Oh and There Was the U.S. Election...

Of course the Web 2.0 Summit wasn't the only thing of interest to happen this week. Barack Obama was elected to be the next President of the United States. Check out our slideshow of the election as seen on the Web.

Also much has been said about the masterful use of social media by the Obama campaign. The people working for the President-Elect were by far the more active - and the more savvy - of the two US Presidential candidates in terms of understanding and effectively employing social media as a way of engaging and motivating voters. Regardless of your political leanings, the numbers speak for themselves.

But was it just a means to an end? Or is this personal engagement - embracing social media as a new way of communicating with the masses - something we should expect Obama to use throughout his presidency? Check out our post Obama's Social Media Advantage, Act II for more details.

Lance Armstrong on Politics, Ego, and Twitter

Cancer survivor, seven-time Tour de France champion - with the potential for more now that he's announced he's coming out of retirement - and Internet entrepreneur Lance Armstrong took to the stage with John Battelle at TechWeb/O'Reilly's Web 2.0 Summit on Wednesday. The topics ranged from Barack Obama and his new administration to Twitter to the power of ego, mind, and body.

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Cloud Computing Panel

An all-star panel took a closer look at the implications of the current shift towards cloud computing and discussed the possible business models around it. The panel featured Adobe's CTO Kevin Lynch, Salesfore.com's CEO Marc Benioff, Google's Dave Girouard, and VMware's CEO Paul Maritz. It was moderated by Tim O'Reilly.

Has Current Solved the User Generated Advertising Mystery?

At the Web 2.0 Summit this week Current.tv co-founder Joel Hyatt told the audience that his video site and TV channel has landed multiple multi-million dollar advertising deals with giant companies, based on non-professional commercials created by fans. That's something that a whole lot of companies have been trying to do, unsuccessfully, for years.

Hyatt was joined on stage by Twitter co-founder Evan Williams, who once again repeated the "wait and see" answer when asked about his monetization strategy. Side-by-side with Current's success, Twitter's continued stalling seemed more unsatisfying than ever - but success in general felt more possible when we saw what Current has done.

Yahoo's Jerry Yang at Web 2.0 Summit

Yahoo is obviously going through a rather tough period in its history right now. John Battelle interviewed Yahoo's CEO Jerry Yang and asked him about Microsoft's takeover bid, Google's decision to pull out of its advertising deal with Yahoo, and the persistent rumors of a possible acquisition of AOL by Yahoo. While Yang acknowledged Yahoo's current problems and stated that he would still consider selling the company to Microsoft, his overall outlook for the company was quite upbeat.

Mary Meeker at Web 2.0 Summit: There is Hope

One of our favorite parts of the annual Web 2.0 Summit is Mary Meeker's rapid fire data deluge about the Internet economy. You can view her PDF slides here. She started off by discussing the recession, which she said was "a long time coming" - but wondered "how long will it last?". Meeker noted that advertising and technology spending is closely tied to GDP growth. From 2000 to 2002, USA spending fell 27%. Unfortunately, Meeker thinks that the current pattern looks a bit like early 2001. In 2000-2003 tech spending was flat or negative, however Meeker's presentation included some rays of hope for entrepreneurs.

For a related Summit video, check out this discussion with Kleiner Perkins VC John Doerr:

That's a wrap for another week! Enjoy your weekend everyone.

Adobe's Kevin Lynch considers it his company's role to enable the "fourth generation of software" that will bring a fusion of cloud computing and rich desktop applications to users (by using Adobe Air, of course). At the same time, though, he also acknowledged that Adobe is looking at purely web-based applications with Photoshop.com and Acrobat.com, though he sees Adobe's focus as being on enabling technologies.

In contrast to this, Dave Girouard, who manages Google's enterprise business, sees it as Google's mission to bring users "entirely into the cloud" and not just to create a "cloud-like" experience. Girouard also used this opportunity to chastise the enterprise computing world as 'stagnant' and 'unenlightened' when it comes to considering the user experience for its clients and employees.

Saleforce.com's CEO Marc Benioff mostly talked about the importance of developers in building applications on top of Salesforce.com.

In the second part of the interview, the panelists spent most of the time talking about delivering value in the cloud and possible business models around cloud computing.

Comparing his company to Oracle and SAP, Benioff said they were "dying models" and comparing Salesforce.com to them would not even be fair.

Most of the panelists agreed that Microsoft's entry into the cloud computing business validated the market and, maybe unsurprisingly, argued that developers should look at the different options that are available to them now and decide which one would work best for the apps they are building.

Battelle quickly jumped to the topic that was surely on everybody's mind and asked Yang about the Microsoft deal. Yang acknowledged that he considered selling the company and that he thinks it would still be in Microsoft's best interest to buy Yahoo, but that Yahoo didn't think the price was right at the time and that Microsoft doesn't seem to be interested in a deal anymore. Yang also denied that his personality got in the way of the deal.

Google and AOL

About the Google advertising deal, Yang clearly expressed his frustration and disappointment with Google's decision and stressed that he thought that the deal could have been defended in front of the Department of Justice. Yang also used this opportunity to emphasize Yahoo's commitment to improving its search engine.

Yang declined to comment about a possible acquisition of AOL.

Yahoo

About Yahoo itself, Yang stressed that he thinks that Yahoo's planned shift towards becoming a platform company is going quite well so far. In a short discussion about the Yahoo Open Strategy, Yang also emphasized Yahoo's focus on opening up the Yahoo network as a platform and the importance of getting developers to start using it.

Overall, the reviews of Yang's performance were mixed. He surely doesn't have the personality of a Steve Jobs, and he isn't exactly Yahoo's greatest marketing asset. However, his overall analysis of Yahoo's current situation struck us as accurate.

To show our support for this initiative, ReadWriteWeb is running a competition in this post. We have 2 full conference passes to give away to the New York Web 2.0 Expo 16-19 Sept (value over $1000 each), as well as a free Expo hall pass (value $100).

According to a press release, the Web 2.0 Summit team "will solicit donations, and donation ideas, from individuals and companies within the community and then choose the 10 most promising and unique offerings to auction after the conference dinner." They've already lined up Tour de France legend Lance Armstrong, who will donate an autographed bicycle.

All proceeds from the event will benefit three charities, including WITNESS.org, which "uses video and online technologies to open the eyes of the world to human rights violations." You can suggest other worthwhile charities on this Facebook page. Also head over to the Summit website to find out more.

We think the auction is well worth supporting, as it fits within ReadWriteWeb's ongoing quest to find 'real world' uses for Web technologies. We'd love to see the Web being put to more use outside of the early adopter groups.

To be in to win one of the 3 prizes, we want to know: what would YOU bid on that web celebrities could offer? The 3 best answers, subjectively chosen by the RWW team, will win the prizes. Tip: both humorous and serious suggestions are welcome :-) Put your entry into the comments below. You'll need to enter your email address, so we know how to contact you, but this isn't published. We'll announce the winners by end of this week.