Definitely takes the cake for most soulful eyes among the Facebook cofounders.

TechCrunch points us to a delightful discovery: "Marijuana Majority," a cunningly named campaign that attempts to convince the American public that tokers aren't all lazy longhairs and shiftless teenagers and rakish rappers, thereby making it safe for average Joes to come out in favor of decriminalization. On the website, you'll find a long list of prominent individuals of all stripes who've expressed some kind of support for legalizing it.

It comes complete with ready-t0-share image macros, which you can post to your Facebook wall like a little thinking-of-you card for the stoners in your life.

The names presented as witnesses for the defense are a varied assortment, ranging from Arianna Huffington (you didn't really think she meant literal naps, did you?) to Pat Robertson to Morgan Freeman. As you'll no doubt be shocked, shocked to learn, the list also includes an array of prominent techies, such as Facebook cofounder Dustin Moskovitz; Napster cofounder Sean Parker; and Paypal cofounder Peter Thiel.

TechCrunch asked the project's founder why include the tech types alongside megastars like Rihanna and was told:

They’re influential, particularly to younger, web-connected people.  A lot of them aren’t shy about getting involved in policy debates and supporting organizations and initiatives that they agree with.

However, it's worth noting that these folks don't seem to be directly involved in the campaign. Rather, the organizers have aggregated celebs who've made statements of support for legalization, or contributed money to repeal efforts, or gotten caught burning one down in public. Clicking on their names brings up a citation for whatever source justifies their inclusion on the list--for instance, Mr. Parker qualifies by virtue of having once donated $100,000 to a 2010 California effort at legalization.

Makes sense, because we can't imagine any other circumstance in which Pat Robertson and Bill Maher would find themselves on the same list, unless it's a list of people you wouldn't want to invite to a dinner party.

(Photo: AspiringSocialite.com)

It appears New York's tech scene will finally have its own calling card--a glossy, cinematic affair shot by Annie Leibovitz. The celebrated photographer cordoned off the cobblestone streets of Soho yesterday to direct a photo shoot for an upcoming issue of Vanity Fair.

Let Silicon Valley have its tacky tiger-monkeyblowouts, we'll take the Conde Nast's version of Social Register, thank you very much.

A tipster first alerted us to the shoot from Dennis Crowley's Instagram, where the Foursquare founder posed in an ash-colored blazer with Ms. Leibovitz.

But paparazzi who snuck onto the shoot also spied a number of other notable figures including Michael Bloomberg, College Humor cofounder and Notional CEO Ricky Van Veen (with grown-up hair), socialite and Moda Operandi founder Lauren Santo Domingo--looking stylish and pregnant in a cream-colored trench coat, albeit sans her secretly departed fashion director--as well as Union Square Ventures's Fred Wilson, Etsy CEO Chad Dickerson, and Tumblr founder David Karp, perched atop a vintage motorcycle with his bulldog Clark, alongside Arianna Huffington in the sidecar.

The imagery is pretty evocative, but perhaps not the way Ms. Lebovitz intended. It's hard not to picture them all wedged into that sidecar, driving around Soho, boats against the unmonetizable current.

However, this isn't Vanity Fair's first trip to Silicon Alley. In October, the influencers's Bible interviewed chief digital officer Rachel Sterne. And last year, both its "New Establishment" and "Next Establishment" lists were peppered with familiar names, including Gilt Groupe's Kevin Ryan, Business Insider hyperbolist Henry Blodget, as well as Mr. Karp and LearnVest's Alexa Von Tobel.

Since we're rounding the corner on August, the timing seems a little late to shoot the September issue,  so your guess is as good as ours as to the accompanying text. Perhaps it's that Mayor Bloomberg as Tech Savior profile he's been hoping for since Lehman Brothers toppled down Wall Street.

Ringing the closing bell at NASDAQ at the F.ounders NY 2012

This is a guest post from Gary Sharma (aka “The Guy with the Red Tie”), Founder & CEO of GarysGuide and proud owner of a whole bunch of black suits, white shirts and, at last count, over 40 red ties. You can reach him at gary@garysguide.com.

"First time at F.ounders?"
"Yeah, how about you?"
"I attended the one in Dublin last year."
"Nice! Did you guys really hang out with Bono?"
"Yeah man, it was crazy!"
"I heard Obama might show up tonight."
"No kidding. Really?"
"That's what I heard."
The two young twenty-something multi-millionaire startup founders looked expectantly towards the stage, wondering when POTUS would make an appearance.

Ok, so Obama was not on the agenda. But the fact that folks believed there was even a possibility speaks volumes for the quality and reputation of the event that Paddy Cosgrave, a charming 29-year-old from Ireland, had put together. Now in its third year, F.ounders is a must-attend, invite-only, ultra-exclusive annual event bringing together 150 (yup, there's that dunbar number again) startup founder rockstars, along with a medley of top-tier investors, journalists and executives.

Bloomberg calls it Davos for Geeks. The Next Web calls it the Rolls Royce of conferences. And Mashable calls it the best event they've ever been to. I love basketball so I'm-a-gonna call this the "Michael Jordan of Tech Events!" Because it simply doesn't get any better than this.

We were informed that, "Given that the CEOs and founders of over quarter of a trillion worth of 'start-ups' will be in Times Square on Friday, security is going to be very tight." A quarter of a trillion. Yup, that number has a nice ring to it.

Besides running the much bigger Dublin Web Summit (coming up later this year on October 17 to 18), Paddy is also a UN Global e-Leader for Youth and ICT and an advisor to startups such as SkillPages. The guy keeps busy! Kudos also to the other folks on the organizing team including Daire Hickey, David Kelly and the rest. Throwing an event at the NASDAQ MarketSite in the middle of Times Square can't be the easiest thing in the world. Especially when you're coming all the way from Ireland!

F.ounders NY 2012

As I walked along the cobblestone path down Crosby Street, I noticed heavy green foliage to my left. I had arrived at my destination, the Mondrian Soho, an ultra-trendy four-star luxury hotel inspired by the Jean Cocteau Film, La Belle et la bete ("The Beauty and the Beast"). (Btw, all attendees who stayed at the hotel received a nice discount.)

