A webcast is available of this panel from the World Economic Forum: “The Impact of Web 2.0 and Emerging Social Network Models”
The panel, moderated by Peter Schwartz, Chairman, Global Business Network, USA, includes:
- Caterina Fake, Founder, Flickr, USA
- William H. Gates III, Chairman, Microsoft Corporation, USA
- Chad Hurley, Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer, YouTube, USA
- Mark G. Parker, President and Chief Executive Officer, Nike, USA
- Viviane Reding, Commissioner, Information Society and Media, European Commission, Brussels
The “challenger” is Dennis Kneale, Managing Editor, Forbes Magazine, USA.
It’s interesting to see the different concerns:
- Hurley and Fake talk about making it easier for users to share media with each other.
- Gates talks about the centrality of the PC and the need for a more sophisticated digital rights model.
- Parker talks about the NikeID product line where you can customize sneakers with logos, colors, and the challenge of entering into a true dialog with customers.
- Reding talks about the challenge of territorialization of rights across national borders, as well as linguistic diversity and multi-lingualism. She also asked about individual user rights, and privacy?
- Kneale pushes for profit-motive companies to handle these challenges rather than the EU.
Unfortunately, other than the basic notion of “giving everyone a voice changes the world,” there isn’t much in the way of specific “impact.” Everyone seems to agree there is a huge impact, but not a lot of specific examples.
Good moments:
- Gates: “Where was there ever a bust?” (In response to questions about the boom/bust cycle and whether this is a next bubble and will it bust)
- Schwartz: “Why are you worth 1.65 billion dollars?”(to Hurley), followed by “Google got YouTube basically free” (Kneale, referring to Google’s market capitalization rise following the announcement)
- Hurley: “We’re creating a new market opportunity for the networks”
- “Is there anything interesting happening in Europe . . . are people just as creative?” (Schwartz, tongue in cheek, to Reding)
- “We started in Canada” (Fake, in response to Schwartz’s labelling of the panel as American entrepreneurs and business people)
- “This is a tool of transparency . . . but I am worried also about the rights of the invididual” (Reding, referring to the ability to share photos/video from cellphones quickly and rapidly)
- “The European Union is for Net Neutrality” (Reding)
- “Getting it to work across manufacturers – you can call that the iTunes problem” (Gates, responding to a question about digital rights management)
- “We’re working to make sure that the copyrights of the people uploading images to Flickr remain with the people uploading images to Flickr” (Fake, in the same thread)
- “You get the opportunity to wear something you’ve created.” (Parker, in response to questions about what rights users who design shoes in NikeID get)
- “The urge to share is much stronger than the urge to earn” (Fake, in response to questions about payment back to users contributing content)
- “This is a place where Microsoft is behind at least one other company” (Gates, referring to Google’s ad placement ability)
- “I’m not feeling any incredible moral burden about having hyped Web 2.0” (Kneale, responding to an audience question (from Stewart Butterfield?) about the media’s role in creating the Web 2.0 meme).
- “If you don’t embrace this movement, this change, this access, this empowerment for consumers I think you’re at risk, and potentially . . . it’s deadly” (Parker on the impact of Web 2.0)
- “Lots of money to be made, lots of money to be lost, but in fact the power really is in fact shifing” (Schwartz, summing up the panel)