Nexus 2007 panel: Future of the Web

The Nexus 2007 event organized by The Digital Movement, promises to be a major and interactive conference and is happening on 24 March 2007 in NTUC Centre, 1 Marina Boulevard. As we have introduced the first panel in the conference a few days ago, it is now to introduce the 2nd panel for the conference. This panel is rather special, as Dr Bernard Leong, one of the co-founders of SG Entrepreneurs and also from NUS Entrepreneurship Centre, is honoured to moderate this panel packed with heavyweights from Yahoo!, Salesforce.com, Amazon and Google entitled “Future of the Web”. In this post, we review the topic which talks about the future of world wide web and the new economy introduced by the long tail. We also offer our readers how you can contribute via the wiki set up by the team in Nexus 2007. Of course, you should not miss this event and do register as soon as possible.

In the past few years, the world wide web has transformed from web 1.0 (portal) to web 2.0 (interactive and community sharing via blogs, wikis, podcasts, vodcasts and online social networks). What is the future of the world wide web in the next few years? In the current setting, some top web 2.0 companies, for example, YouTube and Flickr have been acquired by web search giants, Google and Yahoo! respectively. Can we review the present to look for possible trends that might occur in the future? If so, where do we start looking at?

One possibility is to examine the new economy induced by the long tail, a term coined by Chris Anderson. In his book, he argued that products that are in low demand or have low sales volume can collectively make up a market share that rivals or exceeds the relatively few current bestsellers and blockbusters, if the store or distribution channel is large enough. In other words, the internet has offered the possibility of infinite choices to the consumer. That leads to the breakdown in the traditional 80/20 rule on consumer behaviour which states that “80% of your sales come from 20% of your clients.

Here are some questions which BL will put forward to his distinguished panel of speakers (see their profiles below):

1. From the transition from web 1.0 to web 2.0, are there any fundamental shifts in the business models for internet-based companies? What do you see in the future of e-commerce?

2. Since the internet has created a space with unlimited demand for niche based products using the dynamics of the long tail, how do internet based companies interface with traditional industries for example, music, fashion, lifestyle products, to create more value for the customers?

3. What is in the future of the web in Asia, particularly in dealing with copyright and intellectual property? How do new web-based businesses cope with such issues given the distribution of content is now rampant with democratization tools through YouTube?

4. The traditional 80/20 rule is now broken for internet commerce. How do the experts seek to predict or forecast the business environment of the internet?

If you have any questions, please join in the wiki or place your comments in this post so that we can ensure that there is an exciting and interesting discussion in Nexus 2007.

Profile of Panellists

• Andreas Weigend (Former Chief Scientist of Amazon.com): Andreas is one of the world’s top experts on the web. Besides being the chief scientist of Amazon.com, he brings to the table vast global experiences in helping many cutting edge startups like Alibaba.com, Technorati, OpenBC achieve success! He has also worked with major companies like World Economic Forum and Swiss International Air Lines to help them adapt to the new oppportunities created by the web.
• Bobby Napiltonia (Senior Vice President, Global Business Development and Alliances, Salesforce.com): With their bold No Software model fully online Appexchange platform. Salesforce is the company currently revolutionizing the very way software is distributed to and used by companies worldwide. Bobby is the main man behind their mission to bring more and more partners and allies into their revolution!
• Reza Behnam (Managing Director of Yahoo! South East Asia)
• Derek Callow (Regional Marketing Manager, Google Inc): Derek is the regional marketing manager for Google Hong Kong, responsible for marketing across Hong Kong, Taiwan and South East Asia. He will be there to share Google’s vision for the region, and why SEA is a very important part of Google’s outlook.

Related Links:
[1] Bjorn Lee, “The Long Tail – Our Dilbert of the Digital Age”, SG Entrepreneurs.

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