I picked up my pass and sauntered down into the lobby, where I ran into Ben Parr, cofounder of The Peep Project & ex-Mashable scribe, holding a tall glass of beer. I got a high-five from Ben and we were soon joined by Accel Partners' Daniel Levine and the lovely Kelsey Falter from PopTip.

"How did it go?" I asked Kelsey, referring to her presentation earlier at the TechStars Demo Day. "Awesome!" she replied. Kelsey's startup Markover recently won Betabeat's web series / startup competition The Pitch. After getting into TechStars, though, she pivoted to PopTip. "Any VC checks in your pocket?" I asked "Not yet!" she laughed but the twinkle in her eye told me good things were coming.

We asked Ben what he was drinking. "SmuttyNose! It's IPA." he replied. The conversation soon devolved (as it usually does) into discussing the merits of East Coast versus West Coast beer. Conclusion? The East Coast has the better beer, but West Coast burritos rock! (SmuttyNose, incidentally, takes its name from the island where the beer is made, somewhere along the New Hampshire coast. And the place is steeped in history and legend and home to poets, pirates and ghosts!)

On my way to the bar, I ran into the wonderful Cindy Gallop from If We Ran The World. I hadn't seen Cindy since SXSW, and we caught up and chatted about everything from the pornification of brands to the art of vajazzling and, of course, the upcoming launch of her much-anticipated MakeLoveNotPorn.tv. Her digs in New York (a.k.a. #TheBlackApartment) were recently the backdrop for a photoshoot for singer Amanda Palmer (yes, the same Amanda Palmer who just raised $1.2 million on Kickstarter). During my last visit, I'd presented her with a beautiful statue of Ganesha (the Indian elephant god), which you'll see on her coffee table, assuming you're lucky enough to score an invite. Cindy, the jetsetter that she is, had recently attended DLD Moscow and was headed to Cannes Lions after F.ounders NY. In her own words: "From the people inventing the future to the people struggling with it."

Svyaznoy Group's Yulia Mitrovich, If We Ran The World's Cindy Gallop and Bipper's Silje Vallestad at the F.ounders NY 2012 Reception at Mondrian Soho

I met 18-year-old Harvard dropout Sujay Tyle who heads biz dev and strategy for Scopely. Sujay is one of Paypal godfather Peter Thiel's 20-under-20 fellows (yes, THAT program--where Thiel writes you a check for $100,000 and you drop out of college). "I'm a big fan of GarysGuide!" he said. "Thanks!" I smiled. Sujay, incidentally, from age 11 to 16, conducted biofuel research surrounding the conversion of cellulose to ethanol, for which he won the International Energy Olympiad and was named one of the Top Young Scientists across New York. Impressive! And hopefully an inspiration to the kids these days, if the US is to get serious about closing the education gap in science/engineering, where we're falling way behind the rest of the world.

I met the founders of hot Y-Combinator startup Pair and we talked a bit regarding strategies for mobile user acquisition. Pair is inherently not a viral product (it's a social network for couples) and while it has received a lot of buzz in the tech community, they really needed to figure out a way to reach the broader mainstream audience. But it does seem to have struck a chord with many users, so I'm sure they'll figure out a way.

I chatted with a bunch of other folks at the reception including Google Ventures' Rich Miner, Redpoint's Satish Dharmaraj, Mashery CEO Oren Michels, Agent of Change's Marcy Simon, Decide.com CEO Mike Fridgen, Class V Group's Lise Buyer, Irrive's Steven Cohn, Quixey's Tomer Kagan, Aframe's David Peto, Apax Partners' Tripp Lane, Social Bakers' Jan Rezab and Talenthouse CEO Roman Scharf.

I had a nice conversation with Polaris Ventures' Noel Ruane (who also leads Dogpatch Europe). Noel created and managed LaunchPad, Ireland's first digital tech accelerator program, inspired by Y-Combinator. They are accepting applications for their Autumn 2012 program (deadline is July 6)

NYC Tech was fairly well represented with a bunch of familiar faces including the lovely Shauna Mei from AhaLife, Foodspotting's Soraya Darabi (who is now working on a new startup), and Blip cofounder Dina Kaplan (also working on a new startup and others.)

Later we all headed over to the Charity:Water offices, which were lined everywhere with their trademark ubiqitious yellow jerrycans.

The Kin playing Musical Robbery at F.ounders NY 2012 at Charity:Water

Founder Scott Harrison talked about the origins of the idea (bringing clean, safe drinking water to people in developing countries), their philosophy (100 percent of all public donations directly fund water projects) and how they almost ran out of money (Bebo Founder Michael Birch and his wife saved the day by wiring them a million dollars). They've since raised about $50 million and helped two million people gain access to clean water. Scott also shared a few stories from the trenches, showing how lives were being changed. By the end, there wasn't a dry eye in the room.

After the speeches, I ran into Wordpress founder Matt Mullenweg. "I thought I recognized you from the red tie!" he smiled. Matt had recently reached out to me, as he'd heard about my red tie and was interested in sponsoring it. We reminisced a bit about the early days of blogging (when they were duking it out with Movable Type).

I met the Turakhia brothers, Divyank and Bhavin, who both handed me what looked like gold business cards. Divyank (aka Div) started his first business when he was 14 and later, at age 18, he cofounded the Directi Group with his brother, taking $600 from their parents as seed capital. Directi is now worth $300 million and the brothers are multi-millionaires. Not bad at all! While Bhavin is focused on Directi, Divyank has a new startup, Media.net, with an ambition to take on Google Adsense. (Okay, so I'm guessing those gold business cards are actually for real. Guys?)

Gold business cards? - F.ounders NY 2012 at Charity:Water

I struck a conversation with Ville Vesterinen, founder of Grey Area, a gaming startup, who was here all the way from Helsinki! I gave him my business card. "I'm subscribed to your newsletter," he exclaimed excitedly. I was flattered--my first Helsinki subscriber! :) Ville and his girlfriend were planning to move to NYC soon (she's joining hot local startup Codecademy). "What's a good neighborhood for couples?" he asked. I recommended Park Slope in Brooklyn and promised to connect him to my Brooklyn friends.

