OpenCo NY is just ten or so days away – the opening plenary (for Backstage pass holders and VIPs) is Weds evening, May 22, and the full day of open sessions inside 130+ innovative NY-based companies is the following day, May 23. Consider this post a “curtain raiser” of sorts, with all the information you might need to grok the event and, I hope, participate if you happen to find yourself in NYC for InternetWeek.

General admission registration is still open, and I plan to keep it open until at least 2000 folks register. As of today, we’re past 1500, and with ten days left and pacing of about 100 a day, I expect that to happen sometime next week. VIP access to our schedule picker, which works just like a music festival app but you pick the companies you want to visit (as opposed to the bands you want to see) is already open. If you want to register, either for the free admission or VIP, go here. I humbly suggest you upgrade to a VIP level (it’s just $100) which makes sure you get immediate access to picking the companies you want to visit – once we open General Admission later next week, most of the companies listed below will fill up quickly.

A VERY special thanks to founding Tour Partner American Express OPEN Forum (you’re amazing!) and to IPG and Yahoo!, who are both major supporters and sponsors as well.

So here are the amazing companies that are opening their doors to the public for this festival, and telling the world their story and their mission. Here they are:

(RED), About.com, Adobe/Behance, AppNexus, appssavvy, Artspace, Artsy, Aviary, BazzarVoice, Betaworks, Birchbox, bitly, Blue Ridge Foundation New York, BlueKai, Bonobos, BrightFarms, Business Insider, BuzzFeed, Centre for Social Innovation, ChallengePost, Charity: Water, Chartbeat, Complex Media, Crowdtap, Curbed Network, Dashlane, Deep Focus, Delaney Barbecue, DonorsChoose.org, DoSomething.org, Dress Code, Droga5, Echoing Green, Echolocation, Edelman, Etsy, Evidon, eXelate, Fab.com, Farmigo, Federated Media Publishing, Forbes Media, Foursquare, Free The Children, Friends of the High Line, General Assembly, Gilt, Gojee, Google, Greatist, Hill Country Hospitality, Hot Bread Kitchen, Huge, IDEO, INDMUSIC, IPG Media Lab, isocket, JaegerSloan, Kensington & Sons, Kickstarter, Kiip, KMco, Lerer Ventures, Leske’s Bakery, LiveIntent, LocalResponse, Locket, LUMA Partners, Luminary Labs, Major Food Group, MakerBot, Maker’s Row, Mashable, Meals to Heal, MediaMath, Meetup, Mexicue, MOUSE, National Museum of Mathematics, Next Jump, NowThis News, NSG/SWAT, OneBeat, ooVoo, Outbrain, Pave, Percolate, Plyfe, PolicyMic, PublicStuff, PureWow, Qnary, Quantcast, Quirky, R/GA, RebelMouse, Regus, Rent the Runway, Sailthru, Salesforce.com, SeatGeek, Simulmedia, Skillshare, Snaps!, SocialFlow, Someecards, Stack Exchange, STORY, StyleCaster Media Group, Sumpto, Tablet, Tapad, TechStars, TED, The Guardian, The YARD, Thrillist Media Group, Trigger Media Group, Tutorspree, Undertone,Vaynermedia, Warby Parker, WeWork Labs, Work Market, Yahoo!, Yext, Yieldbot, Yodle, YouNow, Zeel and ZocDoc

Speakers at the plenary (you have to buy a Backstage pass to come to that!) include

June Cohen, Executive Producer of TED Media
Chad Dickerson, CEO, Etsy
Eric Hippeau, Partner, Lerer Ventures
Bob Pittman, CEO, Clear Channel
Rachel Sterne Hoat, Chief Digital Officer for the City of New York
Matt Seiler, Global CEO, IPG Mediabrands
Robert K. Steel, Deputy Mayor for Economic Development, Office of the City of New York
Joanne Wilson, Gotham Gal

Next are the amazing advisors who have helped bring this to life in NYC:

I’ve just learned that Kim Kadlec, Chief Media Officer for Johnson & Johnson, has also joined this illustrious group. Thanks to all of you, you’ve made this a raging success!

