The best and brightest Israeli web 2.0 start-ups

So much for live blogging:) I’ve fallen off the blogging bandwagon for the past two weeks. I’ve been so busy “innovating” that I’ve had no time for stodgy and predictable ol’blogging. I mean who actually reads these posts? I challenge you to leave a comment!

Anyway, so two weeks ago on July 1st, I hiked up to Tel Aviv for a spotlight conference on the most enterprising web 2.0 start-ups. GigaOm scribe, Om Malik was the keynote speaker, and I must admit, he was the main draw for me. When I heard him speak I was immediately struck by the irony of bloggers as timid and dry public speakers. Malik’s presentation was entitled, “State of the Silicon Valley.” He professed the end of the first phase of web 2.0 and dropped names like Flickr and Del.icio.us repeatedly. He made some odd comments about serendipity as a business model and how the industry needs a Dolby of the web. After dropping some more names, he ended on the rising might of cloud computing and social media metrics.

Thanks to ROI2008, two minutes after I entered the conference I ran into ECamp Israel’s, Nir Kouris and was immediately plugged into his cool group of friends making social networks for programmers or doing diaspora/Israeli media relations. The only presentation that distracted me from this shmoozing was by a company called Dapper. They allow you to build custom feeds and mash-up ads based on semantic information on your web site…oooh la la!

Other than Dapper, nothing else caught my eye except, Hive Sight and Kaltura. And apparently, I wasn’t the only one who wasn’t that impressed. The entire conference was a bit off, but I did enjoy the novelty of the experience and the calm reassurance that techy geeks look and sound the same no matter what continent you’re on.