I chatted with a bunch of other folks including Tagged founder Greg Tseng (doing great, 10 million MAUs, 12 mins spent on site: less than Tumblr but higher than Facebook), UStream founder Brad Hunstable (Livestream? We're four times bigger!), StumbleUpon founder Garrett Camp, KPMG's Tim Foster and others.

Later we headed to the Angel Oresanz, a beautiful Gothic Revival synagogue built in the 1800s, for dinner.

F.ounders NY 2012 Dinner at Angel Oresanz

F.ounders NY 2012 Dinner at Angel Oresanz

At the dinner, I ran into a bunch of folks including Hipmunk cofounder Adam Goldstein, TaskRabbit founder Leah Busque, General Assembly CEO Jake Schwartz, Chegg cofounder Aayush Bhumbra, Wired's Spencer Reiss, Goldman Sachs' Jane Dunlevie and others.

I chatted with FirstMark Capital's Lawrence Lenihan about "Ready Fire Aim," the entrepreneurship class that he's teaching at NYU. My friend Gauri Manglik (Fondue) had taken and raved about it. It had been the inspiration that led to her starting a startup. Right on! He invited me to sit in one of his classes. I also connected with Julie Cohn, who covers business and tech news for The Daily (News Corp's iPad magazine) and we chatted about the NY tech scene among other things.

The Peep Project's Ben Parr and 99 Designs' Matt Mickiewicz at the F.ounders NY 2012 Dinner at Angel Oresanz

After dinner, we all headed back to the Mondrian for the after-after-party.

Around midnight, I snuck out briefly to attend the 40th birthday party of Prince Lorenzo Borghese (a.k.a. The Bachelor) which coincidentally (and thankfully!) was also taking place at the Mondrian at their ultra-exclusive Mister H lounge. This is why I love New York. Everything is so conveniently located!

On my return I bumped into Art.sy's Carter Cleveland, Gotham Innovation's Fahad Khan and Apture (now acquired by Google) founder Tristan Harris. The conversation was all about recruiting San Francisco startups to move to New York City (Yes!) and Tristan had a clever kickstarter-esque idea to help founders take that leap.

Other folks I met were TopTal cofounder Taso Du Val, Curebit cofounder Allan Grant, Mobclix cofounder Vishal Gurbuxani and others.

I had a fun conversation with Ben Milne, Founder of Dwolla, a disruptive payments startup backed by Union Square Ventures and based out of Des Moine, Iowa that is trying to build a bank-to-bank e-payments network bypassing credit cards altogether (and their atrocious fees). "Betabeat, huh," he smiled, noting my badge. I sensed a little history :) Ben's beard may not be as crazy as Techstars founder @workforfood, but it certainly has a personality.

"Any chance you can change the name of the company?" I asked. "Everytime I hear it, I think of that Crazy Joe Davola character from Seinfeld in that clown outfit!" Ben smiled. "I had no idea! I will definitely give it some thought." Good enough for me, Ben. I'll follow up in a couple of months ;)

The next morning the action shifted to the NASDAQ.

There were, of course, a bunch of panels and fireside chats. Here are some tidbits:

Arianna Huffington to Mathew Bishop: "Want the one-night stand or the long weekend getaway? Our iPad magazine is the long getaway!"

David KirkPatrick moderating the Future of Education Panel: "Is anybody on this panel close to making any money? No? Didn't think so."

MG Siegler: "The Facebook IPO was great for Facebook, not necessarily great for later-stage investors."

The Hungry Games Panel: "Guy in Saudi Arabia spent $100,000 in one day on Zynga!"

Steve Case commenting on the Aol/TimeWarner merger: "I drank the koolaid. Some would say I made the koolaid!"

Etsy's Chad Dickerson: "Startups focus too much on a marketplace's functions, like checkout and search, not enough on its community."

David Karp: "2-4 percent of all posts on any given day on Tumblr are porn."

Arianna Huffington at F.ounders NY 2012 at NASDAQ

The Road to IPO with Deirdre Bolton (Bloomberg), Eric Hippeau (Lerer Ventures), Fred Wilson (Union Square Ventures), Bob McCooey (NASDAQ), Rich Miner (Google Ventures) and Anthony Noto (Goldman Sachs) at F.ounders NY 2012 at NASDAQ

I ran into 2tor cofounder Jeremy Johnson. I hadn't seen Jeremy in ages, and we reminisced about the New York tech scene and how it had grown. Speak of growth, 2tor had been doing very well with over 350 employees now, a little over 90 million raised (26 million in a Series D round 2 months ago) and revenues doubling. They have partnerships with top universities such as USC, Georgetown and UNC to offer online graduate programs. And Jeremy mentioned that, going forward, undergrad programs would be on their radar, a much bigger potential market. Jeremy invited me over to their offices for a demo of some of the new stuff they're working on. "So how's the culture like at the office?" I asked. "We have a strict no assholes policy!" he smiled. Word.

GenWi cofounder PJ Gurumohan gave me and Facebook Effect author David Kirkpatrick a tour of their tablet publishing tool. Later I connected with Matt Galligan (SimpleGeo, SocialThing) who was now launching a new startup, Circa, along with Cheezburger's Ben Huh. Circa's investor list reads like a who's who including 3 Davids (Tisch, Cohen, Karp), Dave Morin, Rick Webb and others. OnSwipe's Jason Baptiste joined us and we had a long, entertaining chat on the future of publishing and where things were headed.

Waiting in line for lunch, I struck up a conversation with Dominique Vidal, who is a partner at Index Ventures and previously ran Yahoo Europe. Index has a couple of funds targeting seed, early and growth stage, and an impressive portfolio including Facebook, Path, Flipboard, Last.fm and most recently, Etsy. Dominique, who focuses more on the later stage, was very much on the lookout for potential growth/IPO-track companies to invest in. "See anything interesting?" I asked. "Quite a few!" he replied and mentioned a few names. We chatted about two hot NYC startups that Dominique sits on the board of, Outbrain and SquareSpace, both of which are going gangbusters and potential IPO candidates down the road. It was starting to make sense why this event was being held at the NASDAQ MarketSite.

