Presentations: Strategy & Business Models

Complete Web Monitoring Download sample chapter from “Complete Web Monitoring“
By Alistair Croll and Sean Power

This track examines the economic opportunities created by Web 2.0 trends. Real-world examples feature companies using Web 2.0 angles to create new business models, enter new markets, develop new products, and make real money. We thank iStockphoto for supporting the event.

Sessions are being confirmed daily. Please check back often to see the latest program content.

Behaviorally Targeted Advertising – Holy Grail or Third Rail?

Moderated by:

Satya Patel (Battery Ventures)

Panelists:

Mathew Greitzer (Razorfish), Fran Maier (TRUSTe), Ingrid Sanders (TARGUSinfo), Omar Tawakol (BlueKai)

Online data collection is fueling a new wave of behavioral targeting, but does the potential effectiveness justify its real or perceived invasiveness? Experts from across the advertising ecosystem will provide a reality check on the balance between privacy protection, user experience, and ad revenue; and share insights into encouraging mutually beneficial web site interactions.

Building an Ad-Supported Business around a Community

Chris Tolles (Topix)

Topix launched in 2004, and after establishing an early lead in the news aggregation space, received $60M in investment from the three largest newspaper publishers in the USA. Chris Tolles, Topix' CEO will talk about what it takes to build out both the product and the monetization to create an ad-supported community-focused business.

Cha-Ching!: How to Cash in with a Freemium Business Model

Moderated by:

Chris Anderson (Wired Magazine)

Panelists:

Christopher Dean (Skype), Brad Jefferson (Animoto), Joe Kennedy (Pandora)

It's no secret that startups need a strong business model to stay afloat in a continuously challenging economy. This session focuses on the good, bad and ugly of the freemium model, shared by the executives of three successful companies based on one. Why go freemium? Where do you draw the “free” line? And how do you convert users to customers?

Darwin’s Finches, 20th Century Business, and Open APIs: Evolve Your Business Model

Sam Ramji (Apigee)

Presentation: Darwin’s Finches, 20th Century Business, and Open APIs_ Evolve Your Business Model Presentation [PDF]

APIs are changing the face of business. This session will teach you how to take advantage of this innovation and build an enterprise-ready business model around open APIs. Using real-life case studies of enterprise adoption, we’ll illustrate how to leverage existing data and services, support a vibrant developer community, find new partners, and ultimately monetize with open APIs.

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It's All about the "i" -- A Decade of iStockphoto Community and Business Learnings from File Ingestion to Image Search - Sponsored Session

Aaron Springer (iStockphoto), Kelly Thompson (iStockphoto)

iStockphoto changed the image industry forever by democratizing access to great imagery for everyone at affordable prices in 2000, creating the microstock industry and connecting community artists directly with buyers online.

Lean Product Management for Web 2.0 Products

Dan Olsen (YourVersion, Inc.)

Paper: Lean Product Management for Web 2_0 Products Paper [PDF]

Is the product you're building what customers really want? How do you know? Come learn best practices in Lean Product Management. This session will cover how to understand customer needs, product design, usability testing, how to parse user feedback, and using metrics to optimize your product.

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Massively Distributed Work

Lukas Biewald (CrowdFlower)

New technologies let thousands of people collaborate almost instantly. This session, led by CrowdFlower, a rising startup in the sector, will look not at how these new crowdsourcing technologies are being applied to social problems and business problems alike--with innovative processes and surprising results. We'll also look at the sometimes-shady side of the sector.

Media's New Business Model: Success without Google

Moderated by:

Jessica Vascellaro (Wall Street Journal)

Panelists:

Bernard Gershon (GershonMedia, LLC), Tristan Harris (Apture), Heidi Perry (ShareThis), Darian Shirazi (Fwix)

News corporations and small bloggers alike are thinking twice about being indexed on Google. So what does a Googleless Web 2.0 content economy and its viable business models look like? What's the impact on journalists and publishers? From real-time aggregation to monetization and distribution, join a panel of successful companies working beyond Google in an adjacent media world.

Money for Nothing: User-Generated Virtual Goods

Cary Rosenzweig (IMVU, Inc.)

Presentation: Money for Nothing_ User-Generated Virtual Goods Presentation [PPT]

What does it take to build a successful virtual goods business? With the most successful user-generated virtual goods system in the world, supported by the world's largest catalog of virtual goods (over 3 million), IMVU, a leading 3D virtual world and social network, knows how to do virtual successfully.

Open Leadership: How Social Technology Can Transform the Way You Lead

Charlene Li (Altimeter Group)

Presentation: Open Leadership_ How Social Technology Can Transform the Way You Lead Presentation [PPT]
Paper: Open Leadership_ How Social Technology Can Transform the Way You Lead Paper [PDF]

The biggest barrier to the adoption of social technology in an organization is resistance to being open--a fear on the part of leaders that if they let go of control, chaos will ensue. This presentation will highlight lessons from a new book, "Open Leadership" that looks at a new paradigm for strategy and business.

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Privacy and Free Speech: It's Good for Business

Andrew Bridges (Winston & Strawn, LLP), Lauren Gelman (Blurry Edge Strategies), David Hornik (August Capital), Raman Khanna (ONSET Ventures), Brian Knapp (Loopt), Nicole Ozer (ACLU of Northern California)

Expensive lawsuits, bad press, being hauled to Washington for government investigations –not conducive to business success. Get the inside track from VCs, privacy officers, and lawyers at the ACLU about how to bake good privacy and free speech into the business and product development process and make those early decisions that are good for users and the bottom line.

Sharing is the New Lead Gen

Rashmi Sinha (SlideShare, Inc.)

Presentation: Sharing is the New Lead Gen Presentation [PPT]

Checkins are the new coupons. Bit.ly links are the new affiliate links. Social startups are slamming up against (and reinventing, repurposing, or disrupting) old business models. There are many reasons to launch a performance business model like lead generation. However you need the right mix of factors for it to work. Learn from SlideShare’s experience with LeadShare to how to make it work.

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Social Games 2.0: Myth, Fact and a Grand Future

Moderated by:

John Davison (GamePro Media)

Panelists:

Omar Abdelwahed (Ubisoft Entertainment), Ilja Rotelli (Wizards of the Coast), Eric Todd (Playdom), Simon Jeffrey (ngmoco:))

Social games have become mass market. Facebook alone has many millions of daily active users checking on their farms' produce, making sure their virtual cafes are clean, and conspiring their next mob hits. Revenue projections are equally exciting, but difficult to confirm. We'll examine the social games landscape and discuss the details of successful game development.

Upgrade Your Mandate - From User Experience to Customer Experience

Peter Merholz (Adaptive Path)

Presentation: Upgrade Your Mandate - From User Experience to Customer Experience Presentation [PDF]

Your customers lead multi-channel lives. So why are you focused on just one? In this talk, Peter Merholz will lay out a strategy for "Web + 1", connecting the web to other service touchpoints, and how to address the organizational challenges in doing so.

What Our Users Will Pay For

Moderated by:

Eric Wilhelm (Instructables.com)

Panelists:

Armen Berjikly (Experience Project), Heather Hilleren (Local Dirt), Rich Reimer (Grouply)

2009's drastic reduction in online advertising forced us to rethink Instructables' ad-driven business model, and quickly build new revenue generating products, primarily in the form of paid subscriptions. This panel discussion will investigate the changing business models of Instructables and three other small web-based business.