Web 2.0 Conference Videos

Nate Elliott | October 22, 2007, 10:14 AM

How are you spending your Monday morning? I'm drinking coffee and writing reports, of course. But I've also got videos from last week's Web 2.0 conference running in the background. There's nothing earth-shattering so far, but they're definitely interesting, and worth a bit of time.

Best (and most bizarre) quote so far comes from Ballmer. He was asked if Microsoft's search business is like a kid who, even though you tell strangers you love them, in private you smack them on the back of the head because they're not doing well in school: "No, absolutely not. I would say 'Hey, you're just three years old. And we've got you playing basketball with the 12-year-olds. And you're growing up quick, you're getting better everyday, and it may take until you're 6 or 7, but you're gonna dunk on the other guy someday.' "

Ballmer also doesn't deny that Microsoft is losing money on their Facebook ad deal -- but claims that what Microsoft really wants from this deal is to learn more about social media and to open the door to different types of advertisers. If I thought Microsoft (or Google or Yahoo) could ever win the social media game, I'd be worried that this is an old-school Microsoft partner-with-an-innovator-and-then-duplicate-their-model deal. But since I can't imagine Microsoft or the rest ever winning in social media without buying an existing leader (does the old software-era partner-and-borrow strategy even work online? I don't think we've seen MSN do it yet), the ad-repping deal is more likely to simply whet Microsoft's appetite to buy a piece of Facebook. With Facebook apparently having scheduled a company-wide meeting for tomorrow, it looks like we'll soon find out if that's what has happened.