A couple of girls walked by and exclaimed "Gary, we're really looking forward to the party at your loft tonight!" Hmmm, I wondered, this was news to me. Now where did they get that idea? I pulled out the f.ounders agenda booklet and flipped through it. Sure enough, there it was. 6p.m.: Party at Gary's Loft. Yikes! Who was this Gary? Because it surely wasn't me. My curiosity was piqued.

WordPress' Matt Mullenweg and CrunchFund's MG Siegler at F.ounders NY 2012 at NASDAQ

Cracking the education code with David Kirkpatrick (Techonomy), Jose Ferreira (Knewton), Michael Karnjanaprakorn (Skillshare), Zach Sims (Codecademy), Osman Rashid (Kno) and NT Etuk (DimensionU) at F.ounders NY 2012 at NASDAQ

I caught up with data junkie and entrepreneur Eva Ho from Factual (Eva was previously part of the founding team at Applied Semantics) We chatted about mountain trekking and the Himalayas and going up to Everest BaseCamp (18000 feet above sea level!), as one of her friends had recently been up there. Adding this to my bucket list! "Would you go all the way to the top?" I asked her. "That might be too much!" she laughed. Eva showed me her calendar. It looked almost as crazy as mine! I noticed she was involved with a lot of incubators (NewMe, MuckerLab) but also many charity and cause related initiatives. One in particular caught my eye. Iridiscent (where she's a board member), helps introduce high school girls to the worlds of science, engineering and entrepreneurship. They provide the girls with the tools / hardware / software / etc and help them actually create something. How cool is that--their first taste of being an entrepreneur!

I chatted with Matthew Prince, cofounder and CEO of CloudFlare and Jennifer Hyman, cofounder and CEO of Rent The Runway. "We like to think we're in the business of providing Cinderella experiences for our customers," said Jennifer. "So that would make you the fairy godmother?" I winked. "YES, story of my life!" she exclaimed. "And now I am going to change your life!" She gave me the contact details of one of the best salons in the city. Apparently they are geniuses when it comes to dealing with crazy curly hair like mine. Fairy Godmother indeed!

I met a bunch of other folks lincluding Locu founder Rene Reinsberg, whom I'd met at TechCrunch Disrupt recently, Qwiki founder Doug Imbruce (who was a big fan of Gary's Guide :)), mobile payments startup Venmo founder Andrew Kortina, Appthority founder Domingo Guerra, Disqus' Ro Gupta, GigaOm's KiMae Huessner, who I hadn't seen since the Betabeat anniversary party, Soundtracking founder (and iMeem co-creator) Steve Jang, and David Axmark, one of the founders of MySQL.

I later ran into AOL & Revolution Founder Steve Case, and we had an interesting discussion on all the stuff he's currently involved with, including the recently passed JOBS Act, Startup America, where he is chairman, and, most importantly, the upcoming Startup Act 2.0. "The good news is that senators from both parties are on board and the bipartisanship should definitely help. But it is an election year and we shouldn't take anything for granted," he mentioned. Interesting stats: More than 40 percent of Fortune 500 companies in the U.S. were founded by immigrants or their children, including Google, Apple, and IBM. And new businesses (less than five years old) have created nearly 40 million American jobs.

I congratulated LooseCubes cofounder Anna Thomas on their recent big round (about $7.8 million). "Thank you and so great to finally meet you!" she exclaimed. LooseCubes has big plans and will be rolling out some cool new features. I promised to stop by their offices to co-work sometime soon.

I discussed with Gabe Rivera regarding what was next for TechMeme. He mentioned that World News was one of the categories he'd been looking at. It seemed the right fit for the TechMeme format and was a fairly big market.

Later I ran into Divyank again, this time with Paypal's KC Fox. We chatted about adventure sports. Divyank has apparently tried everything from aerobatic flying to ballooning, skydiving to paragliding. Oh, and also Wing Walking. Don't know what that is? Here, check it out. Yup, adding that to my bucket list, too!

I chatted with Apture's Tristan Harris and Eytan Elbaz, Founder of L.A.-based gaming startup Scopely (yes, THAT one, with the viral hipster jobs page). Eytan along with brother Gil  (the founder of Factual) had founded Applied Semantics (a.k.a. Google Adsense). The conversation veered towards the most helpful folks in the Valley. Two names right at the top: Square's Keith Rabois and YouTube's Hunter Walk. "Back in the day, they were like the indie bands," mourned Eytan, "undiscovered and very accessible. But now the secret is out and it's much harder to get hold of them." We wondered who the new hidden gems were.

Later in the afternoon we were all handed maps to ... err ... Gary's Loft, and we headed over. Encompassing two floors plus a huge rooftop with stunning views of the Empire State Building, it was definitely one of the swankier penthouse lofts I'd ever been to. Whoever this Gary was, I felt a certain kinship with him. He had good taste!

Gary's Loft at F.ounders NY 2012

Media.net's Divyank Turakhia, Facebook's Ethan Beard and Digg's Matt Williams at Gary's Loft at F.ounders NY 2012

I ran into Ethan Beard, who handles developer relations at Facebook. "So do certain apps get preferential treatment?" I casually asked, mentioning Viddy and SocialCam. "Not really, but when we're exploring a new use-case we might work with just a few apps initially until the kinks are ironed out, and then we roll it out to all other apps," he explained, citing Spotify and Rdio as an example. Ethan also mentioned that leading up to the IPO, you could definitely sense a certain tension within the company. It didn't affect productivity and they tried to adopt a business-as-usual attitude. But I guess when you're in the quiet period of arguably the most heavily anticipated IPO of our generation, things can get a little stressful, no?

I chatted with Matt Williams, CEO of Digg. Washington Post had recently acq-hired a bunch of Digg employees. And Matt mentioned that various suitors have been sniffing around Digg for the Technology / IP portion. A sale imminent? Stay tuned.

Wix Founder/CEO Avishai Abrahami and I headed over to the buffet to feast on some delicious oysters, shrimp and sushi. Wix.com was doing great. They'd recently made a big push towards HTML5 and were already seeing one million sites on it. Plus, they were seeing a lot of growth in mobile.

