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Web-Kong was alive and present at Yahoo's Open Hack Day, hosted at the Millenium Hotel in New York City.

The keynote was given by NY University professor Clay Shirky who takes a look back and the successes and failures of varying Internet projects and social websites.  His insights provide ideas on where you should be focusing effort on your own Small Business website.  Noted in this post are some intriguing quotes and ideas from Clay's keynote.

"It's better to have good communinty and bad technology than the other way around," notes Shirky in reference to Linux's dropping its use of a closed source collaboration utility many years ago.  Despite the Internet era in which we live, human nature has not been abandoned.  We are social creatures and flashy websites and envogue technology is no replacement for customer relationships.  While proper use of technology can enhance your business, it doesn't drive your business.

Referencing the Metafilter weblog host Clay says, "Optimize for the culture, not the numbers."  A website is easy to get excited about considering it accesses a global audience, but try to sell to everyone and you may sell nothing.  Know your customer and provide what they want.  The Internet just provides a means for more of them to find you.

Shirky also refers to the Internet's most successful project^* as, "micro-global from the beginning."  He notes that Linus Torvald's project initially consisted of about a half dozen participants dispersed around the world communicating via the Internet.  An important concept to embrace even for the Small Business providing directly local services (ie: Restaurants).  You too can be "micro-glbal."  Keep in mind that while your target audience may be geographically centered, you shouldn't dismiss the ability to reach would-be travelers.

See post keynote video interview:
 

Additional info can be found at this Yahoo! blog.

^*While you may not use Linux hands-on at your Small Business's office, you likely touch in every day in one way or another such as when using Google's Linux powered search engines.  You cannot touch the Internet without touching Linux.