Web 2.0 is a moneymaker. Sort of. That is, the slick, innovative start-ups that make up the Web-based tech trend aren't necessarily profitable. Many, in fact, aren't generating much revenue. But the conferences? Cash cows.
Tech book magnate Tim O'Reilly runs the biggest event, the annual Web 2.0 conference where start-ups come to strut their stuff, and techies, moneymen and bloggers come to rub laptops. He's now expanding the concept to the Web 2.0 Expo, which began here on Sunday.
Did the tech world really need another Web 2.0 event? O'Reilly seems to think so--he says he had to turn away willing paid attendees from his last conference in November. This one's supposed to be more practical and less theoretical. But there's plenty of overlap and a little bit of overkill. With 11,000 attendees cramming into keynote sessions, some are feeling Web 2.0 fatigue.
"I'm finding myself in a football stadium filled with developers, not the key executives I was looking for," said Lars Hinrichs, chief executive of Xing, a career-focused social networking company publicly traded on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange. He doesn't plan to attend the next Web 2.0 conference. "But haven't you seen the smile on Tim O'Reilly's face?"
With such a big crowd of tiny-company executives, disappointment runs high when Web-successful headliners don't deliver much in the way of insight. Amazon (nasdaq: AMZN - news - people ) Chief Executive Jeff Bezos took the main stage Monday, but answered a slew of questions with "I can't really talk about that."
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