Scale of tech change ahead is huge says Facebook VP

The scale of change technology is going to bring to the business model is unlike anything we've ever seen before, Facebook vice-president Nicola Mendelsohn this morning told the Dublin Web Summit.

Speaking on the digital marketing stage, she said the opportunities ahead are huge but also terrifying, adding that technology has penetrated our lives in ways we couldn’t have imagined.

“Back in 1992 oil was $10 per barrel. Who knew we should have bet on oil back then. AT&T had just invented the first picture phone and it cost £4,700. We now live in a most extraordinary, multi-connected, multi-platform world.”

"We have more smartphones in the world than people in China, and weirdly more mobile phones in the world that toothbrushes."

She said Facebook totally underestimated the tidal wave that came upon the company as a result of mobile.

“We had to completely refocus the company to mobile. Every engineer had to be retrained to code for mobile. Eighteen months ago we had zero per cent revenue from mobile. Today over 40 per cent of our revenues come from mobile.”

Opening the Dublin Web Summit at the RDS this morning, founder Paddy Cosgrave said the event had come "incredibly far, incredibly fast."

“We wanted to create something different that would focus on attendees rather than just speakers.”

More than 10,000 people will attend the event from 100 countries over the next two days, with Paypal founder Elon Musk, AOL chief executive Tim Armstrong and Skype co-founder Niklas Zennstrom.

One start-up in attendance which could prove very helpful to many Dublin businesses is Hong Kong-based Appyhotel.

“We help any hotel create an app and a mobile website in just a few clicks,” JP Dumas said.

He said the start-up was currently offering a free app and free mobile site to every hotel in Dublin, emphasising that a digital presence is coming more and more important in the hospitality industry.

Justin Boh and Chris Bergman travelled to the summit from the US to exhibit their app Choremonster, which allows kids to gain points for doing chores, points which can be turned into real rewards.

“It makes doing chores more enjoyable for the kids,” Mr Bergman said, adding that the Web Summit was the most well-organised tech conference he had been to.

“We’ve been to a lot of conferences including South by Southwest and this has been the best run and seamless. Entrepreneurship can be a very lonely career so we came here to meet our peers and other people on the same journey as us.”

Dmitry Litvinov travelled from Moscow to exhibit his start-up Online Tours and meet with investors.

"We are a Russian travel agency selling package holidays online. The package holiday market is huge in Russia worth nearly $15 billion. We raised just over $2 million in our first funding round and are now interested in more investment to expand."

“We are also interested in seeing the latest trends in e-commerce so we can keep on top of them,” he added.

Investor Yaniv Golan of Lool Ventures travelled from Israel to the Web Summit, to network and scope out potential investment opportunities.

“We are doing lots of networking and we might invest in some companies here too,” he said.

While sprits were high at the summit for the most part, the only gripe start-ups, entrepreneurs, attendees and media alike had was the poor internet connection.

"The internet access isn't the best, it's very slow and hard to connect to," Plugair chief executive Hiroshi Asaeda, who had travelled to the Web Summit from Japan said. He was attending the event to launch his product, which is an access key that can be plugged into smartphones and tablets, allowing users to access their music collection.

“Spotify isn’t in Japan yet. The cloud is too techy for some people. We are bridging the gap between CDs and music on the cloud,” he said.