Tonight was the Social Networking Meetup and the Web / Internet Entrepreneurs & Startups Meetup held together at a bar called SlatePlus. The event is organized by Brett Petersel and Oz Sultan. This meetup began as 5 people in a bar and has grown to what I count at about 150+ people tonight. I believe it's the third largest tech meetup group after the NY Tech Meetup and the NY Video Meetup. I enjoy this meetup as it's a bit more social than the NY Tech Meetup but not a full-on social event.

Before I provide my commentary on the presentations, let me hop on my box for a moment. When you present your idea to anyone or any group, bring your A game. I will do everything I can to get you exposure via CN along with many other bloggers, but if you can't get the people excited, will the product succed? In a bar/club environment where it's loud and dark, it's critical to draw in your audience immediately. I noticed a couple of tonight's presenters speaking to the first two rows of couches and ignoring the people in the back. And that's why they began their own meetup in the back. This is your baby, get excited about it and show some passion! If you don't know how to present, learn or have someone else do it. Ok, I am done. Now onto the quick presentation recaps:

Buddy Media - AceBucks Product - Jeff Ragovin

Jeff begins by explaining that AceBucks is the largest loyalty program on Facebook. The idea is this: You install the applications that work with AceBucks and you earn credits for playing the games or doing the AceBucks earning actions. If you like to play games, and want to win prizes, this is the Facebook app for you!

They are working on expanding AceBucks past Facebook to OpenSocial and Bebo. Jeff showed a bunch of stats including 170k Sudoku installs in first 3 weeks since launch, 1.2 million AceBucks installs since 10/1.

Today they launched the AceBucks storefront which allows you to sell anything you don't want and receive AceBucks in return. Once you get a bankroll of AceBucks, you can spend them in their auction! You can also use your credits to purchase Facebook trinkets to send to your friends like the Facebook daily gifts.

While this model works with a few niche demographics, I am not sold it works on Facebook for the long-term. Who wants to sell a Blackberry and not walk away with cash? Jeff ended the presentation by saying that anyone could have a card worth 250 AceBucks. But the cards he handed out are just his business cards - so I have to email him just to get the credits? Why not hand out a card with a link to get the bucks directly? Since Facebook is tied into logins, there shouldn't be any gaming, and it saves me time and removes another resistance point. It's like getting a new gameboy on your birthday and having no batteries.

Convos

Convos was up next (I didn't catch the presenter's name) - they provide a group application. It's very good looking - has an Outlook feel to it. The idea is to take real world groups and manage them online. The presenter said that it's a real Web app because it "has a lot of buttons". It's built on Adobe Flex2 and uses Amazon Web Services as well.

Convos has no ads and uses a freemium model. Up to two groups a year is free, after that it moves up to $39/yr depending on usage.

One of the audience questions was around the competitiveness of the group space and what makes Convos different. The presenter noted that the differentiators are in the interface and their quick ability to add new features based on the usage of the Flex platform.

I'd like to see Convos tie into an authentication scheme already available - whether it's Facebook, Google, or even OpenID. One of the reasons Yahoo Groups and Google Groups are popular is because everyone has an id for both of those services already.

Snooth - Philip James

Snooth is a wine social networking application and Philip described Snooth as a "social shopping site". Reminds me a bit of Cork'd. They have a Facebook application to help push distribution. The site looks very nice - has many Ajax features. Snooth is a data aggregator - they pull in content from thousands of sources. This is one area that Snooth differs from Cork'd in that the Cork'd community creates the content.

Once you review 5 wines, Snooth will then start to serve up suggestions for future wines based on your tastes.

Snooth generates revenue from the clicks they send to the wine shops - they have 1,000 shops in the database currently. I struggle with this as a sole business model. Think about TripAdvisor. I will review a hotel there but purchase from the site I choose. TripAdvisor serves ads so they still benefit. Nothing stops me from enjoying the reviews on Snooth and then buying the wine down the street.

RadiusIM - John Londono

Last up was RadiusIM which is a Web IM client similar to Meebo and eBuddy. The difference is that RadiusIM focuses on location to help you find new buddies. In NYC for a meeting, check out other people on RadiusIM that are in your area. RadiusIM works with AIM, Yahoo IM and Google Talk.