The post These Companies Are Denting the Universe In NY appeared first on John Battelle's Search Blog.

It’s been building for weeks – Friday marks the first day of the fifth annual Outside Lands festival here in San Francisco. Despite the demands of work and family, I try to get to as many festivals as I can – so far, I’ve managed to see Bonnaroo a few times, Coachella once (I’ll be back!), Austin City Limits, and a few others. Outside Lands is local to San Francisco and therefore much easier to attend – this will be my third. Compared to your average festival goer (who tends to be single and about half my age) I’m a punter, but I’ll take it.

Why do I go? In two words, serendipity and joy. When you gather with tens of thousands of like minded, smiling people, unexpected connections are made, and bouts of pure happiness break out all over the place. Who wouldn’t want to soak in some of that?

I bring this all up because I’ve noticed a trend, highlighted by this story: YouTube streaming Lollapalooza music festival for free this weekend. Outside Lands was one of the first festivals to stream for free (back in 2009, if I recall), and many others have followed apace.

Why?

Well, I think the truth is obvious, but worth restating: it’s one thing to be there, and quite another to watch everyone else being there. The value of gathering together only increases as the virtual channel becomes ubiquitous. And that is a good sign for humanity, to my mind.

The post The Power of Being There appeared first on John Battelle's Search Blog.

Mayer at the Web 2 Summit, San Francisco

(image James Duncan Davidson)

I try to let big news percolate for a few days before weighing in, and it seems even more appropriate to follow that playbook when it came to the scrum around Marissa Mayer joining Yahoo.

Yes, I’ve known both Marissa Mayer (and Ross Levinsohn) professionally, for more than a decade, but so do many other folks, and it seems nearly all of them – Steven Levy and Kara Swisher intelligently among them – have weighed in, multiple times, on what this all means. If you want a rundown, just search for “Marissa Mayer” in Google News.

The coverage has taken its usual course from “Holy Shit!” to “What Will Happen to Ross?” to “Wait, Is Mayer Right for the Job” to “Here’s Our Advice/The Things That Need  to Be Fixed/What Mayer’s Focus Should Be” types of pieces.

This won’t really be any of those. Instead, I find myself thinking about the things I’ve not really seen much coverage of, at least in depth. And true to what I’ve spent a fair amount of time thinking about, they all come down to the intersection of media and technology, and the role marketing plays in that landscape.

When I spoke to Mayer after she was named CEO, I asked the question, almost as a joke – “So is Yahoo! a media or a technology company?” She was quick to respond that she just does not get the debate – of course it’s both. What matters, she pressed, is creating great products that surprise and delight Yahoo! customers.

I couldn’t agree more, yet there is an important nuance here – just who *are* Yahoo’s customers?

Let me step back here and posit something that might upset more than a few of you: Yahoo has two sets of customers, and of course the “end user” is one of them. But the other is the marketer.  And media companies – or “tech companies driven by media revenues,” or however else one might want to phrase it – sometimes ignore this fact at their peril.

I’ll let those of you who find such a statement anathema go ahead and click away – here’s a nice unicorn chaser if you’d like – or you can flame me in the comments (I do respond to most, as long as they’re in English and don’t employ more than the occasional insult).

But those of you who’ve continued to read probably know that I believe, deeply, that commercial publishing is a conversation between three key parties: The reader (or viewer), the publisher/content creator, and the marketer. And while it’s generally been true that this conversation has been all kinds of broken during much of the web’s history, the truth is, it needn’t be that way. Six years ago (!) I wrote a series of posts describing the rise of conversational media and imploring that marketers learn to join the conversation. I think it’s fair to say that this is happening, at scale.

Beyond the contributions of pioneers like Federated Media (yes, I had to plug us), the rise of “native” advertising formats is proof of this. Twitter’s promoted suite is one growing example, as is Facebook’s Sponsored Stories (and its attendant focus on getting brands to be true publishers on the Facebook platform). Pinterest, WordPress (in partnership with FM), and Tumblr are hard at work on “native” solutions for their services as well. All of these advertising solutions pale, however, in comparison to the original “native” advertising format of the Web: Google AdWords.

