Web 2.0 Expo - Day One; a view

This week's Web 2.0 Expo here in San Francisco is again a front-row seat to what everyone else is doing with their SocialMedia (blog) strategy. Much has changed just since last year's meeting - especially around the operating systems and software capabilities and thought I'd just give three (3) key items I observed today.

1. Microsoft's new Live Mesh renews lends credence that software's future lie in it's usefulness beyond a single device. Simultaneously it builds upon the economics of centralization - and the whole notion of ambient "cloud" computing. An impressive idea that whose value is obvious. Let's just hope it works.
2. Clay Shirky offered an interesting perspective on the changes in Media that are underway in part thanks to battle hymn of social media. In summary, media was offered solely for consumption and was created using a very ordinary, vertically integrated, command and control business model. Someone (networks) made it and the masses consumed it; usually from their couch. What's changing - and what traditional media can't stand - that that media is evolving into really three (3) parts: Consumption, Participation and Sharing. Still the vast majority of media is consumed but over time newer generation will come to expect that which they can participate in and share with others. Can you say Wikipedia, Facebook, MySpace, Slide. Clay went on to say that he estimates that Wikipedia has cost approx 100 million man/hours of time to create but that in the US alone we consume (watch) about 200 billion man/hours of traditional media. That is for all the time and effort that has gone into creating Wikipedia the amount of intellectual capacity that is still off-line during the consumption of traditional media is the equivalent of 2,000 individual Wikipedia's per year.
3. Little mention of Google beyond their utility-like characteristics as it relates to SEO strategies for blogs and social media sites. Strange in as much as how prominent Google was featured at this meeting last year with Eric Schmidt's roll out of their new Apps offering. Not that Google is unimportant but there are clearly many new participants some old (IBM) and some new (Slide, Orange Soda).