Michael Arrington starts off his speech by looking at CouchSurfing – a site that accidentally deleted themselves a couple of days ago. Everything. All 90,000 user data and all. Will it rebuild? Does it have a business model? Can it monetize itself?

This is a lead in to the world of startups and acquisitions. The growth of services such as digg and youtube beyond ‘early adopter’ to mainstream. The industry is going to see more IPO and/or acquisitions.

Steve Rubel: these start-ups/websites cannot depend on advertisers to bankroll them the way the model is now

Do you need economies of scale? Is acquisition or major partnership the only way to succeed in the mainstream marketplace?

YouTube jumped to success by facing controversy and legalities of copyright – mainstream media is only now realizing it’s not "us versus them" and that so-called stolen material can be good for you (exactly how I feel in my b5 entertainment blogs). Fans are good.

There need to be better models for monetization – it’s not just advertising dollars or IPO or acquisition.

Will success be hampered by net neutrality? The increased bandwidth costs being shifted back and hampering growth of startups

Digg – it’s not just the technology. That was easy and cheap. But even with that, copied Digg models fail. It’s the network effect. Nobody can match it now. And soon it will surpass the NY Times. It’s the people who make the startup valuable – the power of the end-user.

Michael Arrington’s measure of success for a Web 2.0 startup: "they make money and they make the Internet a better place to hang out."

What is the difference between starting a company now and in 1999? Simply the reduced cost to begin a startup. Thousands versus millions.

Can you fail when you have network effects? Meaning – can you have mass market numbers of users and still fail? Netscape – did it have network effects? Did it fail?

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