Social Times, Venturebeat, and DEMO have put together a last minute meetup in Washington, D.C. This Thursday (tomorrow), we will be hosting up to 100 entrepreneurs, venture capitalists, investors, and interested parties at Hudson Restaurant and Lounge. The venue is located a couple blocks south of Dupont Circle at 2030 M St NW. Venturebeat and DEMO are covering the first 30 people’s drinks. In order to determine how many people are interested in attending we’ve set up an eventbrite page.

Please go fill out your basic information so we can keep track of how much interest there is. It’s definitely last minute but there’s never a bad reason to take some time out to network with fellow entrepreneurs and investors. Go visit the eventbrite page. Also Venturebeat said they are good for the first 30 drinks.

It’s almost time for TECH Cocktail DC 4. Coming up later this month, the 4th TECH Cocktail in DC will be held on Thursday, February 26, from 6:00 - 8:30 pm. The location for TECH Cocktail DC is at LeftBank wired bistro lounge in the Adams Morgan neighborhood.

This is a new location for the TECH Cocktail DC event, but it’s got a laid back vibe to match the casual and welcoming theme that TECH Cocktail is known for. The event is free to attend, as usual, but you’ll still need to RSVP. Get there early enough to grab a drink before it gets too crowded.

The TECH Cocktail series has grown a great deal in the past couple of years, starting in Chicago and making its way across a number of cities, including DC. Hosted by Eric Olson and Frank Gruber, the TECH Cocktail events have proven to be a great way to meet others on the tech scene and get the word out about your company. If you’re interested in sponsoring the event or learning more about TECH Cocktail DC, click here for more details.

OMMA Social – San Francisco – 2009

Commenters create 70% of the dialogue in the exploding universe of the blogosphere, and are playing an increasingly important role in the evolution of social media. Blogs are evolving beyond sources of information into dynamic locations for Internet discourse. Commenters create the conversational elements on blogs, helping shape both blogger content and readers’ understanding. Major news sites have accepted this trend, and enable a commenter to reach a global audience by posting their comments after reporters’ articles published online. Marketers see comments as the “low hanging fruit” of social media marketing, and are using social media “participation” software to monitor blogosphere comments and post their responses without actually visiting the sites themselves.
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Everyone loves a good Tweetup. How about a Tweetup on steroids? That would be called a Twestival. And there will be one in Washington D.C. (among other cities across the world) to help raise funds and awareness for charity: water. Along with 100+ other cities, the Twestival will take place on February 12, 7:00 pm - 11:00 pm. For D.C. attendees, the benefit will take place at Local 16. Click here for more details.
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Max Levchin had a huge opportunity to grill the individuals responsible for the largest social platforms on the web at Web 2.0 Summit today, unfortunately he didn’t seize the moment. The CEO of Slide, led a discussion about the state of platforms and where it’s going among Vic Gundotra of Google, David Treadwell of Microsoft, Amit Kapur of MySpace, and Elliot Schrange of Facebook. Ultimately much, if not all, of the discussion was high-level and focused on the theoretical evolution of platforms.

The only brief disagreement during the conversation was between David Treadwell of Microsoft and Vic Gundotra from Google who disagreed about the future of open platforms. It was a disagreement over theoretical things though. If you wanted to know how MySpace’s Data Availability project is going and how many sites have implemented it so far, there were no answers.

There was a huge opportunity to address the current conflict between the “open stack” and Facebook Connect but unfortunately it wasn’t discussed. Why did it lack such conflict? Well one can assume that Max Levchin’s current dependance on many of the platforms on stage was definitely one part of it.

Whatever the reason was for a lack of conflict on stage, Elliot Schrange took the opportunity to discuss the issues surrounding the inherent conflict between developers and platform owners. Schrange stated that, “When things are happening quickly, it’s wrong to think that the communication should be bi-directional (between developers and platform owners)”.

It’s clear that there is always a substantial amount of tension between developers and platform owners and on social platforms that tension is extremely transparent. Recently when Facebook redesigned the site, and the Facebook platform, many applications were pushed from the top rankings. With the opening of all the social platforms and now mobile platforms the challenges for developers have increased and determining a business strategy is more challenging.

Unfortunately, practically none of the conversation today surrounded the tension existing between the large platforms though. For now the stories of platforms and the developers on them will be left to the blogs and back-channel conversations.

In the last session of the day at Web 2.0 Summit Thursday, MySpace CEO Chris DeWolfe and Edgar Bronfman, CEO of Warner Music, sat down with John Battelle for a conversation about the future of music. At one point during their conversation, John Battelle stated some ballpark estimates about Facebook and inaccurately claimed that the site had eclipsed MySpace domestically.

It was a moment which clearly frustrated DeWolfe and he was quick to respond that according to comScore, the company is beating Facebook by over 30 million monthly unique visitors in the United States. He also was quick to underscore the company’s focus on generating a real business, which contrasts Zuckerberg’s much buzzed about statement that the company isn’t heavily focused on monetization.

According to one person I spoke with at the MySpace party last night in San Francisco, the company is now actively pursuing publishers to partner with on the MySpace ad platform. Just as I wrote this morning on AllFacebook, users will be cookied and targeted based on profile information they provided on MySpace. This emphasizes that MySpace is not sitting by and waiting for the open web to take place, they are trying to take advantage of it now.

When it comes to making money from MySpace Music, the company remains focused on an ad-supported model. DeWolfe stated, “The main difference with our model is that we have the largest music community in the world.” This emphasis on community is what DeWolfe believes will give them a leg up. As to whether or not he’s concerned about Facebook entering the music arena?

“There are significant barriers to entry,” DeWolfe told John Battelle. He proceeded to list out the four business components necessary to succeed and suggested that it would be very challenging for Facebook to enter the space. It’s clear that MySpace is focused on building a business and while Facebook may be rapidly gaining traction, the company will continue to focus on monetization and growth opportunities. For Chris DeWolfe, it’s all business.

SNAP Summit, a conference focused on social networks and advertising, which is based out in San Francisco, is going on today. Thankfully, for those that weren’t able to make it, they are streaming it live. We’ve embedded a live stream of the event for those interested in watching.

Update
The event is no longer streaming but if you can go view an archive of SNAP Summit.

I’ve been posting the videos individually from Social Ad Summit and after uploading all of them, I’ve decided just to included the entire conference in one player. If you weren’t able to make it, check out all of the presentations below. I’ve gone ahead and placed the videos in the order of the entire event agenda. Enjoy!

Next from the Social Ad Summit video archives is the Social Advertising Metrics panel with Sean Ammirati (mSpoke/RWW), Albert Lai (kontagent), Ian Swanson (Sometrics), Cam Balzer (DoubleClick Performics), and Jodi McDermott (Clearpsring). Check it out!

While widgets are not all social, social applications are frequently associated with widgets. I tend to differentiate between the two in that widgets are simply compartmentalized content which can be distributed anywhere on the web. They also don’t necessarily have social features. Monetizing widgets is just as challenging as monetizing social applications though, and based on their close association with applications I decided to have a panel at Social Ad Summit discussing the topic.

The panel includes Kevin Barenblat of ContextOptional, Hooman Radfar of Clearspring, Sam Wick of Userplane, Ben Pashman of Gigya, and Heidi Henson of RockYou. Check out the video below to see the full panel.