Gary's Loft at F.ounders NY 2012

Wix Founder Avishai Abrahami with The Daily Muse Founder Kathryn Minshew at Gary's Loft at F.ounders NY 2012

An anonymous but credible source who sees a lot of deal flow in the Valley told me that investors had become really spooked with the recent less-than-stellar Facebook IPO. Many of them had been investing in the last couple of years with a little less discipline and a little more recklessness than was prudent, assuming that a successful Facebook IPO  was pretty much a lock. More than a few of them were now holding back on investing in any new stuff. And the high valuations (that they themselves have been partly responsible for driving up) were not helping. It may or may not develop into the full-blown nuclear winter that YC's Paul Graham warned about recently, but the winds are definitely shifting.

I chatted with 99 Designs cofounder Matt Mickiewicz, Scribd cofounder Jared Friedman and Microsoft startup evangelist Sumit Shukla. "Thank you for acquiring Yammer," Jared (an early angel investor in Yammer) told Sumit. The conversation shifted to the rumors regarding an apparently very lavish party that Yammer CEO David Sacks was throwing for his 40th birthday and also to celebrate the acquisition. Details were hazy but apparently involved a $125 million mansion in L.A., 18th century costumes and Snoop Dogg. Sounds like a party to me! Matt entertained us with stories from his trips to the Playboy Mansion. Bucketlisted!

At the bar I ran into TechCrunch Europe Editor Mike Butcher and the lovely Silje Vallestad, founder/CEO of Bipper. Mike was his usual hyper-energetic self, while Silje regaled us with stories from her time visiting the Dalai Lama in Tibet.

I ran into Gary Vaynerchuk of Vayner Media and WineLibrary TV fame and author of The Thank You Economy. "Loving your Betabeat articles!" he exclaimed. "Thanks!" I smiled back. And then, of course, we had to tackle the elephant in the room. "Is this your loft?" I asked. "No, I thought it was yours!" he replied. Hmmmm, the mystery deepens, so who is this Gary of Gary's Loft anyway? I plan to dig my investigative journalist nose deeper into this, folks. Stay tuned!

Gary Vaynerchuk and Gary's Famous (and Sponsored) Red Tie at Gary's Loft at F.ounders NY 2012

Locu's Rene Reinsberg, CNN Money's Laurie Segall and Artsy's Carter Cleveland at Gary's Loft at F.ounders NY 2012

Other folks I met were Redeem and Get CEO Gene Murphy, Tripping founder Jen O'Neal, CNN Money's Laurie Segall, A&L GoodBody's John Whelan, Livebookings (the OpenTable of Europe) founder Chris Persson and iZettle founder Jacob de Geer (who showed off their Square like phone dongle).

I met world-renowned photographer Kevin Abosch who's worked with everyone from President Obama to Johnny Depp. He did the amazing founder photo portraits displayed earlier on the NASDAQ, an exciting preview of a large-scale project FACES:TECH. As tech products like Google, Facebook and Twitter become more pervasive and ubiquitous in our lives, he thought it'd be interesting to bring focus to the entrepreneurs & visionaries behind these products such as Twitter's Jack Dorsey and Skype's Niklas Zennström. A major bi-coastal exhibition of FACES:TECH is planned for later this year.

Portrait of Tumblr Founder David Karp by world-renowned photographer Kevin Abosch on the NASDAQ as part of the FACES:TECH project during F.ounders NY 2012

I ran into Indiegogo Founder/CEO Danae Ringelmann. Of course we had to chat about the whole Oatmeal / FunnyJunk situation and the related fund-raising project, Bear Love Good. Cancer Bad. "No, we didn't take it down. And actually it's up to almost $160,000 now" she told us. The power of the Internets!

Polish serial entrepreneur the lovely Ela Madej and I sat down to take a breather from the non-stop networking. Ela is the founder of Credictive, a new startup that helps you get credit for all things you've created--images, sounds, videos, etc. "Kinda like an IMDB for creative content,” she explained. Ela got accepted into the latest batch at Y-Combinator. Mazel tov! We chatted about a bunch of other stuff including CEO coaching (Jerry Colonna is helping her), bootstrapping companies and her upcoming trip to India.

At the after-party at Number 8 in Chelsea I ran into 4chan / Canvas Founder Chris "Moot" Poole. We chatted about what's next for Canvas, an image-heavy website for creative outlet. The answer was easy: mobile, of course. "A tablet app is in the works," he said. Fun fact: Chris was banned within 45 seconds of using Airtime, the ultra-hyped-chatroulette-without-the-penises startup by Napster cofounders Sean Parker & Shawn Fanning. Way to earn some geek cred, Chris.

As I was leaving, I ran into Rick Marini waiting outside for his Uber ride. Rick's the founder of BranchOut, a LinkedIn-style professional networking app on Facebook. BranchOut has impressive traction (25 million users, 60 percent monthly active) and an even more impressive war-chest ($49 million). And the mobile app released in December has really spurred growth (3 new users every second, 40 percent traffic on mobile). "We've kind of figured out user acqusition and our focus now is on retention" said Rick. They're planning to roll out a new user interface in a couple of weeks. "I've made my money." he said refering to the $100 million exit he got for his previous company Tickle sold to Monster. "But now with BranchOut there is an opportunity to build something for the ages. I want to swing for the fences and take it to an IPO. I want to go all the way." Spoken like a true F.ounder

Mr. Peretti (flickr.com/wonific)

If Arianna Huffington is the Madonna of the media industry, what does that make Jonah Peretti, cofounder of burgeoning meme factory BuzzFeed? Prince, perhaps? (In keeping with the '80s references, of course.)

Ms. Huffington, who founded The Huffington Post with the help of Mr. Peretti, was so excited to hear the nerd king's presentation, which directly followed her own, that she announced offhandedly that she was changing her schedule so that she could stay. And Mr. Peretti, whose slideshow was chock full of cute animal photos and other humorous BuzzFeed absurdities, did not disappoint. (Though it was apparently quite similar to the one he did at Ad Age Digital a few weeks ago.)

