyped-up name: Web 3.0. Yes, folks, we are declaring the Web 2.0 era over, because, well, when you run conferences and Web sites, you can say stuff like that.

But, if you read on a bit, you will see that we actually have some real, rational basis for believing that yet another seminal moment has arrived in the never-ending digital revolution that inspired us to launch this gathering. And, as you will observe over the next few days, we have assembled what we think is a stellar lineup of speakers to address this major change and other topics.

First, though, a few words about the elephant in the ballroom: The Great Recession. Or, as we like to call it on the AllThingsD.com Web site: The Econalypse. We started work on launching D during the last tech bust, and we believed then that — despite the very real economic woes afflicting the industry–the digital tidal wave sweeping the world wasn’t stopping. In fact, it was during that last recession that the iPod, iTunes, Windows XP, Mac OS X and early social networking services, like Friendster and LinkedIn, were born.

We are painfully aware that this crisis is far worse–we work at a media company, after all, and media companies have been economic piñatas lately. We do not in any way underestimate the economic pain and danger still under way all over the world. But we still believe the digital tidal wave rolls on. And we are immensely grateful to all of you for continuing to attend D under these tough circumstances. In fact, your support has been so strong that we actually sold out a few days earlier this year than last.

So what’s the seminal development that’s ushering in the era of Web 3.0? It’s the real arrival, after years of false predictions, of the thin client, running clean, simple software, against cloud-based data and services. The poster children for this new era have been the Apple iPhone and iPod Touch, which have sold 37 million units in less than two years and attracted 35,000 apps and one billion app downloads in just nine months.

The excitement and energy around the iPhone and the Touch–and the software and services being written for them–remind us of the formative years of the PC and PC software, in the early 1980s, or the early days of the Web in the mid-1990s.

It’s a big deal.

But this is not just about one company, one platform or even one form factor. No, this new phenomenon is about handheld computers from many companies, with software platforms and distribution mechanisms tightly tied to cloud-based services, whether they are multi-player games, e-commerce offerings or corporate databases.

Already Palm, Research in Motion, Nokia, Microsoft and others are hot on Apple’s tail. You will hear from them here at D. And a profusion of new devices, software development kits, app stores and cloud-based services has been announced in the teeth of the economic downturn.

Some of these handheld computers will make phone calls, but others won’t. Some will fit in a pocket, but others will be tablets or even laptop-type clamshells. But, like the iPhone, all will be fusions of clever new hardware, innovative client software and powerful server-based components.

And media companies are on the case, too. You can already read The Wall Street Journal and other news sources, complete with photos and videos, on the iPhone, the BlackBerry and the Kindle, and new handheld devices are coming that are tailored to news. Our own AllThingsD iPhone app will be out by the time you read this. And consumers can stream radio and TV, and even follow live sports events, on pocket devices.

Over the next few days, you’ll hear from Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer, whose company makes software for both the new platforms and the traditional PCs they threaten. And the leaders of the hottest social network, Twitter, Evan Williams and Biz Stone, will talk about its future. Speaking of the future of social networking, we have invited News Corp. digital head Jon Miller and MySpace CEO Owen Van Natta, who were recently brought in to reinvigorate the media giant’s business, to talk about how they plan to do just that.

You’ll hear from new Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz, who’s trying to deal with rivals and suitors just as the new era is dawning. Also on stage will be the leaders of some key companies making the handheld computers’ hardware and software: Mike Lazaridis of RIM; Jon Rubinstein and Roger McNamee of Palm; and Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo of the worldwide mobile phone leader, Nokia.

From the telecom side, there’ll be Randall Stephenson of AT&T. Cable pioneer and media mogul John Malone will offer his perspective on the future of television.

And, from the content world, we’ll have Jeff Zucker of NBC, Irving Azoff of Ticketmaster, Mark Cuban of HDNet, blogging queen Arianna Huffington and Washington Post publisher Katharine Weymouth.

The leaders of Mozilla, Mitchell Baker and John Lilly, will talk about the role of Web browsers and open source. And playwright Eve Ensler will explain how all this shiny technology is tied, unwittingly, to a crisis thousands of miles away.

So sit back, open your minds, and get ready for Web 3.0.

*Actually, just a cottage in back of Kara’s house.

