Who Knew?

“A few people got up and asked questions and the geeks did manage to (sort of) address one or two but then they forgot about the questioners and just started rambling again, talking to each other and forgetting about the audience. It was like watching five college kids with ADHD and an eight-ball of coke trying to hold a conversation. One thing that struck me is that in trying to explain what Web 2.0 or Web 3.0 is all about, the geeks kept coming back to this example of how they had been trying to find a good restaurant in Boston and how their cool social networking tools and collaborative filters had enabled them to do such a great job of this restaurant hunting task because, like, Facebook and Twitter are so much better for this than just a Google search because, like, I don’t need a Google search bringing up a list of every restaurant in Boston, I want a filtered search relying on people I trust, people in my network. If I were funding these guys I might go home scratching my head about what those kids are doing with all of my millions. Maybe there is a point to what they’re doing, but honestly, what great problem are these companies trying to solve? Sitting there watching this spectacle — watching these guys unable to simply explain what they do and and how they are going to make a business out of it – it was staggering to think that someone has entrusted these people with very large sums of money. But someone has. I weep for those people.”

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Dan Lyons writing about a Web 2.0 panel at MIT.

One of his better posts.