The Web 2.0 Summit (originally known as the Web 2.0 Conference) was an annual event, held in

San Francisco San Francisco, officially the City and County of San Francisco, is a commercial, Financial District, San Francisco, financial, and Culture of San Francisco, cultural center of Northern California. With a population of 827,526 residents as of ...

California California () is a U.S. state, state in the Western United States that lies on the West Coast of the United States, Pacific Coast. It borders Oregon to the north, Nevada and Arizona to the east, and shares Mexico–United States border, an ...

from 2004 to 2011, that featured discussions about the

World Wide Web The World Wide Web (WWW or simply the Web) is an information system that enables Content (media), content sharing over the Internet through user-friendly ways meant to appeal to users beyond Information technology, IT specialists and hobbyis ...

. The event was started by

Tim O'Reilly Timothy O'Reilly (born 6 June 1954) is an Irish-American author and publisher, who is the founder of O'Reilly Media (formerly O'Reilly & Associates). He popularised the terms open source and Web 2.0. Education and early life Born in County Co ...

, who is also widely credited with popularizing the term "

Web 2.0 Web 2.0 (also known as participative (or participatory) web and social web) refers to websites that emphasize user-generated content, ease of use, participatory culture, and interoperability (i.e., compatibility with other products, systems, a ...

". It was organized by O'Reilly's company,

O'Reilly Media O'Reilly Media, Inc. (formerly O'Reilly & Associates) is an American learning company established by Tim O'Reilly that provides technical and professional skills development courses via an online learning platform. O'Reilly also publishes b ...

, with O'Reilly and journalist/entrepreneur

John Battelle John Linwood Battelle (born November 4, 1965) is an entrepreneur, author and journalist. Best known for his work creating media properties, Battelle helped launch ''Wired'' in the 1990s and launched '' The Industry Standard ''during the dot-com ...

serving as co-moderators. The Web 2.0 Summit was an invitation-only event and featured many of the most prominent entrepreneurs and thinkers of the web community. Spin-off events included the Web 2.0 Expo, which lasted from 2007 to 2011, and the Gov 2.0 Summit, which occurred in 2009 and 2010.

2004

The first Web 2.0 conference was held October 5–7, 2004 at the Hotel Nikko in San Francisco. It is believed to be the point at which the term

came into popular usage.

Darcy DiNucci Darcy DiNucci is an author, web designer and expert in user experience. DiNucci coined the term ''Web 2.0'' in 1999 and predicted the influence it would have on public relations. Career DiNucci has worked in web design and user experience in a num ...

had coined the term in 1999 and predicted the influence it would have on public relations. Speakers at the conference included

Jeff Bezos Jeffrey Preston Bezos ( ;; and Robinson (2010), p. 7. ; born January 12, 1964) is an American businessman best known as the founder, executive chairman, and former president and CEO of Amazon, the world's largest e-commerce and clou ...

Mark Cuban Mark Cuban (born July 31, 1958) is an American businessman and television personality. He is the former principal owner and current minority owner of the Dallas Mavericks of the National Basketball Association (NBA) and co-owner of 2929 Entertain ...

John Doerr L. John Doerr (born June 29, 1951) is an American investor and venture capitalist at Kleiner Perkins in Menlo Park, California. In February 2009, Doerr was appointed a member of the President's Economic Recovery Advisory Board to provide the ...

, Mary Meeker, Craig Newmark,

Marc Andreessen Marc Lowell Andreessen ( ; born July 9, 1971) is an American businessman and former software engineer. He is the co-author of Mosaic, the first widely used web browser with a graphical user interface; co-founder of Netscape; and co-founder and ...

Cory Doctorow Cory Efram Doctorow (; born 17 July 1971) is a Canadian-British blogger, journalist, and science fiction author who served as co-editor of the blog ''Boing Boing''. He is an activist in favour of liberalising copyright laws and a proponent of th ...

, Bill Gross,

Lawrence Lessig Lester Lawrence "Larry" Lessig III (born June 3, 1961) is an American legal scholar and political activist. He is the Roy L. Furman Professor of Law at Harvard Law School and the former director of the Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics at Harvar ...

, Halsey Minor, Louis Monier and Jerry Yang.

2005

The 2005 Web 2.0 Conference was held October 5–7, 2005 at the Argent Hotel in San Francisco. Speakers included Stewart Butterfield,

Bram Cohen Bram Cohen is an American computer programmer, best known as the author of the peer-to-peer (P2P) BitTorrent protocol in 2001, as well as the first file sharing program to use the protocol, also known as BitTorrent. He is also the co-founder of ...

Mena Trott Mena Grabowski Trott (born Philomena Frances Grabowski on 16 September 1977, now Mena Grabowski Lazar) is a co-founder of Six Apart, creator of Movable Type and TypePad. Career Trott was president of Six Apart. The company name originates from ...

Joe Kraus Joe Kraus is the founder of Excite, JotSpot, and DigitalConsumer.org, along with his long-time business partner Graham Spencer. Currently, Kraus is an Investment Partner on the GV team and President at Lime. Career A long time entrepreneur ...

, Vinod Khosla,

Barry Diller Barry Charles Diller (born February 2, 1942) is an American billionaire businessman. He is chairman and senior executive of IAC and Expedia Group and founded the Fox Broadcasting Company with Rupert Murdoch and USA Broadcasting. Diller was ind ...

, Mary Meeker, Ray Ozzie, Terry Semel and Evan Williams.