**Actually, just a handful of journalists, a couple of editors, a geek and an intern, plus some business people.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20090526/welcome-to-web-30/feed/ 16 http://allthingsd.com/20090312/when-in-rome-do-as-the-romans-do-as-in-no-twittering-or-much-iphoning/ http://allthingsd.com/20090312/when-in-rome-do-as-the-romans-do-as-in-no-twittering-or-much-iphoning/#comments Thu, 12 Mar 2009 12:45:08 +0000 Kara Swisher http://kara.allthingsd.com/?p=10830

BoomTown’s visit to Italy has been eye-opening in a lot of ways, not the least of which is to be reminded that not everyone in the world is jacked into the matrix 24/7.

In other words, Julius Caesar conquered Rome, but Twitter definitely has not.

In fact, the conference being held here is aptly called “Tutto Cambio, Cambiamo Tutto?” (I came here to interview Huffington Post editrix Arianna Huffington and LinkedIn founder and CEO Reid Hoffman onstage about innovation and online trends.)

That roughly translates into “Everything changes, let’s change everything?”

This is not a question that is much asked in Silicon Valley, which changes just like the weather, embracing change for change’s sake.

But here, whether or not to change is much more of a debate–one in which change does not always come out on top.

Internet penetration is much lower here than elsewhere in Europe, as is everything from per capita computer ownership to online advertising spending. Television still dominates most media.

“We’re 2,000 years old” is something you hear a lot from people as an explanation for approaching everything, from social networking to iPhones to anything interactive, with some wariness.

While most people here note that they like Facebook, prounounced “FAY-sa BOO-ka,” hardly anyone sees the point of Web 2.0′s trend du jour, Twitter (“TWEE-tur”).

In fact, few have heard of it, and those who have don’t use it.

And while several people have iPhones, no one seems over the moon about the Apple (AAPL) phenom or captivated by its potential to herald Web 3.0 as the mobile revolution.

In any case, here is a video I did, speaking to both Huffington (here is her blog on the event) and Hoffman, as well as to several Italians at the conference:

[ See post to watch video ]

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20090312/when-in-rome-do-as-the-romans-do-as-in-no-twittering-or-much-iphoning/feed/ 8 http://allthingsd.com/20081231/a-bad-quarter-ends-today-but-will-it-be-a-happier-new-year-for-tech/ http://allthingsd.com/20081231/a-bad-quarter-ends-today-but-will-it-be-a-happier-new-year-for-tech/#comments Wed, 31 Dec 2008 16:35:36 +0000 Kara Swisher http://kara.allthingsd.com/?p=8039 Today, most companies in the tech and Internet sector will close the books on what is likely to be a very disappointing fourth quarter and also close out what has turned out to be a mucho depressing year, which got hammered starting in the third.

While financial results will not out for some weeks–Yahoo will report on Jan. 27, for example–one does not have to be a psychic to know what’s coming: A lot of weakness, with hopes for better days ahead.

While those results are probably already prefigured into tech’s weak stocks, the news will surely not be mitigated by the expected euphoria around the inauguration of President-Elect Barack Obama in the same time frame.

After all, while he is at least a little bit tech-savvy and seems committed to acting like the federal government cares a lot more about one of the most important sectors of our economy, there is no magic wand either he or his alleged CTO for America can wave to make it all better right away.

And that’s leaving out the vast start-up sector, the hundreds of privately-funded companies that don’t have to report, but are still feeling the pain of lower revenues–if they had any to speak of.

Those valuations have also been heading to the basement.

It’s a far cry from how 2008 started out for every big public digital company, as you can see from the stock chart above (click on the image to make it larger).

Consider the share prices on Jan. 2, 2008 to today, which in every case have been halved:

Yahoo (YHOO) was $23.72 and is now $12.19 today. Down 47.64 percent for the year.

Google (GOOG) was $685.19 and is now $308.84 today. Down 55.64 percent for the year.

Apple (AAPL) was $194.84 and is now $86.45. Down 56.31 percent for the year.

Amazon (AMZN) was $96.25 and is now $50.26. Down 45.67 percent for the year.

Microsoft (MSFT) was $35.22 and is now $19.40. Down 45.46 percent for the year.

And eBay (EBAY) was $32.49 and is now $14.13. Down 57.46 for the year.

Those were the days my friend, Silicon Valley thought they’d never end, to sing and dance forever and a day.

