Is it just me, or do these businesses sound kind of boring? I read their pitches, and after the first sentence my eyes began to glaze over - I couldn't really tell what some of their businesses were all about. Loggly and zoombu (not a fan of the name) seem to be exceptions, since I knew exactly what they would do for me if I signed up.

Absolutely:

>> Compass Labs has a team of talented, accomplished individuals with strong expertise in Web and social media technologies, natural language processing, machine learning, artificial intelligence, data mining, and - not surprisingly - complex algorithms. Compass Labs is propelling a paradigm shift in people's online experiences. To support our groundbreaking efforts, we have created an equally innovative organizational structure: flat, non-hierarchical, and designed for optimal collaboration.

So what? No one gives a crap how awesome you and your company are. What's your business?

I can't find it now, but there was a story on HN recently lamenting the fact that this AWS competition is funded by VC's and the author claimed that really promising bootstrapped companies didn't get a fair shot given that there was little opportunity for the sponsoring VC's to invest in them -- even though they may be awesome startups.