Gnomedex: Arrington -- Who's Gonna Make The Leap?

Mike Arrington's leading a great conversation about how some of the Web 2.0 startups are making a big leap into the big time. He mentions Digg and YouTube and MySpace (obviously already big).

Steve Rubel suggests the advertising isn't there to support it, Mike disagrees with that. Advertising is booming.

Mitch Radcliffe says he thinks many of them will fail, but raises the issue Buzz Bruggeman has already raised about Net Neutrality.

I ask about whether these new apps are really in search of the right platform -- mobile phones, ipods, video ipods, etc -- not sure we KNOW where these apps will succeed.

Arrington talks about Digg being so big so fast. Another speaker says something he disagrees with , but Mike politely says "that's a bad opinion to have" ... a perfect way to say, "YOU'RE WRONG!"

Kathy Gill, U of Washingon, 1. micromarkets are not like 2. geeks shouldn't name things -- network neutrality should be called network discriimination.

Scott Rafer calls out, "let's talk about the echo chamber ..." Those two go at each other. Arrington says as a leader in this space Rafer should not be dissing Web 2.0.

Someone asks, "define success" Arrington, it makes money AND it makes the internet a better place to hang out.

"What's the difference between this time and 1999?" Arrington says it's very diff, "People are not going public ... this is a different environment. Edgeio for instance, we spent very little on it and we would have spent much more if it had been done in the 90s."

Arrington talks about Swaptree, similar to eBay and ... missed the details. Mike says he wasn't impressed with Swaptree at first but changed his mind.

What about "network effects" - Bob Wyman says that they have failed, that network effect-based companies mostly failed. Meanwhile, he asks Bob to name one and says "Netscape".