Web 2.0 Summit Looks At Emerging Frontiers Of InnovationWeb 2.0 Summit Looks At Emerging Frontiers Of Innovation

You may not have heard of Christine Gambito, but if you spend any time on YouTube, you've probably caught her work.

A 31-year-old American of Filipino ancestry who happens to be "lovely and talented," as the pageant announcers say, Gambito acts and sings in her self-produced videos under the moniker "HappySlip." Performing her original skits (in which she plays multiple characters), monologues, and songs (including a brilliant take-off of James Blunt's execrable "You're Beautiful," describing her love for her Macintosh), this actress, singer, and satirist has risen to be the No. 6 most-subscribed-to YouTube star. Film and TV parts cannot be far behind.

In other words, HappySlip is a member of the Web 2.0 pantheon, a perfect example of the converging trends that make up the Web 2.0 universe: unknown talent finding an audience without the intermediation of labels or studios, democratization of the means of production and distribution, quirky content popularized purely by viewer demand, user-friendly platforms, etc., etc. It's unlikely that she'll be in San Francisco for the Web 2.0 Summit this week, but much of what will be discussed here will be directly relevant to, and fueled by, entrepreneurs like HappySlip.

This is the fourth year for the Web 2.0 Summit, and it's arguably now the hottest ticket on the tech conference circuit (admission is by invitation only, so if you don't already have a ticket you're out of luck). The first year, according to organizers (Web 2.0 is co-owned and operated by O'Reilly Media and CMP Technology, which owns information), was about the central idea of the Web 2.0 concept: transforming the Web into a platform for applications, user-generated content, new business models, and so on. Years two and three focused on "Revving the Web" and on the widespread disruptions that Web 2.0 is causing for traditional business models.

Year No. 4 will be about the emerging frontiers of Web 2.0: "This year, we'll delve into nascent innovation and attempt to parse the only-just-beginning-to-be-discovered territory at the edges of the Web," say the organizers on the event's Web site.

To be sure, the whole notion of "Web 2.0" is still in enough dispute that at least some of the time will be spent, as usual, defining just what the term means and how it continues to evolve. Here are a few descriptors picked up in an afternoon of surfing and reading: "Ajax, democracy, and not dissing users." "The new hallucinogens, only now it's all legal." "Participation, collectivism, virtual communities, amateurism." "The OS for a megacomputer that encompasses the Internet, all its services, all peripheral chips and affiliated devices from scanners to satellites, and the billions of human minds entangled in this global network." "The successor to the human potential movement." The list could go on and on. You can add your own Rashomon or six-blind-men-and-an-elephant analogy here.

One thing is unquestionable, though: The last year has seen Web 2.0 go mainstream. You could argue that this actually happened two years ago, when News Corp., the media barony of Rupert Murdoch (who's appearing at Web 2.0 this week), acquired MySpace. But the last 12 months have seen a flurry of deals not only of the News Corp.-MySpace ilk -- wherein a traditional media company buys a Web 2.0, social networking upstart -- but "reverse acquisitions" such as the purchase of DoubleClick (a quintessential Web 1.0 company) by Google, the ultimate Web 2.0 giant. For more evidence, look at the deals expected to be announced at the show: Nokia, the world's No. 1 handset maker, is hosting a product-launch breakfast at which it will, according to online speculation, announce a new "Web 2.0-enabled" smartphone to rival the iPhone. AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson will follow up his company's recent purchase of $2.5 billion worth of spectrum in the 700-MHz band with ... something. Microsoft's Steve Ballmer will once again try to convince the audience that the world's leading purveyor of conventional packaged software is transforming itself into a Web 2.0 leader.

Murdoch, speaking along with MySpace CEO and co-founder Chris DeWolfe, is likely to announce that MySpace is following Facebook by opening up its APIs to outside developers. And so on.

Perhaps the primary point of evidence, though, is the nature of the show itself. In its first couple of years, the Summit was a three-day festival of prognostication and high-level head-scratching. Now it's a deal-makers' ball.

"Billed as a big-think brainstorming session, Web 2 .0 is actually a three-day business-development party with a $3,000 entry fee," wrote Valleywag editor (and Summit attendee) Paul Boutin, who apparently thinks that's a bad thing. "Attendees are there to find sales and partnering leads, and to boost publicity for their companies and products."

Larger questions will be tackled as well, though. What will the ongoing explosion in "democratized," user-generated, free content mean for Madison Avenue? (AdWeek on Monday ran a gloomy column by Andrew Keen in which he predicted that "the Web 2.0 hysteria marks the end of the golden age of advertising; in the long term, it might even mark the end of advertising itself.") What will Google's ascendance mean for the flourishing of creativity and innovation currently going on? (Put another way: Will Google become Microsoft 2.0?) What does all this paradigm-shifting and barrier-destroying mean for IT managers, who after all have old-world things like budgets and trusted-partner relationships to worry about? What does the proliferation of Web 2.0 startups mean for Silicon Valley's VC community and traditional business-funding models? And if we can't agree on just what Web 2.0 means, what the hell is this talk about "Web 3.0"?

What this week's Summit is certain to demonstrate is that the pace of change will continue to accelerate. This week's Economist includes an essay on the future of innovation by Vijay Vaitheeswaran, author of the new book Zoom: The Global Race To Fuel The Car Of The Future (Twelve, 2007), in which he argues that centrally planned approaches to business and technological progress are "giving way to the more democratic, even joyously anarchic, new model of innovation.

"Rapid and disruptive change is now happening across new and old businesses," Vaitheeswaran continues. "Innovation ... is becoming both more accessible and more global," as "democratization releases the untapped ingenuity of people everywhere."

Vaitheeswaran wasn't referring to this week's Summit, or specifically to the Web at all. But that's as good a definition of Web 2.0 as any.