Of course nobody on the panel is really going to tell us what 'the next big thing' is, mostly because they don't know but also because even if they did, they wouldn't tell a room full of their rivals. The discussion flitted from green-tech to software to open standards, but I'll skip to some points of interest.
Openness: Kim Polese of SpikeSource said it's the companies not promoting openness or open standards that have to worry.
Chris Sacca of Google said that Twitter's 20-fold increase in web traffic through its API is a great example of how openness encourages innovation outside the company walls.
User-created content: So what, really, is the common characteristic of The Next Big Thing? They were all unexpected, said Maria Sendra of investment firm Baker & McKenzie, but the pattern is user-created content. "People are coming on and spending time because of the stickiness, and leaving a lot of data behind. The next step is to figure out more about the users from the data mining that can be done on these services."
The user experience: Sacca said that everyone thought video was the next big thing for about ten years, but said that when YouTube broke through it wasn't that innovative - it just made video easy.
"Flash ubiquity became so easy that you could count on it. iTunes was the same way - it's a closed platform and I'm not a huge fan of that, but iTunes was enough that it took a lot of us who used Kazaa to buy music again, and I'm not making any confession or denial here. [Steve] Jobs streamlined the process by focusing on the user experience."
He went on to talk about integrating new staff after acquisitions, saying they should be given performance milestones. Blogger, he admitted was quite poorly handled even thought the product was a natural fit for Google; they just took them on and sat them at a desk. "You sit there, we sit here and we'll see you at lunch."
After considerably more acquisitions, Google now sets achievable targets and defers compensation until those targets are met. "It's a way of saying 'when you turn up on Monday, what do you guys do?'."
Keep it real: And with the fixation on the next big thing and the holy grail of the Web 2.0 business model, let's keep some perspective, said Valley veteran Joe DiNucci.
The only thing I know for certain for sure is the truth that you are going to die, so the only thing you can decide on is what you do with this next hour.
"Sometimes it's good to remember that."
Technorati Tags: ChrisSacca, Google, JoeDiNucci, KimPolese, Kazaa
