Last night I attended Seattle's small (but growing) Web 2.0 roundtable, hosted by the kind folks at Wetpaint. The traffic was a bit tough, due to a Mariners game across the street, but we managed to start right around 6pm and the hours flew by.
The companies represented included:
Payscale
Their site isn't as "open" as one might hope, but they do get a lot of data by restricting access until you complete registration (and provide salary information of your own). I added in my salary, drastically dragging down the average of CEOs in Seattle :)
All I have to do now is keep this information from the SEOmoz employees... UPDATE: You can see some cool stuff without logging in via their Research page and blog.
Wetpaint
Wetpaint offers free hosted wikis. I created a sample site months ago after first meeting with them, and I love the user experience. It's so easy to make content and the formatting is highly marketable. Wetpaint is constantly improving, too - rolling out new features multiple times each month. There are thousands of Wetpaint wikis (view a few here), but one of my favorites has to be WikiFido. They've even got linkbait-worthy content in the form of this "every-breed-of-dog-ever" page.
We spent some time talking about SEO for Wetpaint and they're clearly well focused on those efforts, though we all agreed that the keyword "wiki" should be somewhere in their title tag :)
BuddyTV
This service provides celebrity/expert commentary that accompanies popular TV shows. It's a bit of an odd concept, but the delivery is quite good. Imagine watching your favorite TV shows with an experienced insider (oftentimes someone who's worked on the show) and you'll have a reasonably good idea of what to expect.
A good example is for Bravo's Project Runway, which Mystery Guest is addicted to. BuddyTV has the winner from the second season provide commentary on all the shows - don't skip commercials, just mute them and listen to what Grace Kelsey has to say about the Rebecca Romijn's ultra-suede jumper.
BlueDot.us
This might have been my favorite company at the event, just because I love the idea of their service. It's a bit like del.icio.us, in that you share bookmarks and content publicly, but the integration is much tighter, and the community aspects (friends, connections, etc.) are very well done. It's not perfect by any means, but I think it's a very natural crossover between social bookmarking and social networking.
From what I can see, they've grown exceptionally quickly since their initial launch at the end of June. The tags pages are filled and the members look to be over 5000 strong. It's tough being a space like Blue Dot's because of the massive competition, but these guys are making a serious claim to worthiness in the field. I wish them the best of luck.
I hope to be able to attend more of these in the future - sitting around a table with whiteboards, a web connection on a projector and lots of web-savvy, driven entrepreneurs makes for a great time.
Hey! How can one attend these 2.0 Roundtables?
Raquel
What does one need to do to be invited to one of these events?
One needs to be a bad ass SEO like my boss.
Ummm... No, that's not it. I got the invite through a relationship I had built with the folks at Wetpaint, and because they had expressed interest in learning more about SEO at one of their previous meetings.
Yeah, but my explanation sounds much cooler.
It's beards Rebecca, beards.
Beards.
I have a beard!
Actually inflatemouse, I'm interested in a Seattle area SEO-SEM Roundtable. My understanding is that there really isn't a regular meeting up here. If I volunteer to organize one would people come?
Post your response here or email your contact info to [email protected]. (Permision marketing is so Web 1.0)
And how small will these indents get Rand. Can we drive it down to a single character column? :)
An excellent question... perhaps something we should test? Actually, I think this is the end...
This is the end Beautiful friend This is the end My only friend, the end
Of our elaborate plans, the end Of everything that stands, the end No safety or surprise, the end Ill never look into your eyes...again
ride the snake to the lake, the ancient lake the snake is long, seven miles ride the snake...he's old, and his skin is cold
*ahem* ok so I think I wrote it to stop indenting after 5 rows or so
I'd definitely be interesting in something like this, both to pick some brains and share some of my experiences. Please keep me posted.
Many thanks to Rand for sharing his participation in the WetPaint RT on Web 2.0. This is a volatile time in Web technology and the more folks that take a hard look at staying ahead of the wave [and share] the better for this community of practice. Hat's off to TMS for starting another and I'm hopeful for a place at that table.
According to Google, Rand is the number one most bad ass seo.
Sounds like it was fun and informative. I'm glad you had a good time!