Many have pointed out that Mayer’s principle weakness, when compared to Levinsohn, is her lack of traditional media and marketing chops. I can say from very deep experience that the marketing business is very much a relationship business – CMOs and agency leaders live in a world driven by ideas, creative and content – and they want to know the people who they do business with, and trust them in a way that is difficult to model algorithmically. Mayer’s detractors point out that she’s not spent much time wooing Madison Avenue, or dealing with the inevitable headaches born of the complex, people-driven businesses that are agencies, marketing clients, and content partners.

While there is some truth in this criticism, I think it overlooks a few things. First and foremost, Mayer is a very fast study, and she already knows how important the traditional media business is to Yahoo. Hell, a quick overview of the company’s financials bears this out, as does a visit to any of its properties, which are dominated by advertising. Yahoo may have a lot of technology behind the covers, but its products are nearly all media products – content intended to gather an audience and provide a place for marketers to message to that audience. More than half of Yahoo’s revenues come from “display” advertising, most of the rest comes from search, which is also marketer driven.

Secondly, Mayer will be a big draw of talent, and not just engineering talent. She understands that if she can’t retain Levinsohn and/or his recent CRO Michael Barrett (I certainly hope she can), she’ll need to attract top tier media minds to the business. And I think she’ll succeed at doing just that.

But to me, the thing many are missing is that Mayer will bring her fanatical product focus to more than just Yahoo’s consumer-facing media offerings. She’ll also be staring at the company’s advertising products, and asking this simple question: How can we do better?

To answer that question, Mayer will need to do more than study the data (though of course, that will be important). She’ll need to sit down with a wide swath of Yahoo’s marketing customers and ask them what they want from their investment in her platform. She’ll hear an awful lot of conflicting advice, but it’s in the bricollage from all the feedback that the best ideas come out. Mayer can’t afford to immediately tack away from all those boxes and rectangles cluttering up the Yahoo! experience, nor should she – it turns out that display advertising does indeed work for marketers. But the larger question remains: Can we do better?

The answer lies in executing the subtle and ongoing iterative work of true digital publisher – improving the core product experience both sets of customers – consumers of the media experience, as well as marketers looking to be part of that experience in a more native fashion. And again, from a quick study of Yahoo’s products, there’s plenty of improvements to be made.

An important and related part of the work ahead for Mayer and her team will be deciding what role ad tech and search will play in Yahoo’s future. Despite purchasing Right Media back in 2007, Yahoo has never been seen as a leader in ad tech, and word on the street in the weeks prior to Mayer’s ascension was that Yahoo was about to outsource its ad technology platform to market leader Google. Of course, such a move is fraught with regulatory and business implications. And Mayer may well decide it’s in Yahoo’s best interest to invest in own its own destiny when it comes to the machine-driven world of ad serving and programmatic audience buying. But trust me, what Yahoo does here will be an extremely important directional indicator.

Which brings us to search. It’s been widely reported that Yahoo’s 2009 deal to outsource core search to Microsoft hasn’t worked out as well as either party wished it would. Given how important search is to Yahoo overall, and how deeply knowledgeable Mayer is in this particular field, I’d expect big changes in Yahoo Search. The company recently unveiled a new search product called “Axis,” which seems like a neat idea but feels a bit too complicated for most consumers to really grok. Mayer will likely take Occam’s Razor to search, and I expect the results will be quite positive.

But it’s the other side of Yahoo’s revenue equation – the branded display market – where Mayer will face her greatest challenges, and find her biggest opportunities. Yahoo isn’t a startup like Pinterest, Tumblr,  or even Twitter, where founders can leverage massive user growth to raise enough capital to “figure out how best to implement appropriate native marketing solutions.” Yahoo is nearly 20 years old, and it’s got a very deep, tangled, and somewhat tarnished brand in the minds of its best advertising customers. It’s true that creating world-beating consumer-facing products will go a long way toward fixing that brand. But those products must be informed by – and even created for – both sets of customers – the consumers of content, as well as those who pay for them to be created in the first place.

The post On Mayer, Yahoo!, and The (Other) Customer appeared first on John Battelle's Search Blog.