As it turned out, it was more of a swan song for Web 2.0–at least until Web 3.0, that is.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20081231/a-bad-quarter-ends-today-but-will-it-be-a-happier-new-year-for-tech/feed/ 2 http://allthingsd.com/20081212/alcatel-lucent-lets-get-small/ http://allthingsd.com/20081212/alcatel-lucent-lets-get-small/#comments Fri, 12 Dec 2008 16:50:56 +0000 John Paczkowski http://digitaldaily.allthingsd.com/?p=9547 Alcatel-Lucent, the world’s largest maker of telecommunications equipment, won’t be quite so large come 2009. This morning the struggling Franco-American network supplier said it plans to sack 1,000 managers and 5,000 contractors in a bid to bring down costs. “The new management team is committed to rapidly executing this new strategy and leveraging the new streamlined organization,” CEO Ben Verwaayen said in a statement. We are focused on delivering results and restoring profitability.”

This latest swing of the ax brings total job cuts at Alcatel-Lucent (ALU) to about 22,500 since the 2006 merger that created it. And though the company will be leaner and meaner for it, that new found agility won’t count for much without a shift in business strategy bold enough to reverse the brutal reduction in market share and market capitalization Alcatel-Lucent has suffered. And an oblique and, frankly, baffling mention of Web 2.0, does not a business strategy make.

Alcatel-Lucent’s plan is to “combine the trusted capabilities of the network environment with the creative communications services of the Web (Web 2.0, Web 3.0 and beyond).” What the hell does that mean?

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20081212/alcatel-lucent-lets-get-small/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20081212/alcatel-lucent-lets-get-small-2/ http://allthingsd.com/20081212/alcatel-lucent-lets-get-small-2/#comments Fri, 12 Dec 2008 16:50:56 +0000 John Paczkowski http://digitaldaily.allthingsd.com/?p=9547 Alcatel-Lucent, the world’s largest maker of telecommunications equipment, won’t be quite so large come 2009. This morning the struggling Franco-American network supplier said it plans to sack 1,000 managers and 5,000 contractors in a bid to bring down costs. “The new management team is committed to rapidly executing this new strategy and leveraging the new streamlined organization,” CEO Ben Verwaayen said in a statement. We are focused on delivering results and restoring profitability.”

This latest swing of the ax brings total job cuts at Alcatel-Lucent (ALU) to about 22,500 since the 2006 merger that created it. And though the company will be leaner and meaner for it, that new found agility won’t count for much without a shift in business strategy bold enough to reverse the brutal reduction in market share and market capitalization Alcatel-Lucent has suffered. And an oblique and, frankly, baffling mention of Web 2.0, does not a business strategy make.

Alcatel-Lucent’s plan is to “combine the trusted capabilities of the network environment with the creative communications services of the Web (Web 2.0, Web 3.0 and beyond).” What the hell does that mean?

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20081212/alcatel-lucent-lets-get-small-2/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20080522/salesforcecom-a-play-on-gulp-web-30/ http://allthingsd.com/20080522/salesforcecom-a-play-on-gulp-web-30/#comments Thu, 22 May 2008 19:35:00 +0000 Eric Savitz http://voices.allthingsd.com/20080522/salesforcecom-a-play-on-gulp-web-30/ Salesforce.com (CRM) is the thing you’ve been waiting for: a play on Web 3.0.

At least, that’s the way Jefferies & Co.’s Ross MacMillan sees it. He raised his rating on the stock today to Buy from Hold, and upped his price target to $77 from $49. The move comes one day after the company reported better-than-expected results for its fiscal first quarter ended April.

MacMillan contends that the company is morphing from the leader in on-demand CRM software to “a major provider of cloud computer infrastructure.” (Which is to say, Web 3.0.)

Read the rest of this post

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20080522/salesforcecom-a-play-on-gulp-web-30/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20080508/ddv20080508/ http://allthingsd.com/20080508/ddv20080508/#comments Thu, 08 May 2008 18:00:47 +0000 John Paczkowski http://digitaldaily.allthingsd.com/20080508/ddv20080508/

[ See post to watch video ]

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20080508/ddv20080508/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20080508/ddv20080508-2/ http://allthingsd.com/20080508/ddv20080508-2/#comments Thu, 08 May 2008 18:00:47 +0000 John Paczkowski http://digitaldaily.allthingsd.com/20080508/ddv20080508/

[ See post to watch video ]

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20080508/ddv20080508-2/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20080508/quoted-106/ http://allthingsd.com/20080508/quoted-106/#comments Thu, 08 May 2008 07:00:43 +0000 John Paczkowski http://digitaldaily.allthingsd.com/20080508/quoted-106/ If the defining characteristics of Web 2.0 are “groundbreaking” Facebook widgets, easy access to dumb capital and haughty start-ups dangerously over-leveraged on other companies’ assets what (or who) will define the Web 3.0 epoch?