Mr. Peretti's presentation revolved around the concept of the current shift from "search" to "social." Before, people relied on search engines like Google to find information, but now they are increasingly relying on their social networks to share and receive articles. Google, he said, is concerned with connecting people with the information they want, while Facebook is about helping you express yourself and connect with your friends. But BuzzFeed is all about creating content for this new social ecosystem.

"What we’re building at BuzzFeed is treating social as the new starting point," he declared. "We’re starting with the premise that people get their news from social sources and saying, 'What does it take to create content in a social world?'"

With that, Mr. Peretti cued up a photo of two basset hounds running, their faces mangled into hilarious and oddly adorable expressions. The audience laughed heartily, with some high-pitched "awws" mixed in for good measure.

"Turns out in the social world, two basset hounds running are actually pretty good. Basset hounds have a property of having messed up faces when they run, so you laugh, so you get the 'LOL,' plus the 'Cute,' so there’s an overlap of two things," Mr. Peretti explained, with the gusto of a professor hashing out a complicated scientific theory.

"In the social world, people want to be a participant in the stories that they're reading about," he added. On the presentation screen, Mr. Peretti showed examples of BuzzFeed stories that have performed well because of this participatory element: the campaign to make People magazine name Ryan Gosling the sexiest man in the world, and a post with a list of the most powerful images of 2011.

"The biggest post we had on BuzzFeed in 2011 was the 45 most powerful images of 2011," he said. "All these epic monumental things that we all lived through in 2011--we put that into a list that people could share on Facebook, so you felt like you lived through things with your friends, but there was also the social value of reliving these experiences with your friends."

Mr. Peretti elaborated on this by explaining that the new currency in the social world is emotional intelligence, or "being able to think, 'When I share this, how does it make me look? Can I make my friends happy or inspired or more informed by sharing things with them? What’s the social dynamics of content?' I think that is sometimes more important than traditional I.Q."

"People will say, 'Oh, why don’t you just post a bunch of nude celebrities? People search for that and click on that at a tremendous rate, because no one really sees you do it," he added. "Social raises the bar to what people are proud of and what makes people more human."

Read our earlier coverage of the Guardian 2012 Activate Summit here and here.

Ms. Huffington (flickr.com/worldeconomicforum)

The post-lunch session of the Guardian Activate Summit kicked off with an interview between Guardian U.S. editor in chief Janine Gibson and a woman whom Ms. Gibson called "the Madonna of our industry:" why Arianna Huffington, of course. Ms. Huffington, who donned a smart navy blue blazer and a perfectly coifed blond bob, introduced herself with some opening remarks about what she called the "fetishization of social."

"The fetishization of social is celebrating something going 'trending' or going 'viral' without asking what it is that's going trending or viral," said Ms. Huffington. "We all need to do a better job of asking those questions, otherwise we’re going to find ourselves in the same dangerous area that mainstream media have found themselves in, where everything is breaking news. Donald Trump endorsing Mitt Romney, Balloon Boy, all these things."

We found this comment especially pointed coming from Ms. Huffington, as The Huffington Post just tweeted, "Miley Cyrus saves a dog left outside of Walmart," a piece that has all the classic elements of a viral story (major celebrity + cute animal + feel-good component) without any of the explanation. We really do need to be asking why Miley Cyrus' dog saving abilities are going viral, wouldn't you agree?

After her lengthy self-introduction, Ms. Huffington fielded a few questions from Ms. Gibson. How did you feel when Obama made the joke about the Huffington Post winning the Pulitzer at the White House Correspondents Dinner, she asked?

"Any time the President of the United States jokes about your Pulitzer it’s kind of a good joke for me," quipped Ms. Huffington.

As always, there were the usual questions about whether The Huffington Post "steals" articles by aggregating them.

"The HuffPost is two things," replied Ms. Huffington. "It’s a journalistic enterprise--it employs 500 full-time journalists--and it is a platform. Even if I had a trillion dollar budget, I would always make sure Huffpost is a platform. We live in a link economy, and the joy of a link economy is that we can promise readers the best of the web, whether we produce it or link."

"Ubiquity is the new promiscuity," she added. "When people say they want to launch a site to show their stuff, that train has left the station long ago. Now it’s about, 'Can you put your stuff everywhere?'"

Ms. Huffington also said that maintaining a bootstrappy spirit is key to continued success. "I want us to keep that startup spirit even as we’re growing and scaling, because that’s really at the heart of staying ahead," she said.

Do you see any Lady Gagas coming to usurp your Madonna title, wondered Ms. Gibson?

"I think there can be room for Madonna and Lady Gaga," emphasized Ms. Huffington.

Quietly, almost as if she didn't want the audience to hear, she added, "It’s a very manly way of looking at things, like who has the biggest swinging dick."

Check out our coverage of the morning 2012 Guardian Activate Summit session with LinkedIn cofounder Reid Hoffman here.

via Gentleman's Quarterly

It's been less than two months since Facebook rolled out it's stalking, sorry subscription feature and it's already revealing telling personal insights about our "friends." Which, we have to imagine, is just how privacy, um, trailblazer Mark Zuckerberg wanted it.

But a tipster alerted Betabeat that it might also reveal something about Zuck himself.

In addition to subscribing to the Facebook feeds of his own employees and engineers, pundits like Jeff Jarvis, as well as journalists like Nick Bilton, Farhad Manjoo, and Fareed Zakaria, Mr. Zuckerberg subscribes to the Facebook feed of gamine Glee actress Dianna Agron.

In fact, Zuck subscribed to Ms. Agron's  feed, which currently features her Halloween costume (a "Reptar") and posts about her "spirit animal" (co-star Harry Shum Jr.) before subscribing to any of the luminaries above. Even before subscribing to fellow mogul Arianna Huffington!

But don't go thinking his pop culture interests are limited to wholesome musical numbers. Before Ms. Agron, Zuck signed up to see Snoop Dogg's feed. Since it's Zuck's world, of course, you can find him under Calvin Broadus. Makes sense. With my mind on my money and my money on my mind is the perfect backdrop for IPO dreaming.

