Web 2.0 Expo NY keynotes are happening today. Technology in use included CrowdVine which I’d not heard of, and plenty of Twitter feeds such as w2e_NY08.

The opening keynote was Fred Wilson from Union Square Ventures with his presentation New York’s Web Industry From 1995 to 2008: From Nascent to Ascendent .

Some stats, Seed and early stage deals.

• 1995 230 SF Bay area, 30 in NY
• 2008 360 SF Bay area, 116 in NY

Fred first asked “New York is not an alley. Call it Broadway, or just New York.”

Here is a summary of his history of New York Web Industry.

• 1991 – ZDNet
• 1993 – New York Online Dialup services
• 1993 – Jupiter Communications online conference
• 1993 – Prodigy
• 1994 – Startups such as Pseudo, Total New york, Razorfish.
• 1994 – Time Warner Pathfinder
• 1995 -NYIC 55 Broad St. – Technology oriented building
• 1995 – Seth Godin – Yoyodyne – Permission Marketing
• 1995 – itraffic, agency.com, NY Times online
• 1995 – Softbank, Double Click, 24×7, Real Media
• 1996 – Silicon Alley Reporter
• 1996 – ivillage, the knot
• 1996 – Flatiron Partners – good sued for that
• 1997 – The Silicon Alley Report Radio Show
• 1997 – mining co.
• 1997 – Total NY sold to AOL
• 1997 – Agency rollups razorfish buying 4 companies
• 1997 – DoubleClick IPO
• 1998 – Seth Godin moves to Yahoo
• 1998 – Burn Rate
• 1998 – Kozmo – We’ll be right over
• 1998 – was the last year of sanity in the Internet wave
• 1999 – The start of the boom
• 1999 the big players came online , all hell breaks loose. 200 startups were funded in 1999, 300 in 2000.
• 2000 – The Crash & Burn
• 2000 – f**kedcompany
• 2000 – Google came to New York. – 86th St Starbucks
• 2001 – Layoffs, Landlords and bankruptcies
• 2002 – Rock bottom
• 2003 – Renewal
• 2003 – Blogging started gizmodo
• 2003 – Web 2.0 coined
• 2003 – del.icio.us was launched from a computer in an apartment
• 2004 – NY Tech Meetup
• 2004 – Union Square Ventures $120million raised
• 2005 – about.com acquired by NY Times
• 2005 – Etsy
• 2006 – Google took over port authority building, now with 750 engineers in NY
• 2008 – Web 2.0 comes to New York City

New York is now 1/3 of Silicon valley, compared to 1/8 of funded Internet companies.

One thing mentioned is a documentary called “We live in Public”. Some of the footage from 1999, is so early Big Brother.