I attended the Churchhill Club panel discussion this evening -- Blogging & Social Networking: Who Cares?
The Panel:
Antony Brydon, CEO, Visible Path Corporation
Jason Calacanis, Chairman, The Weblogs, Inc. Network
Marc Canter, CEO, Broadband Mechanics
Charlene Li, Principal Analyst, Forrester Research
Ross Mayfield, CEO, Socialtext
Ajit Nazre, Partner, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers
David Pell, Electablog.com
Mark Pincus, CEO, Tribe Networks
Moderators:
Tony Perkins, Creator and Editor-in-Chief, AlwaysOn
Dan Gillmor, San Jose Mercury News
The panel was a group of folks from companies that I didn't really expect to see on the same stage. The panel was actually quite large. It seems the reason behind the size of the panel was that everyone the moderators invited decided to accept the invitation. The panel definitely cared. I expected that.
Tony Perkins opened the proceedings by describing how much money has been invested by VC's in this space just in the companies on stage. This opener pretty much answered the "who cares" question for the VC's in the audience.
There was so much optimism in the air about the potential of these two technologies to transform the world we live in that it was palpable. Not since BloggerCon have I seen that kind of enthusiasm. The only difference is that there had to have been over 600 people in the room. About 40% were bloggers and over 80% had tried one of the social networks. In other words, the audience cared. Not what I expected.
I have always believed that blogs were a form of social software and that tools for building social networks will play a role in how people who write blogs will find and interact with each other. These tools place a renewed emphasis on people and their relationships. I think that's important both in terms of giving them a voice and helping them contribute - everywhere.
People care about openness and transparency. Spoke and Friendster got slammed pretty hard both by the audience and the panel for their lack of openness. This applied to platform, lock-in, how the data is being used.
I really enjoyed Marc Canter. After reading his blog for quite a while now, I have to say that he is just like his blog. Some of the panelists mentioned how you can have different personas for different sites - I am not sure that's possible if you are a blogger and you care. Who you are just comes out.
All-in-all it was a great discussion with Antony Brydon representing the corporate world, great Jason Calacanis media stories and commentary, Marc Canter being himself and the champion of openness, Charlene Li for the analysts, Ross Mayfield's intellectual musings on the future of corporate communication, Ajit Nazre taking the heat from the other panelists who don't need the money, David Pell powerblogger, and Mark Pincus who outbid Yahoo for the social network patent held by SixDegrees.com vowing to make it a safer world for people who care.
10:47:34 PM 
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