Image via Vanity Fair

UPDATE: Reuters reports that The New York Times is suing AOL Inc to force the The Huffington Post to change the name of its new blog, Parentlode, which borrowed the chief writer, Lisa Belkin, and most of the name from her previous  NY Times column, Motherlode.

"The Times said Belkin "clearly intended" to confuse readers into believing her new blog was the same as her old blog, which she called a "virtual koffee klatch" for parenting," reports Reuters. "The Times sued AOL for trademark infringement, unfair competition and deceptive trade practices. It also wants AOL to abandon its trademark application for the Parentlode name."

Last November two advisers from the 2004 Kerry-Edwards campaign, Peter Daou and James Boyce, filed suit against Arianna Huffington, claiming she stole the idea for the Huffington Post from them and cut them out of the business. Along with her co-founder Ken Lerer, Ms. Huffington filed to have the case dismissed. Now, as PaidContent reports, New York state Judge Charles Ramos has ruled that the case can go to trail.

The judge threw out seven of the eight complaints filed, but said that Ms. Huffington herself had confirmed the idea was something concrete and novel in a 2008 interview with Playboy. The pressure is now on Ms. Huffington to settle or be draw into a public court battle.

This ruling comes only a few days after the New York Times handed a cease-and-desist letter to the Huffington Post for hiring away their lead blogger on Motherlode and starting their own blog, subtly titled Parentlode. While the case has nothing to do with the lawsuit, it does play on the same themes of over-eager-appropriation.

Paid Content got the boilerplate from both sides:

Mario Ruiz, a spokesman for Huffington Post provided the following statement on Wednesday night: “Seven out of the eight claims were thrown out. To describe this as any kind of victory is as laughable as their lawsuit.”

Partha Chattoraj, the attorney for Daou and Boyce, responded on Thursday morning: “Arianna Huffington and Ken Lerer may say that they find “laughable” the court’s decision to uphold our claim that they stole my clients’ ideas for the Huffington Post, but we are gratified to have the opportunity to bring the truth to light.”

For a deeper dive into the he said she said, check out Vanity Fair's fine piece, Huffing and Puffing:

“It fully dawned they just weren’t going to do the right thing,” Daou explains. “We needed to go there and say to Arianna, ‘Look, you’ve got to make this right. We can’t let that stand.’ And whatever. The chips will just have to fall. I mean, if this becomes a big confrontation, well, it is what it is. We went in with eyes wide open.”

Same great taste, way less filter.

Apparently ripping and running with the work created by New York Times journalists was getting to be a little stale for the blog lords at The Huffington Post. Founder Arianna Huffington has been poaching top talent from the gray lady as well. But today, as first reported by John Koblin at WWD, the  Times hit HuffPo with a cease and desist letter threatening legal actions after they hired away parenting writer Lisa Belkin from Time's column Motherload and started a new blog of their own called, wait for it, Parentlode.

Ms. Belkin explained the new name in her first post on HuffPo:

Finally, why the new name...For three years I have answered those emails by saying that a brand is a brand, and the Times wasn't inclined to change this one, but if I were choosing today I would choose something more inclusive.

Seems I AM choosing today. So welcome to "Parentlode."

There is obviously a legitimate trademark case to be made here. But the deeper issue is the relationship between the Times and Huffington Post. The latter has emerged as the biggest winner and most reviled practitioner of online aggregation. As Bill Keller told The Atlantic:

"pretty damned annoying" how Arianna keeps coming back with big checks trying to take his best staffers. "She’s tried to hire a lot more good people and not succeeded. I don’t know that anybody’s actually keeping score around here but you might be surprised to know how many people have turned down big checks because they’d rather work here than there," he said. "But it’s probably also a really good thing for journalism that there are people writing checks," Keller concluded in a different interview.

So remember kids, a four letter domain name is money in the bank. It's got to be easy to spell and pronounce. But that won't stop the copy cats from coming out of the woodwork. The best bet is to execute and iterate faster than the next guy.

Oh and BTW, Parentlode? Seriously? You know that's no longer a pun...

Image via Flickr user jdlasica

For the last decade, Erick Schonfeld has been the lone wolf of tech media, working as the East Coast point man for tech publications headquartered in Silicon Valley “He’s the kind of reporter who can handle anything you throw at him, from a trendy Web 2.0 startup to a Fortune 100 titan,” said Josh Quittner, who was Mr. Schonfeld’s old boss at Business 2.0. “For us he played the one man band.”

The thirty-nine-year-old father of three lives in the suburbs near Chappaqua, forty five minutes north of New York City. (He left a tip on Foursquare about his morning commute from the Metro North station: “Get here early and snag a metered parking spot.”)

At public events he tends to wear slightly oversized suits in tan or grey, frameless glasses and a thick head of dark curls. “He’s a very sober person, even keel, not easily upset,” said Mr. Quittner. “When I started we had a number of people working for us on the East Coast, but by the end it was just Erick.”

Two weeks ago, Mr. Schonfeld, never a shrinking violet, took a big step into the spotlight. He had been, for the last four years, the co-editor of TechCrunch, a level headed counterpart to Mike Arrington, the pugilistic provocateur who founded the site as a personal blog. But the last year has been an eventful one for TechCrunch. Mr. Arrington sold the site to AOL a year ago, after which AOL merged with the Huffington Post, setting up an inevitable clash between two of the biggest egos in media: Mr. Arrington and Arianna Huffington. After Mr. Arrington announced he'd formed his own tech fund and would be investing in some of the same companies TechCrunch covered, he was forced out in a dramatic shake-up. That's when the mild-mannered editor was asked to step in for one of the media’s biggest bomb throwers. He accepted the position, and immediately found his old partners leveling their formidable rhetorical firepower at him.

“The truth is, Erick was Arianna Huffington’s choice, not TechCrunch’s,” wrote Arrington acolyte Paul Carr, in a resignation post that he published on TechCrunch (where else?) as Mr. Schonfeld was boarding a plane. Mr. Arrington followed up a few days later on his new blog, Uncrunched, noting, “Public executions of leaders tend to have a severe chilling effect on whoever takes over, and Arianna Huffington is, without a doubt, the current editor in chief of TechCrunch.”

