CNet’s Caroline McCarthy has captured the essence of the Web 2.0 Expo in New York this week that was underway as Wall Street events and corporate failures hurricaned through global financial markets, the economy and prompted urgent actions by Hank Paulson and company in Washington. We all lived a week that I couldn’t imagine a script writer envisioing.

With 2 decades experience  in the technology world being part of,  and watching, technology companies both aspire and fall, (starting with PRODIGY the online service), I couldn’t help but wonder as I walked the Web 2.0 Expo halls how many of these companies will be around this time next year? 

I counted 150 plus Web 2.0 Expo booths including the Long Tail Pavilion.  Among them were  a handful of the now global brands and companies that through decades have both created the computers and applications that laid the foundation for the Web, and impress by adapting and sustaining through changing economic and technology times:  Hewlett Packard, IBM, Intel, Intuit, Microsoft, and Sun Microsystems.  Then there were the next generation companies–Amazon, eBay and Salesforce– who drove new business models leveraging the Web, and continue to do so in the case of Amazon and Salesforce by promoting utility computing via the cloud. What lessons they all offer the Long Tail pavilion participants if only their management will take a moment to look around and back.

In retrospect I wish I had tallied the number of times I saw “social” plastered on banners and product feature lists. Given the themes in a recent piece colleague Victoria Axelrod and I published  about “Open Net∞WORKing Organizations” (for India based Effective Executive Magazine), CNET writer Caroline  McCarthy captured my observation that labelling your product “social” in this environment is not enough.  Priority one is business models and technology solutions that deliver demonstrable results to enterprises:

“Indeed, most of the buzzed-about companies at the Web 2.0 Expo, as with the Demo and TechCrunch50 events earlier this month, were enterprise-oriented services rather than free consumer applications. There’s a real question as to whether companies will spring for these products in a time of tightening budgets, but ultimately, it’s a positive sign: business models, not cute fads, are at the forefront.” 

Tim O’Reilly, in his Thursday morning “Web Meets World” keynote,  translated this message into a call for individual action, specifically that people in the room “build technology that solves real problems and makes a difference.” 

Next year,  2009 it will be 20 years since Tim Berner’s Lee invented the World Wide Web,  transforming the way we work and business is conducted. Connsidering the technology themes emerging from Web 2.0 Expo, in the context of financial industry crises and reorganization, and Tim O”Reilly’s call to code to good purpose, it seems we have indeed entered both a new, more grown up,  eyes wide open and wiser world for the technology business.  Have we?  I wonder what you think.

~ Jenny Ambrozek