John shared some stats: 600k unique visitors since launch, 160k registered users with 50k in the past 30 days and 125 million IMs exchanged. While not as robust as eBuddy or Meebo, it's pretty groovy. Of course, the only people you see on the map are those using RadiusIM. John noted that monetization will come later on and that if his users stay on for 2 hour session lengths, once they reach a critical mass, advertisers will be very interested.

They are hiring for Java developers along with Javascript and Ajax programmers. Contact John if interested.

John ended the presentation by noting that RadiusIM is a great way to discover new friends. I could see a quick acquisition by eBuddy or Meebo as both would benefit from this technology.

From 43 Things to Zooomr, social networking sites have become a three-year-old overnight sensation. According to Wikipedia, “A social network service focuses on the building and verifying of online social networks for communities of people who share interests and activities, or who are interested in exploring the interests and activities of others, and which necessitates [...]

The best indication of a VC’s interest is direct feedback. While some VCs will offer this feedback without being prompted, you may have to ask others (and it is OK to ask). If a VC gives you feedback, listen to it. Don’t hear what you want to hear, hear what they say no matter how unpleasant it might be.

Be sure to listen carefully to what VCs say even if you believe that it contradicts their actions. Often entrepreneurs will ignore direct feedback because they have decided that other signals (e.g., body language) are more telling. This is a bad idea. Listen to what the VC says to you first and foremost.

Most VCs are too busy looking at lots of deals to play games. If they tell you that they are not interested move on.

If you rationalize away what a VC told you, you may ultimately make bad decisions. First, if you don’t listen to feedback your expectations for receiving capital may be misaligned. This has obvious implications for adversely impacting decision making. Second, if you don’t listen to the VCs feedback you may justify interactions with them that annoy them and ultimately damage your relationship.

The key is to take direct feedback at face value. It will make your life easier.

The next juicy episode of nextNYers is live. This time, Meghan speaks with newly-launched BricaBox and its CEO Nate Westhimer. We covered the BricaBox launch earlier this month. Nate discusses BricaBox technology, competitors and funding. Three takeaways are:

• Provides a powerful web publishing platform that's easy enough for everyone
  
• Estimated value at launch is between $1M and $5M
  
• Plans to open up to outside developers in 6 months

NY-based KickApps is announcing this morning a new tie into Wordpress that allows for a single sign on (SSO) experience between WordPress blogs and KickApps hosted social media sites.

When publishers enable the KickApps SSO plugin between their WordPress and KickApps powered social media sites, registered members of the WordPress powered site will be auto-registered into the site’s KickApps powered community during sign in, requiring no initial user import.

Most WordPress blogs aren't using any authentication so I assume to integrate KickApps into the site, they will either need to turn on user authentication on the WordPress side or on the KickApps side.

This is a good move by KickApps to further distribution -- they announced a tie-into Joomla in October. It's fun to watch the battle between the white-label social networking providers. Check out our previous KickApps coverage including an interview with marketing SVP Michael Chin.

BricaBox CEO and Founder Nate Westheimer visits to discuss the future of website creation and a new kind of web publishing. Check out some photos from the interview.

What we learned about BricaBox:

• Provides a powerful web publishing platform that's easy enough for everyone
  
• Estimated value at launch is between $1M and $5M
  
• Plans to open up to outside developers in 6 months

Online speed dating company Camlink is preparing for a launch on Valentine’s Day. Co-founder Ilya Zatulovskiy will unveil a beta version of the site at Tuesday’s Web2NewYork networking party.

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Magnify.net is announcing today their "video blog in a box" setup which basically allows anyone with a webcam to start a video blog in 5 minutes or less. Sounds similar to the Wordpress.com setup which also takes about 5 minutes. The service is in private beta and you can request a beta invite here.

It's always an interesting discussion when we talk about video blogging. I can sit with 10 people and 5 love it and 5 hate it. Some are doing well with it like Justine, Sarah and Gary but video blogging is still in its infancy.

Podcamp co-founder and online media guru Chris Brogan will host a daily video blog called “Attention Upgrade” (http://www.attentionupgrade.magnify.net) to showcase Magnify's new platform during the private beta.

They have also introduced a variety of new features in time for the holidays including:

• Widget Maker 2.0
• A Bookmarklet - allows others to refer videos to your channel on Magnify.net
• Custom Page Builder
• Flash Uploader
• and a new Profile Builder

Kristen over at Mashable has additional details on the announcement. Check out our previous Magnify.net coverage including the nextNYers interview with CEO Steve Rosenbaum.