2006

In 2006, the event was renamed "Web 2.0 Summit". The 2006 event's theme was "Disruption & Opportunity". It was held November 7–9, 2006 at the Palace Hotel in San Francisco. Speakers included

, Joi Ito, Roger McNamee, Ray Ozzie,

Eric Schmidt Eric Emerson Schmidt (born April 27, 1955) is an American businessman and former computer engineer who was the chief executive officer of Google from 2001 to 2011 and the company's chairman, executive chairman from 2011 to 2015. He also was the ...

, Arthur Sulzberger, Jr. and Ben Trott.

2007

The 2007 Web 2.0 Summit was held November 5–7, 2007 at the Palace Hotel in San Francisco. The theme was "Discovering the Web's Edge". Speakers included

Steve Ballmer Steven Anthony Ballmer (; March 24, 1956) is an American businessman and investor who served as chief executive officer of Microsoft from 2000 to 2014. He is the owner of the Los Angeles Clippers of the National Basketball Association (NBA). He i ...

, Steve Case,

Craig Venter John Craig Venter (born October 14, 1946) is an American scientist. He is known for leading one of the first draft sequences of the human genome and led the first team to transfect a cell with a synthetic chromosome. Venter founded Celera Geno ...

and

Mark Zuckerberg Mark Elliot Zuckerberg (; born May 14, 1984) is an American businessman who co-founded the social media service Facebook and its parent company Meta Platforms, of which he is the chairman, chief executive officer, and controlling sharehold ...

2008

The 2008 Web 2.0 Summit was held November 5–7, 2008 at the Palace Hotel in San Francisco. The theme was "Web Meets World". Speakers included Edgar Bronfman, Jr.,

Al Gore Albert Arnold Gore Jr. (born March 31, 1948) is an American former politician, businessman, and environmentalist who served as the 45th vice president of the United States from 1993 to 2001 under President Bill Clinton. He previously served as ...

, Arianna Huffington, Vinod Khosla,

Max Levchin Maksymilian Rafailovych "Max" Levchin (born July 11, 1975) is a Ukrainian-American software engineer and businessman. In 1998, he co-founded the company that eventually became PayPal. Levchin made contributions to PayPal's anti-fraud efforts ...

Gavin Newsom Gavin Christopher Newsom ( ; born October 10, 1967) is an American politician and businessman serving since 2019 as the 40th governor of California. A member of the Democratic Party (United States), Democratic Party, he served from 2011 to 201 ...

, Evan Williams, Jerry Yang and

2009

The 2009 Web 2.0 Summit was held October 20–22, 2009 at the Westin Hotel in San Francisco. Speakers included

Tim Armstrong Timothy Ross Armstrong (born November 25, 1965) is an American musician, songwriter and record producer. Known for his distinctive voice, he is the singer/guitarist for the punk rock band Rancid (band), Rancid and hip hop/punk rock supergroup T ...

, Carol Bartz,

Tim Berners-Lee Sir Timothy John Berners-Lee (born 8 June 1955), also known as TimBL, is an English computer scientist best known as the inventor of the World Wide Web, the HTML markup language, the URL system, and HTTP. He is a professorial research fellow a ...

Carly Fiorina Cara Carleton "Carly" Fiorina (; ; born September 6, 1954) is an American businesswoman and politician, known primarily for her tenure as chief executive officer (CEO) of Hewlett-Packard (HP) from 1999 to 2005. Fiorina was the first woman to le ...

, Peter Guber, Jeffrey Immelt, Sheryl Sandberg and Evan Williams.

2010

The 2010 Web 2.0 Summit was held November 15–17, 2010 at the Palace Hotel in San Francisco. The theme was "Points of Control". Speakers included Carol Bartz, Tony Hsieh,

Marc Benioff Marc Russell Benioff (born September 25, 1964) is an American internet entrepreneur and philanthropist. Benioff is best known as the co-founder, chairman and CEO of the software company Salesforce, as well as being the owner of ''Time (magazine ...

, Jeff Weiner, Evan Williams and

2011

The 2011 Web 2.0 Summit was held October 17–19, 2011 at the Palace Hotel in San Francisco. The theme was "The Data Frame". Speakers included

Dennis Crowley Dennis Crowley (born June 19, 1976) is an American Internet entrepreneur who co-founded the social networking sites Dodgeball and Foursquare. Education Crowley was born in Medway, Massachusetts to Mary Moraski Crowley and Dennis P Crowley. He ...

Michael Dell Michael Saul Dell (born February 23, 1965) is an American billionaire businessman and investor. He is the founder, chairman, and CEO of Dell Technologies, one of the world's largest technology infrastructure companies. As of May 2025, accordin ...

Reid Hoffman Reid Garrett Hoffman (born August 5, 1967) is an American internet entrepreneur, venture capitalist, podcaster, and author. Hoffman is the co-founder and former executive chairman of LinkedIn, a business-oriented social network used primarily ...

MC Hammer Stanley Kirk Burrell (born March 30, 1962), better known by his stage name MC Hammer (or simply Hammer), is an American rapper known for hit songs such as "U Can't Touch This", "2 Legit 2 Quit", and "Pumps and a Bump", flashy dance movements, e ...

, Sean Parker and Christopher "moot" Poole.

After 2011

The Web 2.0 Summit conference was not held in 2012 because co-organizer John Battelle lacked the time to help organize it while working on the book he was writing. Battelle stated that the conference might continue in subsequent years. There has not been a subsequent Web 2.0 Summit.

References

External links

Web 2.0 Summit homepage
{{Webarchive, url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080512054913/http://www.web2summit.com/ , date=2008-05-12 Web-related conferences Web 2.0 O'Reilly Media 2004 establishments in California 2011 disestablishments in California Recurring events established in 2004 Recurring events disestablished in 2011 Events in San Francisco