The crisis, a perfect timing for launching online start-ups

The major players inside the Internet industry appreciate that the moments of crisis, as it also happened in 2000-2001, are a perfect timing for launching new projects, sites that will gain billion of dollars in a few years. At least this is the conclusion drawn by the founder of Digg.com, Kevin Rose, to Web 2.0 Summit 2008 which just ended at San Francisco.

It's also true that the only concrete event of the conference was the launch of MySpace Music and the rumor that the online division of News Corp. will launch an MP3 player under its own brand, for competing with iPod. Does anybody really believe this?

On the other hand, on this time Web 2.0 Summit was more like a business summit in comparison with the previous meetings of the young people in industry. The players in domain don't legitimate anymore as successful start-ups, but as serious, mature companies that have a significant impact on audiences. On this time, Kevin Rose or the founder of Twitter Biz Stone weren't anymore speakers at the conference, they being replaced by leaders in the high-tech industry, such as Al Gore, Paul Otellini, chief of Intel, and also stars, such as Lance Armstrong, or talent hunters from all big corporations.

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