I’m a strange person in a strange world. I’ve been on the web since late 1994. I remember what I was doing the day Netscape went public (August 9, 1995). In 1996, I read with wonder The Road Ahead by Bill Gates (which came with a CD) and The Internet Report by Mary Meeker and Chris Depuy.

Fast forward about 11 years. I finally understand MySpace, at least as well as an over the internet hill 31yr old can. I use Flickr, Photobucket, YouTube. My brother runs a virtual world for kids. I’m active on Facebook. I read TechCrunch. I interact with people like Om Malik or Matt Mullenweg every week. I work out of my VC’s office that happens to invest in companies like Meebo, SendMe, and BrightRoll.

All of which basically means that I’m completely out of whack with what the normal internet user goes through on a daily basis. Attending Shop.org was a nice slap in the face. The first two Keynote presentations talked about the new rule of law for marketers – basically, that marketers are no longer the stewards of the brand. The users are in control. Companies that fight that control are closed (very very bad word) and will be left in the dust by more open organizations.

While I was smuggly sitting there thinking ‘I could give this presentation’, after talking with some friends after the conference, I realized that I’m an idiot. Well, I knew that a long time ago, it’s just that the conference helped jog my memory.

You see, all these nice Web 2.0 social networked widgetized thingamagigies are great, and adoption of these technologies is advancing at an incredible clip, but for mainstream Jane web user, she doesn’t care about the latest and greatest from some random new start up. She wants her life online to be simpler. She wants to shop with ease. She definitely thinks she’s in control, and if someone treats her otherwise, she’ll go to the next site.

I need to do a better job at looking at new technologies in this light.