With panelists from Yahoo!, Fox Networks Group, Ask.com and Greylock Partners populating the second panel of the day at the Silicon Valley Summit and the Deal's Joshua Jaffe moderating, the stage was set for some hard questions and quick thinking. Jaffe started off the panel with a question about which Internet subsegment interested each panelist the most. The answers:

Toby Coppel, senior vice president, Yahoo!: "Social media."
Mike Lang, executive vice president, Fox Networks Group, News Corp.: "Social networks."
James Slavet, general partner, Greylock Partners: "Advertising and delivery."
Paul Wehrley, vice president, strategy and operations, Ask.com, Interactive Corp.: "Search."

So the two big names are infatuated with Web 2.0, Ask.com is focusing on search and the VC on the panel is interested in the advertising itself, more than the sites where it will be displayed. Sounds about right. As the panel continued Lang talked about how YouTube isn't a company Fox would be interested in buying. His reasons: For one, he says Fox is very happy with its online video initiative through MySpace, he also seems to think that YouTube is a lawsuit waiting to happen, because there are so many copyright violations on the site right now. He even talked about how Fox had forced YouTube to pull down a recent Bill Clinton interview.

When asked how Internet video will be monetized, Lang fell back on the "content is king" dictum so often used by big media. Saying that the hundreds of millions of videos viewed daily on YouTube aren't where the money is going to be made, but through Internet distribution of mainstream media. While the value of professional broadcast material is obviously higher, you also have to recognize the "long tail" of user-generated content, like the short videos found on YouTube. While the revenue generated by one episode of 24 is going to make more than any one video on YouTube, only 24 episodes of 24 are produced per year. There is money to be made with user-generated video content, the challenge is going to be to find a new way to deliver the ads.

When Slavet was asked about the secret ingredient behind the successful Web 2.0 companies, he replied that every success story was founded by someone of the audience, which translated into an authentic product. Greylock's investments include Digg, Facebook and LinkedIn. — Brian Ward

Go to Josh Jaffe's take on the panel at VC Ratings
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