Stanford ATI Conference

Last Wednesday took place in Shanghai the Stanford University-affiliated Asia Technology Initiative (ATI) Conference. We were on the “Web 2.0″ panel along with four early-stage startups and Chinese mobile content behemoth KongZhong. Coming up with a solid definition of Web 2.0 was not really the point, and it rather illustrated how the concepts associated with it start to have sound business, not only as new media in the wake of MySpace’s recent deal with Google, but also with the creation of new business models – something certainly easier in China where the “traditional” media giants are whether under state control (press and TV) or underdeveloped (like the movie and music industries). Basically, if you can get people’s eyeballs, you are a media. If you are a media, then you can sell something.

Among the participants were City8 a “street-level Google Earth” type of service, showing you the street as you would see it walking on it, with signs and advertising, another was a music recommendation service, but the most controversial was certainly the “personal information search engine” Ucloo, that maps nicely on a single page everything it can find about an individual from alumni websites, forums postings, etc.

It had strong resemblance to the Korean X-file story and gave a glimpse of the future of online identity management: you’d better start thinking about your posts on MySpace, or your interviewer might find in a split-second about what you look like in your emo outfit…

Among the questions tackled were: is VC money needed / be on top or die / monetizing an audience with sound business models (aside from advertising). One of the interesting answers was to “Can Chinese web 2.0 companies go global?”. Nick Yang’s position was that apart from Google, which is technology-driven, US sites (including Yahoo and MySpace) are failing overseas due to their lack of local relevance in terms of taste and content. I found his remark all the more interesting because it is precisely the topic of the article I wrote in June for the Journal du Net (“Are US Internet giants failing in Asia?” – French only as for now).

We had a short presentation prepared for the occasion with some elements about Web 2.0, China and the world. It does not work much without the speech, but some participants asked for it.

Last, here is a report by one of the organizers (in English) and another by one attendee about the Web 2.0 panel (in Chinese).