Web 2.0 parties are getting more pimp.. what does it mean?

Three years ago at the first web 2.0 conference, My friend David Hornik and I both commented, "you know a bubble is coming when you start seeing more women at these things!"... at that conference, the ratio was still probably only 4:1.. but in silicon valley it's noticable when the ratio gets better than the standard 10:1.. (As a society, we really need to do something to encourage and support more women to go into the sciences, but that's another story!)

Whether it is a sign of a bubble or just that our industry is becoming cooler/more interesting to be in.. This week I went to a ton of company parties that also showed signs of something. The Myspace party at SF MOMA looked like they were trying to bring LA to San Francisco, complete with fancy decor, big banners for photogs to take pictures of hot women in front of, and.. hot women (clearly arranged for by the party promoters and co-host 7x7 magazine, because i didn't see any of them at the conference!)

Then last night, almost as if to out-LA LA, SF company BitTorrent had a small party at fluid to celebrate the launch of their CDN network (brilliant business move!). They apparently arranged in conjuction with a local radio station for Ashanti and Sean Kingston to perform to the tiny crowd. I took a picture of BitTorrent's founders Bram and Ashwin to memorialize the moment, sensing that it denoted SOMETHING.. whether it's a sign that the bubble is getting bigger, or the more likely conclusion that techie work is now getting more main stream and therefore a lot cooler remains to be seen! :)

Note: The photo above wasn't the actual one i took with my crappy cameraphone, it is a much nicer version taken by BitTorrent's Pierre Joubert!

Flash Game Developers, Mochi Ads is now open for business!

You almost can't help but love the guys over at Mochi Ads. They are basically building an Adsense like system for game developers to finally make money off their flash games. Traditionally, all the money in that world has been made by websites that steal (or license for peanuts) the games and stick them on their own site, and they make money showing ads on those sites. In other words, the developer gets little to nothing for all their hard work.

With MochiAds, they stick the ads IN the game, so the developer no longer gets screwed when someone steals their stuff. In a nutshell, the people making the games make money, and they don't get screwed by the big guys anymore. Very cool!

Congrats to Jameson and the whole team there for finally opening up and letting everyone off the waitlist in!

In case anyone wants to play some fun games, here is a link to a page with some games that use Mochi Ads.. I personally like Bloons.