The answer’s obvious isn’t it? Salesforce.com CEO Marc Benioff.

Why? Because he says so, that’s why.

Speaking at the company’s DreamForce Europe event, Benioff said that Web 3.0 will be the Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) era. A fascinating definition–convenient too, since this is precisely the sort of business Salesforce.com (CRM) is in. “We think Web 3.0 is now upon us. It’s the era of platforms,” said Benioff. “New platforms are coming right out of the cloud. It’s time to make a choice. You can continue to build your applications in the software model or you can move your applications to the new model of cloud computing. There is a new way to build your applications.”

So Web 3.0 is not, as Tim Berners-Lee, inventor of the World Wide Web, once suggested, the semantic Web–”day-to-day mechanisms of trade, bureaucracy and our daily lives handled by machines talking to machines.” Rather, it’s Web 2.0 with another 1.0’s worth of marketing BS. The “Whatever-I-Say-It-Is Web”–the “Al Franken Decade” of the Internet age.

Well, the “me” decade is almost over, and good riddance, and far as I’m concerned. … That’s right. I believe we’re entering what I like to call the Al Franken Decade. Oh, for me, Al Franken, the ’80s will be pretty much the same as the ’70s. I’ll still be thinking of me, Al Franken. But for you, you’ll be thinking more about how things affect me, Al Franken. When you see a news report, you’ll be thinking, ‘I wonder what Al Franken thinks about this thing?’, ‘I wonder how this inflation thing is hurting Al Franken?’ And you women will be thinking, ‘What can I wear that will please Al Franken?’, or ‘What can I not wear?’ You know, I know a lot of you out there are thinking, ‘Why Al Franken?’ Well, because I thought of it, and I’m on TV, so I’ve already gotten the jump on you.”

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20080508/quoted-106/feed/ 2 http://allthingsd.com/20071004/web30/ http://allthingsd.com/20071004/web30/#comments Thu, 04 Oct 2007 19:02:56 +0000 John Paczkowski http://digitaldaily.allthingsd.com/20071004/web30/

People keep asking what Web 3.0 is. I think maybe when you’ve got an overlay of scalable vector graphics–everything rippling and folding and looking misty–on Web 2.0 and access to a semantic Web integrated across a huge space of data, you’ll have access to an unbelievable data resource.”

–Tim Berners-Lee, May 2006

Web 2.0 is well documented and talked about. The power of the Net reached a critical mass, with capabilities that can be done on a network level. We are also seeing richer devices over the last four years and richer ways of interacting with the network, not only in hardware like game consoles and mobile devices, but also in the software layer. You don’t have to be a computer scientist to create a program. We are seeing that manifest in Web 2.0 and 3.0 will be a great extension of that, a true communal medium … the distinction between professional, semiprofessional and consumers will get blurred, creating a network effect of business and applications.”

–Jerry Yang, co-founder and CEO of Yahoo, November 2006

“Web 1.0 was dial-up, 50K average bandwidth, Web 2.0 is an average one megabit of bandwidth and Web 3.0 will be 10 megabits of bandwidth all the time, which will be the full video Web, and that will feel like Web 3.0.”

–Reed Hastings, founder and CEO of Netflix, November 2006

Had to happen sooner or later, right? The lexicographers who gave us the term Web 2.0 have finally gotten around to issuing an “official” definition of Web 3.0 and, having undoubtedly scurried to trademark the term, are probably already plotting the pricey industry conference that will accompany it.

So what is Web 3.0, “officially”?

Web 3.0 is defined as the creation of high-quality content and services produced by gifted individuals using Web 2.0 technology as an enabling platform.”
–Jason Calacanis

In other words it’s Web 2.0 2.0, Web 2.0 with another 1.0′s worth of marketing BS. Or, as Josh Kopelman, managing director of First Round Capital, aptly puts it, “any Internet-based company that has launched after 2004.“

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20071004/web30/feed/ 3 http://allthingsd.com/20071004/ddv20071004/ http://allthingsd.com/20071004/ddv20071004/#comments Thu, 04 Oct 2007 18:00:20 +0000 John Paczkowski http://digitaldaily.allthingsd.com/20071004/ddv20071004/

[ See post to watch video ]

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20071004/ddv20071004/feed/ 0