Social bookmarking site Xerpi this week introduced a new feature that allows users to create a community and share links with friends. The feature hooks into Facebook, MySpace and LinkedIn.

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This week I attended the Sports Media & Technology conference presented by The Sports Business Journal and the Fantasy Sports Association. The conference is one of the few events in the sports industry where the spotlight is supposedly on digital sports media. While the conference certainly focused on leveraging new technologies and distribution platforms to better serve fans and create new business opportunities, the overwhelming focus seemed to be on the raging conflict between sports television networks and cable operators.

It’s no secret that television rights are the cash crop for sports. If you are not convinced, check out the revenue being pulled in by the NFL or NCAA from it’s television partners. The NY Times recently reported that the YES network is being valued at 3 billion dollars. That is 2.5x the valuation that Forbes has placed on the Yankees franchise. All of a sudden, the Yankees are a media empire that happens to have a baseball team. The Sports Industry has taken notice. Just about every conceivable sports entity from the NFL to the Mountain West Conference to the Ski Channel have created a television network. Now they want the cable operators to pay them a hefty subscription fee to widely carry their networks on their basic packages. For the most part, cable companies aren’t budging unless they own an equity stake in the networks. Hence, we have a good old Mexican standoff. The opening keynote panel on “understanding tomorrow’s sports media consumer” was laced with so much double talk and posturing I thought a presidential debate was about to break out.

On the road to ubiquitous sports coverage and super serving the sports fan, there certainly seems to be a few fumbles, interceptions and technical fouls. Sports fans are often a primary driver for penetration of new technologies such as online video and mobile data devices. When Sling Media Co-Founder and CEO Blake Krikorian was asked what Sports can learn from the entertainment industry, he actually flipped the question and said that sports is way ahead of the curve in adopting new technologies and understanding their customers. At the same time, the NFL has limited it’s out of market package exclusively to one channel and it’s damn near impossible to watch a Thursday night game on the NFL network. After years of having no problem watching my alma mater, Michigan, play football on television in NYC, I now have to scramble to find bars that carry the Big Ten Network. What happened to that “any place, any time, anyway…power to the consumer” chant that media executives used to throw around like it was the next verse of take me out to the ballgame?

There certainly are some exciting events on the digital side of sports that were debated during the conference. A panel on online networking communities discussed the new and interesting ways that fans are conversing with each other through new online platforms and tools. My favorite panel was on the impact of the blogosphere. Will Leitch (Deadspin) and Henry Abbott (TrueHoop) didn’t mince words in explaining what’s happening in sports journalism and how the power is shifting to the fan. The faster that big media admits they have lost control the better they’ll figure out how to adapt to the new landscape. They engaged in a great conversation with Chris LaPlaca, a twenty-seven year veteran of ESPN and a Senior VP, Communications. Mr. LaPlaca seemed nervous of the changing landscape, excited by the new opportunities, and eager to learn from the little guys. It was awesome to see a senior executive at ESPN taking notes from upstart bloggers. That’s the kind of stuff that made this conference worthwhile.

The conference also featured extensive fantasy sports coverage with multiple panels devoted to the thriving industry. It’s hard to be a sports fan these days without sinking your time, life and money into fantasy sports. It’s an ideal online application for media companies and advertisers as it is highly engaging, sticky content and incites so much (maybe even too much) passion. The Fantasy Sports Association released research that over 11 million people are playing fantasy football and millions more participate in fantasy baseball, basketball, NASCAR and golf. While fantasy has been dominated by the big three (Yahoo, ESPN, CBS Sports), a burgeoning crop of upstart companies are entering the space to create new applications, support existing games with content and statistics, or making a play to aggregate the industry and create new advertising opportunities.

Many interesting NYC based sports start-ups were represented at the conference including Takkle, Fantasy Sports Ventures, Sportsvite and Sports Technologies. New York City is the ideal location for a digital sports start-up. With access to sports media companies, major advertisers and the top sports market in the world, conditions are ripe for innovation, new products and to leverage market opportunities. It will be interesting to see how these companies capitalize in the space.

Unlike music and entertainment, the sports industry is still living off the fat (think of Oliver Miller) of traditional media. With the importance of live viewing (no DVR), the penetration of HD, strong ratings and a passionate consumer base the future for sports media is very healthy. Hopefully, the sports world will push forward with digital and technological innovation and continue to allow me, as a fan, to enjoy my sports experience in new and exciting ways.