(I promised a bit more color commentary on Larry Page’s 3500-word missive posted last week, and after reading it over a few more times, it seems worth the time to keep that promise. I wrote this last weekend, but am on vacation, so just posting it now…)

It’s not often you get a document such as this to analyze – the last time I can recall is Google’s feisty 2004 letter to shareholders written on the eve of its IPO.

Well, eight years in, the feisty has taken a back seat to the practical, the explicative, and the … nice! The first thing I noticed were the exclamation points – Larry uses one in the second sentence, then keeps on exclaiming – 11 times, in fact. Now, I don’t know Larry Page very well, but he just doesn’t seem the type to use exclamation points. Seeing so many of them felt….off. Also, the letter had a very “softer side of Sears” feel to it, the language itself was rounded, not quite defensive (as it might have been given the news lately), but also not pointed.

Clearly, this was a new Larry – Larry in a sweater vest, so to speak. As a lover of language, I wanted to see if there were any interesting patterns, so for ease of analysis, I decided to cut and paste it into a Word doc (sorry, Google Docs, old habits die hard. Something that the Bing team knows well…).

Larry uses variations of the word “love” eight times in his post. Beautiful is used three times. “Great” gets a workout: it’s used 14 times. “Excited about” gets five. “You can,” 10, “We have,” 12. “Search” gets 22 mentions, “Google,” 32, “people,” 28.  ”Users” gets 18 – I’ve always hated that word. Android is mentioned 13 times, though it doesn’t seem to be nearly as important in the document as Google+, which merits 9 mentions, slightly lower than “revenue,” which comes in at 10.

But what really strikes me is how, well, nice the language is. So many nice words – beautiful, share, improve, healthy, better, like, important, great, well, tremendous, believe, enable, best – all of these words are used at least three times, often more than ten.

I’m not saying it’s wrong to be so darn nice, it just doesn’t feel like it’s truly Page’s voice. It feels more written by committee. It lacks the zest and attitude of Page’s 2004 missive – but then again, Google has a lot more on its plate now, and a lot more to lose.

Then again, there are some zingers in there, even if they are wearing sweaters. Page makes a point of showing how the Android and YouTube acquisitions worked out in the end, a veiled (or vested?!) defense of Google’s Motorola deal. And while the word “evil” is only used once, I find it very, very interesting it was used at all. For a while, it seemed Google was backing off its unofficial slogan of “Don’t be evil.” But in the letter, up it pops, though again, with its shoulders rounded: “We have always believed that it’s possible to make money without being evil,” Page writes. Then he goes into an anecdote about why revenue is necessary, starring his tragic hero Nikola Tesla.

Oddly, for a letter that is reputedly written for investors, Page never mentions Google’s stock price, which hasn’t exactly beaten the Nasdaq lately, but it hasn’t lagged, either.

In the end, the letter is a long, rambling walk through a familiar suburb. Nice, but…well, just that, nice. Maybe I was hoping that Page would come out swinging, defending Google against all the recent slings and arrows, pointedly explaining why it makes sense to combine privacy policies, integrate Google+ into search, and buy Motorola. But that’s clearly not his (public) style. I’m guessing in private, there’s a bit more fire in his pen.

The post On Larry Page’s Letter: Super Amazing Great Tremendous! appeared first on John Battelle's Search Blog.

I appreciate all you Searchblog readers out there who are getting tired of my relentless Web 2 Summit postings. And I know I said my post about Reid Hoffman was the last of its kind. And it was, sort of. Truth is, there are a number of other interviews happening as well, ones that I am not personally doing. And I wanted to post a last chance for any of you to ask any of these folks questions as well. I’ll be in touch with the winners of the contest (details below) soon, but here are some other interviews of note:

U.S. Senator Ron Wyden, Oregon Interviewed by best-selling author of Game Change, John Heilemann.

Paul Otellini, CEO, Intel I am doing this one, but it’s quite short as Paul is also doing a short presentation, so I figured a call for questions might not be needed.

Ben Horowitz, General Partner, Andreessen Horowitz Heilemann is also doing this one.

