The DC Tech Scene Alive, Kicking, and Growing! at Tech cocktail DC 2

Last night in our great nation's capitol, Tech cocktail's Frank Gruber and Eric Olson hosted Tech cocktail DC 2 at MXMCMXMCMXIXIIXICXICMXMCXIXICXICICVVVVVVVVVVV (read: 1223, for those who don't want to suffer through roman numerals on a Friday morning) and it was a great success! There were over 400 attendees and many of those from interesting new local tech startups looking to spread word, to collaborate with local companies, and to find free cocktails! - the DC tech scene is even more alive and well than we thought.

Since four of us from the searchles crew were able to attend - myself, caveman, dumbfounder, and tuddman - we attempted to chat up a hundred people each to fully cover the crowd. We came across an interesting new web app for Twitter from Summize. It's a service that indexes Twitter's public timeline in realtime - threading together associated tweets. We did a search on Summize for Tech cocktail DC 2 this morning and were able to get the quick rundown on what everyone thought of the event! Very cool search app - I could see the wheels turning in that head of dumbfounder's at the mention of such a service. We were also able to get a few other attendees and companies thinking about search as they grow and build out their platforms. After all, community is great but being able to easily find the people and content YOU're looking for is pretty important and hey...that's what we're here for.

If you're interested in attending local tech events in DC I'd recommend you keep tabs on DCtechevents.com for an updated calender. They're happening all the time and these events are a great resource and a great time!

Poking Fun at Web 2.0 Naming Conventions: Pot Calling Kettle Black

Everybody wants a slice of cool-web-name pie these days. Web 2.0 sites really want to go out of there way to make sure it is immediate clear they are 2.0 - dammit! Losing letters, word combos, abandoning the tried and true dot com... - one could have a field day (ooorr a headache) with the Techcrunch Company Index.

The Try-Hards

E's...Who Needs 'Em? - it's a dog-eat-dog world out there and we don't have time for E's...or yogurt even! That's why we have Go-gurt.

Case and point: Bookr, Buzzd, Flagr, Flickr, Jangl, LiveCastr, Socializr, Yappd

The Double Letters - no, no, no...there's two O's in Goose, boys; it's edgy, catchy, twice the letters...twice the fun.

Not to name any names but... Reddit, Digg, Kwiqq, Pligg

Give me an X - "X"...unknown, mysterious, incites thoughts of pirate treasure...talkin' bout my generation.

Blinkx, Fixya, Flixster, Flux, Kosmix, Loladex

.com...out like the fat kid in dodgeball - these guys are masters of their alternative domains.

last.fm, del.icio.us, fav.or.it, ping.fm, social.im, fantasti.cc

The Try-Harders

Waxxi, Mixx - two letters, two X's...oh snap.
Tripr.tv - the 'E' AND the .com are outta there.

The Try-Hardest

I'm not gonna link it...but there's a site called nipplebyte. Sure it's porn-y, and a quick trip to nipplebyte confirmed all of my suspicions on that front. I'm still going to give them try-hardest distinction because it really captures the essence of the traditional/new age-y combo...plus Techcrunch apparently covered it. Cheers.

Twitter me this, Twitter me that

Twitter - some out there would call it a feature that another website (one with all your friends already there...and an established business model for that matter) could implement at any time, but maybe the fact that the twitter concept isn't tied down to the extra baggage really adds to the simplicity and appeal.

Because Twitter seems to be the next big thing being buzzed about which inherently must be posed a challenge to Facebook's dominance, the comparisons abound. Will it overshadow Facebook? Sue Murphy made a great point over at her blog SuzeMuse - she's found every friend, acquaintance, and gradeschool boyfriend she'd ever want to reconnect with. It was a novelty at first, exciting to see what they were up to...but now, do we really care what half of these people are up to on a newsfeed level? Sebastien over at Praized says that Facebook is just a game and industry pundits are looking for utility.

Utility follows that we actually care about people who we would call up/text, who we would regularly ask 'what are you doing', and in those instances simplicity and speed matter. In realtime, Twitter brings these elements and obviously translates well into the mobile environment - better than all the noise at Facebook.

But all your friends are already on Facebook or LinkedIn or both - it's certainly an issue that Twitter is far more useful the more friends you can entice to join, but your friends are already on five different social networks. Would Twitter be better served just as a Facebook book app? Tough to say. I feel like Facebook and Twitter are two fairly different channels of communication and for some reason or another (oh yeah...speed) twittering has taken off much more than updates to Facebook status – a feature which doesn't really stack up to the conversational tool that twitter has become.

But there's always the question involving whether or not people are jumping on the Twitter train because everyone else is. Is it just a quick fix that happened to be there at the right time for speed-updating on the web? Early tech adopters jumped on because they were bored with and unfulfilled by Facebook and slower networks, later adopters because the exciting conversations in the tech community and blogosphere had moved over to twitter and out of the 'comments' sections, and then finally average joe because he saw the word twitter more than four times in one web-cruising session and figured he'd have to check it out, tell his friends, what have you. I mean I signed up yesterday because of incredulous "I can't believe you're not on twitter" calls at a local event. Oh the humanity.

As another reason to have a new username and password explodes (sure to be followed by yet another) – OpenID is a strong solution to the multiple online identities that are bogging web-users down. It’s an open protocol that has been adapted by several large players including AOL, Google, Microsoft, and Yahoo. OpenID allows users to log on to different web sites using only one digital identity and is advantageous for end-users as well as site-operators – offering a more personal online experience with simplified registration processes as well as opening up the confines of social networks with a portable identity. Aside from making it much easier to connect with your friends and fellow web-users across these many formerly-closed networks, this system also offer more solid proof that users are who they say they are – always a good thing. Is OpenID coming to Searchles soon? Absolutely – we’re working on it now. We know our services offer more value to you as more and more of your friends join so we’d like to make that process easier than ever with OpenID.

So to wrap things up here - will Twitter become just as noisy and unmanageable as Facebook? Are you already addicted? Would you like to see Twitter integrated into your Searchles profile? (Yay OpenID!) It’d be interesting to see not only what articles you’re reading, but what you’re up to/what’s going on in that head of yours – Twitteriffic, Twitastic, Twonderful...I’ll stop now. Let us know your thoughts.