Diggnation live recording with fake mustaches Photo by Anne Helmond (on Flickr)

Today I visited the Next Web conference in Amsterdam. This conference is a two day event about the near future of the web.

Unfortunately I won’t be there tomorrow, but with these conferences this isn’t really a problem. There is a very good live coverage of the event. The organization took care of a live video stream, a backchannel, a great event blog and a bloggers corner (cable internet and wifi, power supplies) resulting in serious online coverage.

My highlights today (quotes aren’t the exact words used, this is how I interpreted them and wrote them down)
In the introduction there was a really interesting sentence by I think Erick Schonfeld that triggered me.

How to make money if the web explodes?

When I make something I don’t think much about business models, I like to think about a concept and how something can be valuable for a user. I don’t really see the web as a business. Although it is serious business.

For most people making a serious business defines the success of a concept. A web that is breaking apart (widgets, feeds) creates a serious problem for people who think this way.

The guy Bryan Thatcher from Empressr said about the future of the web:

“The cloud: information (content) becomes more important websites don’t”

Store your information online and access and transfer your information online. The computer or website becomes a terminal that allows you to access and alter your information. Open systems will eventually allow you to take (or distribute) your information to other services.

Kevin Rose talked about the future of Digg.com and how to make it more relevant.

Expose the right content to the right people

This quote is not just about Digg.com, it can be used for the web in general. We will see better and more personal filters. All these social applications and social profiles enable a better and more personal selection. We are getting used to this and expecting more relevant results on other websites as well.

Nova Spivack talked about his love for the semantic web

The web is the database

This is a concept that regards the semantic web as a database. Store all your information in ‘the cloud’ in the form of metadata. Every set of information will have a complete set of metadata in it, theoretically you wouldn’t need a database because everything is in the front-end.

A smart and great concept, but somehow I’m worried about who will make the meta information? User don’t like to enter a lot of meta information, they just want to upload and share photos.

Tomorrow another day, don’t miss it in Amsterdam or online.