Dr. Ann Cavoukian, Information and Privacy Commissioner of Ontario, Canada & David Vladeck, FTC Bureau of Consumer Protection Moderated by Alex Macgillivray, the GC of Twittter. How cool is that?

John Partridge, President, Visa Inc. & Dan Schulman, Group President for Enterprise Growth, American Express I’m doing this one, but given it’s a three way dialog, I figured a call for questions might be more than we’ll be able to incorporate.

Quantifying Entrepreneurship with Bill Maris and Graham Spencer. Another one of my very short interviews, this time with the principals behind Google Ventures.

Jack Tretton, President & CEO, Sony Computer Entertainment of America Interviewed by the overly qualified Jane McGonigal.

Tim Westergren, Founder & Chief Strategy Officer, Pandora  Interviewed by Adam Lashinsky of Fortune.

Bret Taylor, Chief Technology Officer, Facebook Another short one, which may go long if I have my way….

This program is the best I’ve ever put together, and the most thematic (the Data Frame). Even if you are not coming, take a look at who is, and check the site for the live stream. It’s going to be epic.

And once again, below are pointers to the folks where I did ask for comments. Feel free to add more, and to add comments on any of the folks above. All will be eligible to win free tickets to next week’s show. Hope to see you there!

Mark Pincus, John Donahoe, Marc Benioff, Dick Costolo, Michael Dell, Mary Meeker, Michael Roth, Steve Ballmer, James Gleick, Vic Gundotra, Ross Levinsohn, the Quora founders.

The post Web 2: But Wait, There's More (And More….) – Best Program Ever. Period. appeared first on John Battelle's Search Blog.

Our final interview at Web 2 is Reid Hoffman, co-founder of LinkedIn and legendary Valley investor. Hoffman is now at Greylock Partners, but his investment roots go way back. A founding board member of PayPal, Hoffman has invested in Facebook, Flickr, Ning, Zynga, and many more.

As he wears (at least) two hats, I’ll be asking Reid to not only discuss LinkedIn’s business and industry (think jobs), but also ask him to ponder the culture of our industry, and the current economic and investment client.

Given Hoffman is my final interview at Web 2 this year, this post is your final chance to give me input before we get rolling next week. I appreciate all the comments so far (more than 100!).

As an extra incentive, I’ll be picking the best three questions from these series of posts. The authors of those questions will get complimentary passes to Web 2 – a more than $4000 value. So get to commenting, and thank you!

Previously: Mark Pincus, John Donahoe, Marc Benioff, Dick Costolo, Michael Dell, Mary Meeker, Michael Roth, Steve Ballmer, James Gleick, Vic Gundotra, Ross Levinsohn, the Quora founders.

The post Help Me Interview Reid Hoffman, Founder, LinkedIn (And Win Free Tix to Web 2) appeared first on John Battelle's Search Blog.

Next up on the list of interesting folks I’m speaking with at Web 2 are Charlie Cheever and Adam D’Angelo, the founders of Quora. Cheever and D’Angelo enjoy (or suffer from) Facebook alumni pixie dust – they left the social giant to create Quora in 2009. It grew quickly after its public launch in 2010, inspiring some to claim it was the best structured Q&A site ever. They’ve also snagged funding led by Benchmark. As far as I know, this is the duo’s first major on stage interview together.

I’ve used Quora, a bit, and probably will be using it a lot as I start researching my book in earnest. But I’m curious as to how the service scales beyond its current place as a repository of quality – yet incomplete – knowledge. I’m also curious about its business model.

What are you curious about with regard to Quora? What should I ask its founders?

As an extra incentive, I’ll be picking the best three questions from these series of posts (see below and watch for more). The authors of those questions will get complimentary passes to Web 2 – a more than $4000 value. So get to commenting, and thank you!

Previously: Mark Pincus, John Donahoe, Marc Benioff, Dick Costolo, Michael Dell, Mary Meeker, Michael Roth, Steve Ballmer, James Gleick, Vic Gundotra, Ross Levinsohn.

Next up: Reid Hoffman, founder of LinkedIn and longtime Valley investor.

The post Help Me Interview the Founders of Quora (And Win Free Tix to Web 2) appeared first on John Battelle's Search Blog.

