I’m truly enjoying myself listening and participating in the discussion at LeWeb09 in Paris this year. There’s a lot of mental energy here and my brain is certainly feeding on it.

API integration and predicting the next big social networking craze is keeping the debate going. As always, everyone wants to predict what we should expect as the next killer app and who will introduce it?

william is a company that keeps its clients on the cutting edge and integrates next-generation Web 2.0 assets. Being here discussing with the top thinkers in social networking is certainly jump-starting my ideas for the coming year. 2009 was a great year for us, with new departments, projects and clients, but 2010 is sure to be even more exciting, with all the new API’s we see on the horizon. There will be ever-more interesting tools to integrate and collaborations to make. It also makes me wonder who will by first in line to announce an IPO, signifying that the recession is behind us!

I’m gathering great food for thought, and there’s even better food to eat here in France. My mind and stomach are well satiated. Ah Paris! Some things should never change…

Here’s are a few pearls of wisdom and statements I’ve gathered from CEO’s, COO’s and thinkers from cutting edge technology companies from around the world. (Bear in mind they are not 100% verbatim).  I have included my my immediate reactions to some of the key panelist statements. I hope to offer more insightful, lengthy thoughts after the conference.

ON SOCIAL NETWORKS: SURVIVAL OF THE FITTEST

“The battle for identity is not over. Myspace ID and Facebook Connect are great tools that are going to have tremendous success down the road”

… “Mark my words: Twitter is dead”

(Mike Jones, COO, MySpace)

Have I missed something?

Open Social is not dead but they don’t have that killer app to make it a success….they are going to stay behind the scene without it…. (Panelists)

“We can’t scale ourselves”… “Community Control is bullshit….the user is in control.” (Chris Pirillo Founder, Lockergnome)

I do agree… mostly… however, the user must be able to remove content!

“Twitter and Facebook will not be around forever”. (Chris Pirillo Founder, Lockergnome)

Of course not; from the Roman Empire to the communist regime….nothing lasts forever.

THE NEXT KILLER APP

LeWeb iPhone App: official web app for the conference.

I have to admit that the signature conference App “LeWeb App” is very useful. Just this morning I used it to get to the conference. No paper needed. Everything is included: Agenda, video, Tweets etc.…

Shazam: has more than 300 mobile carrier relationships in order to distribute (Andrew Fisher, CEO of Shazam).

Shazam is my favorite app, my pick for 2009. I think it’s one of the ones we’ve been waiting for.

Square: (demo by Jack Dorsey, the inventor of Twitter): To be launched in March 2010: After years of talking about it, we may finally be able to use our mobile phones as a payment device. You need to add a small gadget to your phone. Meant for personal and corporate use from garage sales to restaurants.

-I was not impressed by the demo, but it sounds like a great idea.

THE BOTTOM LINE

“Entrepreneur is a French word, we are Entrepreneur” (Marc Simoncini, Founder & CEO, MEETIC)

Okay, okay, sure, you are are entrepreneurs, but I would like to point out that Meetic is a carbon copy of Webseducation, a Quebec dating site that launched several years ago.

“Youtube is not a social network, we leverage social media. “There is no magic formula for revenues… always improve the way to present Ads…Few users have more than 1M$ in revenues.” (Chad Hurley, Co-Founder & CEO, YouTube)

There was also talk about whether Youtube will basically become an online movie rental shop.  There is no clear answer, but that might very well be the direction they are moving in.

Summary of the Day: APIs are keys and Mobile platforms will be everywhere next year….