It's 8.09am Paris time. I'm at Le Web. I think I'm posting the first entry from the conference. 
The wifi is really shaky, and the conference has barely started. 
When I organise the überconference, I'm gonna have to find a better way of getting connectivity to the audience than wifi. I'm thinking that a mixed solution would be best - liberal amounts of wifi, and Ethernet available at every desk (rather than chair). And, much as it's a pain in the arse, Peg DHCP (RFC 2322) seems to be a more reliable way of providing IP than DHCP on this scale.
Loic on why it's Le Web 3: "[the previous events were] Very blog focused, focused on social media... wider in terms of topics. The idea of it is to discuss the future of the Internet".
Lorraine Twohill talk - marketing director for Google UK
1994 - Yahoo, 1998 77M users, Google (Read phase). Buy phase: amazon.com, Expedia, eBay...
Some Google products: Google, Adwords, Toolbar, Frooogle, AdSense, Aplied Semantics, Blogger, Picasa, Keyhole, Gtalk, Analytics, Gmail, 2Web, Urchin, dodgeball.
Google's 9 notions of innovation: Innovation, not instant perfection. Share everything you can. You're brilliant, we're hiring. Take risks: reward success, learn from failure, ideas come from everywhere (and more - slow down!). Google News is a "Googlette" - Top 100 list.
Increase in broadband penetration drvies change (but digital divide - commodity in the UK - TalkTalk now has 500,000 users, Sky etc.).
Self-expression drives change - MySpace, bebo. 1 in 3 French internet users(?) is a blogger. Piczo as a niche example.
"Internet is the new creative playground" - Ford using YouTube/GoogleVideo to put out "evil commercials". Lynx using MySpace with 1,500 friends - going "where the kids are".
EMI advertising MySpace. Themes driving Google - commerce and monetisation, ubiquitous access (24/7 generation), communication and collaboration (dalogue not monologue), search, find, obtain (effectiveness and efficiency), digital formats level the playing field (anyone can have a say).
"anyone can be world-famous for 15 MB" (Lasse Gjertsen, Human Beat Box).
Startup session (10:15 am)
Libcast - podcast creation service (currently in French only but in 2007 they are localising for English, Dutch and Spanish users - and doing a mobile service). Looks like a sort of 'roll-together' play (taking what is curently disparate - FeedBurner, Odeo, hosting etc.). Not sure of the value of this one.
Yoono - Firefox/IE extension for social reviewing and recommendation. Could be interesting, but I think they need to think a bit further. Doesn't use tagging - they promote this as an advantage, but I'm not sure how it works. 250k users, 1.7m¤ in series A, 50% of users are in USA. Sponsored link and advertising as revenue model.
MuseStorm - Israeli-based widget distribution and aggregation system - create a simple widget using online design tools (uses RSS data) and it then aggregates across web and mobile widget platforms, and track distribution.
Feedback2.0 - a community service for business conversation space/dialogue. Business model is to sell to companies. Presentation seems quite rushed.
Web 2.0 Giants panel
This panel is for the discussion of where the big companies are going - Microsoft, Google and Yahoo. For some reason, a guy from Orange and a guy from Nokia is on the panel (not a paid placement or anything...).
The question that they asked is "will the giants still be here in five years?" - the answer is "yes, but it doesn't matter". Kodak still exists, but they aren't really relevant anymore. Microsoft will exist in five years, but I'm not sure it'll still be relevant.
Microsoft think that Google (and the vendors) think it's "destination search", wheras they want it to become a utility.
The guy from Microsoft is talking about identity. I wonder whether this means they are going to support OpenID.
The panel was disappointing - a lot of backslapping and waffle. This conference feels a lot less interactive than most of the other conferences I've been to. Which is funny, because it's pushing the "user-generated content and community" line a lot more than any other conference I've been too.
Dave Sifry: State of the Blogosphere
1.3 million legitimate postings per day (by human, for human). "Blogs don't necessarily behave intelligently - but if you poke it, it moves."
English 39%, Japanese 33%, Chinese 10%, Spanish 3%, Italian, Russian, Portugese, French 2%, German, Farsi 1%, Other 5%.
Relative rankings of blogs to MSM sources. More people link to Engadget than to Fox News. More people link to Boing Boing than link to Time Magazine! More people link to TechCrunch than MTV.
Moving up the curve - the more you link, the more posts you make and the longer you have been around.
Alexis Helcmanocki, Ipsos - Power of Blogs
Internet use by country. 44% EU-wide. 56% UK. 44% FR. 49% DE...
Of those, know of blogs blogging. 61% EU. 50% UK. 90% FR. 55% DE. 58% IT. 51% ES.
Read blogs? 17% EU. 14% UK. 27% FR. 15% DE. 15 IT...
3% of EU interent users have a blog/contribute. France is at 7%. UK is 2%.
20% of UK surveyed trust the press ("the tabloid effect"), 60% FR, 44% DE, 44% IT, 61% ES.
Trust blogs? EU 24%, 15% UK, 35% FR, 23% DE, 27% IT, 17% ES.
Trusted medium? Number one most-trusted is a review on a recognised review website. 2 is newspaper articles. Number 3 is blogs.
37% of EU internet users use the Internet in shopping - either buying online, or you read information online. 52% UK, 45% FR, 48% DE, 14% IT, 14% ES.
"The more you buy over the Internet, the more you trust in blogs".
Negative buying decisions - 34% EU, 36% UK, 44% FR, 30% DE, 27% IE, 41% ES.
Positive buying decisions based on stuff you read online - 52% EU, 57% UK, 62% FR, 56% DE, 40% IE, 40% ES.
"Blogs are really present in the purchasing process".
More startups
I walked in at the end of Synthetron's presentation.
Wantuno - a French Woot! clone that uses video and podcasting.
1-Click Media - delivery of HD video over p2p. Monetise through licensing.
Touristr - a travel information site.
Jamendo - Luxembourg-based "free content platform" for music that is based on eMule.
Elsewhere
Ivan has problems with the wifi, the Peres thing and Lunch.
Ben Metcalfe wonders "where's the backchannel?" - when the connectivity works, we'll have a backchannel.
Rédigé par Gildas calls the connectivity "web 1.0 broadband" and thinks that the very pedestrian giants panel avoided the interesting questions.
Tom Raftery is pissed at the crappy Internet connection. I'm distressed by the fact that representatives of large organisations have bought themselves a seat at the table to say very little at all.
Nicole Simone has thoughts on the conference as a whole.
Tags: leweb3, paris, loiclemeur
