I had quite some fun yesterday at the London Geek Dinner with Jyri Engeström of Jaiku (I thanked him for the nice phone). Somehow this Geek Dinner (organized by Ian Forrester) attracted far more people than it normally does. There were Dutch (besides me), Greek, Swedish, Finish, and obviously British attendees. Somehow I have the feeling that Saul Klein’s call for a better entrepreneurial environment in Europe is proving to become easier and easier as Europeans move around Europe as if it is one country.

Jyri’s talk was very casual, but at the same time very inspiring. Ian had arranged the top floor of a bar where there was (unfortunately) also a band practicing on an other floor. Jyri’s speech and the band’s music made for an occasionally hilarious experience. The speech covered the history of Jaiku and what differentiates them and other technologies from their predecessors. It was an interesting insight that had much in common with the talk of Deborah Schultz at The Next Web conference in Amsterdam last month.

Both Jyri and Deborah, and I think they are not the only people in the industry, have discovered that the future of the web is in the long tail, building a more qualitatively interesting network versus the quantitative social networks that exist at the moment. A good example here is Facebook that wasn’t sold for $1.4Billion but has since then been expanding their platform to offer their users a more rich and valuable experience.

The next Geek Dinner is probably in two weeks so I will be looking forward to that.