Perhaps no man is braver than Ross Levinsohn, at least at Web 2. First of all, he’s the top North American executive at a long-besieged and currently leaderless company, and second because he has not backed out of our conversation on Day One (this coming Monday). I spoke to Ross yesterday, and wanted to wait on asking your input on what I should ask him till we had spoken.

On stage next week, Ross and I will have to discuss Yahoo’s top leadership, or lack thereof, save Ross and his interim-CEO boss Tim Morse, who was Yahoo’s CFO up until the abrupt firing of Carol Bartz late this summer.

Since that time, the daily rumor mill has swirled around the company (it was only weekly before that). Today’s news, for example, was that Yahoo stock is up, because potential buyers are “circling” the Internet giant. One of those buyers is Alibaba, the Chinese giant, another is Newscorp, where Ross worked in another life. A third is private equity, which would mean Yahoo ceases to be a public company, at least for a period of time. A long shot fourth is Microsoft, but we’ll get a chance to ask Steve Ballmer about the on Day Two….

It’s got to be hard to focus on the real work at hand – creating great products, taking care of advertising clients, competing with other web giants. But that’s Ross’s job. And that’s what he wants to talk about – the impending launch of Livestand, the value of content (Yahoo is investing in mobile and video platforms and content), the integration of social features into just about everything at Yahoo.

That’s all well and good but…what do YOU want to hear from Ross?

As an extra incentive, I’ll be picking the best three questions from these series of posts (see below and watch for more). The authors of those questions will get complimentary passes to Web 2 – a more than $4000 value. So get to commenting, and thank you!

Previously: Mark Pincus, John Donahoe, Marc Benioff, Dick Costolo, Michael Dell, Mary Meeker, Michael Roth, Steve Ballmer, James Gleick, Vic Gundotra.

Next up: Charlie Cheever and Adam D’Angelo, founders, Quora.

The post Help Me Interview Ross Levinsohn, EVP, Yahoo (And Win Free Tix to Web 2) appeared first on John Battelle's Search Blog.

…on the Web 2 Summit “Data Frame” map. It’s kind of fun to think about your company (or any company) as a compendium of various data assets. We’ve added a “build your own city” feature to the map, and while there are a couple bugs to fix (I’d like to be able to add my own icon, for example), it’s pretty fun to do.

I built a city for Federated Media, naturally. Given our acquisitions of Lijit, Foodbuzz, TextDigger, and BigTent, as well as our organic growth, we’ve actually accumulated quite a bit of Interest, Search, Content, and Wildcard data. It’s fun to see the city take shape in real time. Give a spin for a company you like!

The post I Just Made a City… appeared first on John Battelle's Search Blog.

Next up on Day 3 of Web 2 is Vic Gundotra, the man responsible for what Google CEO Larry Page calls the most exciting and important project at this company: Google+. It’s been a long, long time since I’ve heard as varied a set of responses to any Google project as I have for Google+. Traffic is up in a huge way, state many reports, then, no, it’s down as much as 60%. Google + is the best thing since the slicing of bread, Google+ is a waste of time.

I honestly don’t think the folks at Google care about week to week traffic fluctuations, or initial reviews by the blogerati. The company is in it for the long haul this time. And Google+ marks a shift in how the Google brand is expressed, what it actually means in the minds of its customers. (Here’s my post on that idea).

I know from sources at all companies that people at Twitter, Facebook, and even Microsoft are watching Google+ very, very closely. And we’ll have a chance to ask Vic how it’s going, and where, next week. So what do you want to ask him?

As an extra incentive, I’ll be picking the best three questions from these series of posts (see below and watch for more). The authors of those questions will get complimentary passes to Web 2 – a more than $4000 value. So get to commenting, and thank you!

Previously: Mark Pincus, John Donahoe, Marc Benioff, Dick Costolo, Michael Dell, Mary Meeker, Michael Roth, Steve Ballmer, James Gleick.

Next up: Charlie Cheever and Adam D’Angelo, founders, Quora.

The post Help Me Interview Vic Gundotra, SVP, Google (And Win Free Tix to Web 2) appeared first on John Battelle's Search Blog.