With his influential ex-partner publicly undermining his authority, many wondered if Mr. Schonfeld could keep the site together. Prominent tech investor Fred Wilson had already written on his blog, “TechCrunch is a big question mark. If AOL can keep the rest of the team together, then TechCrunch has a bright future.” The key, wrote Mr. Wilson, was that Techrunch “Has a voice, a swagger, a 'fuck you' attitude that comes from Mike. That can also live on without Mike if AOL allows it. They need to keep the remaining team, the voice, and that attitude if they want to remain at the top of the world of tech media.”

That may be Mr. Schonfeld's biggest challenge for the moment. The two remaining writers best known for their swagger are Sarah Lacy and MG Siegler.

Ms. Lacy is on a fourth-month maternity leave. And late Monday night, Mr. Arrington announced that MG Siegler would be coming to work for him as a venture capitalist at his new Crunchfund, though he would continue to pen a TechCrunch column on Apple.

A weary Mr. Schonfeld phoned Betabeat, shortly after the news about Mr. Siegler broke. “Obviously, MG was a great asset to us, and I would have loved to keep him on as a writer,” said Mr. Schonfeld. “But I'm glad I found a way to keep his voice on the site.”

Mr. Schonfeld noted that this move into venture capital was long in the works, a notion Mr. Siegler seconded in a blog post. But the timing, so soon after Mr. Arrington’s departure, did not look good. “It doesn't really matter how it looks, it matters how I perform,” said Mr. Schonfeld. “I'll stand by that, over the time to come.”

Despite being viewed by some as the Robin to Mr. Arrington's Batman, in fact Mr. Schonfeld has a formidable resume of his own. After graduating from Cornell in 1993, Mr. Schonfeld went right to work as a journalist at Fortune. In 1996 and again in 1997, Schonfeld was recognized as one of the “brightest financial journalists under the age of 30” by the TJFR Business News Reporter. In 1999, he won the prize for best information technology submission at London’s Business Journalist of the Year Awards. In the lead up to the dot-com bust he moved to Business 2.0 and when that company went under a few years later, he took a coveted spot as co-editor at TechCrunch.

When Mr. Schonfeld began working at TechCrunch in 2007 it was still largely the personal blog of Mr. Arrington. In the five year’s since, the site has become the news outlet of record for the tech industry. Startups compete to break their company’s news on TechCrunch, both as a status symbol and because coverage there brings young companies so many new users. The site’s conference, Disrupt, is a sell-out affair, with execs from Google, Facebook and Twitter taking the stage to trade inside jokes with Mr. Arrington.

Mr. Schonfeld’s opportunity is vast. TechCrunch is bigger and more profitable than ever. Its recent acquisition by AOL means it has a fatter bankroll and a much larger audience network. Still, there's a big obstacle: Mr. Arrington seems intent on burning the fields behind his departing forces, even going so far as to write his own epitaph, evoking the spirit of Louis XIV: “I am TechCrunch and TechCrunch is me.” Given that he's the site's founding editor and most recognized writer, that has been true till now. It’s up to Mr. Schonfeld to rewrite that formula.

“I’ve been recruiting for the last three weeks straight,” Mr. Schonfeld told Betabeat. “To pretend that everything will go on as before is foolish. But the team will grow and, best of all, the top writers in the industry all want to work for us.”

For some, Mr. Schonfeld comes across as the consummate company man. “When Mike sold TechCrunch to AOL, a lot of the writers were very unhappy,” said one former staffer. AOL was about as far from the scrappy, irreverent brand TechCrunch had built as possible, and what had been an intimate business was now going to become part of a notoriously corporate behemoth. “Erick was the opposite of most people. He seemed to relish going to those AOL management meetings.”

No one Betabeat spoke to for this article doubted Mr. Schonfeld’s talent’s as a journalist. But several of the site's writers, past and present, worried that Mr. Schonfeld didn’t have the edge necessary to cultivate a new class of TechCrunch writers who would maintain the site's trademark swagger. “Mike can make you feel like a million bucks, and he can also tear you apart with a few words,” said a former staffer. “Erick was good at patching things up after Mike lashed out.”

Up until now, Mr. Schonfeld’s calm persona had been an asset at TechCrunch. It was a classic good cop, bad cop partnership, with Mr. Arrington lighting the fires and Mr. Schonfeld, along with CEO Heather Harde, making sure the trains ran on time.

But Mr. Arrington’s wrath was also the site’s most powerful tool. He used it to motivate his writers and to inculcate their work with a combative tone that became the site’s trademark.

Mr. Schonfeld threw a few punches of his own last week, slamming rival publication VentureBeat for writing a hackneyed attack on TechCrunch. VentureBeat quickly retracted their story and then apologized. Asked if he felt the need to get more aggressive, to put his own stamp on TechCrunch and to reclaim it from Mr. Arrington, Mr. Schonfeld demurred. “It’s not like I’m new here," he said. "There will be more continuity than difference and I don't see a need to sever the connection to Mike. I am not going to change the editorial approach, which was to be smarter and to be first.”

But Mr. Schonfeld did acknowledge that he needed, in some very big ways, to fill the void left by TechCrunch’s departed founder. “I have a lower profile than Mike, it’s a different style.I try not to draw attention to myself, because I prefer to let my stories speak for themselves. But yes, I realize I am the face of the company now. I don’t have to do things the way he did, but yes, I have to come out and be more, be in public."

Nonetheless, he added firmly, "I’m going to do it my way.”

The growth is paired with a push by Arianna Huffington to craft verticals around every type of audience. The site has recently launched HuffPost Gay Voices, HuffPost Weddings and HuffPost High School, among the more than twenty new categories it has brought online since being purchased by AOL.

International expansion is also ramping up. Ms. Huffington was in Brazil when the whole Crunchfund drama erupted and is planning more trips abroad in the coming weeks.

There was no indication in the press release of how much of this new traffic comes from AOL's considerable network. If the growth is simply the result of the new partnership, then  it's less interesting than new organic highs.

As Kara Swisher points out, HuffPo is also acquiring companies and continuing its hiring binge, taking full advantage of its big new bottom line.