Category: Tech news

Today at the event at their headquarters in Palo Alto, Facebook unveiled a completely revamped Groups feature. With it, you can add people from your social graph to a new area of Facebook where you can more easily communicate with them. Below, find an initial walk through of some interesting things. (The feature is available to some today, and will be fully rolling out over the next few weeks, Facebook says.)

Here’s the Create Group pop-up:

You can set a group to “Open” “Closed” or “Secret” (the default is Closed):

As you might expect, can easily add someone to a group just by starting to type their name:

You can also change the icon of a group:

Each group can have an email address:

You can also upload your own Group Profile Picture:

Each Group has a Wall that any member can post on:

There’s a new feature which allows you to create a Doc — which anyone in the group can edit:

Here’s what editing a Doc looks like:

Here’s what Groups chat looks like:

Facebook just announced a complete overhaul of their “Groups” feature, with former Hot Potato CEO to Justin Shaffer heading up the project. This is interesting as Facebook’s Hot Potato acquisition in August was not so long ago.

And this is a relatively fast turnaround for Shaffer as presumably the “Groups stuff” was already in the works before he became product manager or even joined the company.

Today during their event, Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg talked about “the biggest problem in social networking“. What he means by this is social sharing. You need to be able to map out all of the real world groups that you have in the social graph. If Facebook can do this, Zuckerberg says people will be able to do all the sharing they want to do. And as we hinted earlier, Zuckerberg believes they have done this with the complete overhaul of Facebook Groups.

“The naive solution is to do something like Friend Lists,” Zuckerberg says. ”Almost no one wants to make lists,” he continues. He’s noted this before. “The most we’ve ever gotten is 5 percent of people to make a list. It’s pretty brutal to have to do this every single time.” He then went into the algorithmic solutions. These are helpful, Zuckerberg says, but it’s also really easy to get these wrong, he notes. There needs to be a social solution, Zuckerberg says.

Zuckberberg says that the idea for this new Groups social solution comes directly from what they’ve done with Photos on Facebook. He says that 95 percent of users on Facebook in tagged in a photo — but most of that is the result of a friend tagging them. This is the same principle that will guide the new Groups.

Zuckerberg invited Justin Shaffer, the founder of Hot Potato (which Facebook recently acquired), on stage to talk a bit more about the new Groups (he’s the product manager on it). Shaffer notes that each Group is controlled by all its members. There’s group chat, group doc editing, and other apps that can be used within these groups. Groups will also be a part of the Graph API, Shaffer notes.

Groups have an icon, and a logo.”It’s mean to resemble a human space,” head of product Chris Cox added.

Groups aren’t replacing Friend Lists, Zuckerberg says. He doesn’t see the value in deleting what people have already worked on — but going forward, Groups is going to be the way this social element is set up.

This is a big part of creating what Zuckerberg calls “a pristine graph.”

Update: Read more in Zuckerberg’s post on the matter.

Today, at Facebook’s product announcement, founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced a new dashboard for users that will allow Facebook members to see how many sites and applications they’ve allowed to access their personal data through the network and Facebook Connect.

It’s actually a brilliant idea. With more than 1 million sites using Facebook connect and hundreds of thousands of Facebook apps, it can be easy to lose track of what personal information apps have access to.

The dashboard, which will be available in your Privacy Settings, shows three major pieces of information. First, the dashbaord shows the permissions the app has access to within your social graph. Second, the dashboard will let you manage the permissions that apps have over time, so you can restrict apps from being able to access certain parts of your information or restrict actions (i.e. posting on your wall). Lastly, the dashboard will show you a detailed access log of what API calls each app is using.

For example, you could restrict an App from being able to post information on your wall. Or you could remove an application completely from within the dashboard. With the heightened concern of privacy on the social network, a dashboard that empowers users to have control over their personal information accessed by Facebook apps will no doubt be a popular feature.

Whoah. Until now there hasn’t been a way to download info off of Facebook, but at today’s Facebook event in Palo Alto, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced a feature that allows users to port their data from Facebook in a .zip file, “People own and have control over all info they put into Facebook and “Download Your Information” enables people to take stuff with them,” says Zuckerberg.

“Download Your Information” is groundbreaking as the premise behind the Diaspora Project is that it is the “open” portable Facebook. As of today it seems like Facebook is the “open” portable Facebook, as the company now feels secure enough to let users leave with info intact.

Facebook Product Manager David Recordon explains that you can access the “Download Your Information” feature from your account settings, hit the download button (see above) and Facebook will allow you to download everything off your profile, including your friends list, events, all of your messages, wall posts and all of your photos into a zip file.

Downloading your profile in this way does not delete it from the site, but simply provides you with a copy. Users wishing to erase their data entirely will have to go through the process of deleting their entire Facebook profile, separately from “Download Your Information.”

Recordon emphasizes that the product will be simple enough for laymen to use, a one click process.

More importantly, when asked during the Q&A whether a Facebook user could ostensibly download their information and then reupload it to a site other than Facebook, Zuckerberg answered:

“At a high level we’ve built two different things, Facebook Connect — which is our real effort to bring our sites to other sites, and “Download Your Information” where you can download your information and upload it to another site. Stuff that you put into the site, you should be able to take out.”

“Download Your Information” should be rolling out to all users beginning today.

I’m at Facebook headquarters in Palo Alto, where the social network has invited dozens of press to witness the launch of… something. We’ve learned about at least some of Facebook’s announcements, which may include a redesign (Update: Not Yet.) that makes the site’s UI more consistent with Facebook’s Place pages. But given the number of people in attendance (including members of advocacy organizations like the EFF), we’re expecting much more.

Facebook is livestreaming the event, which you can see above. I’ll also be live blogging my notes.

The setup for today’s event is unusual. There are a half-dozen monitors set around Facebook’s large conference room (which doubles as a cafeteria). And Facebook isn’t allowing anyone to take video footage, which I’m hearing is a first.

10:40AM: Zuckerberg has just taken the stage. “I promise we’re not talking today about what you think we’re talking about”. You may have heard we’ve been in lockdown mode. We had a really intense, 60 day period where people finished all of these things. We had a really productive summer.

Last week you may have seen photos. Got hi-res photos. We’ve also improved Chat. Believe third biggest behind MSN and QQ in China, but only had a few people working on it. So we had a big push where we improved stability, cut back complaints by 60%.

On platform side. Done a lot of changes to groups – oops, games (he may have just let something slip…). App developers have seen a surge in growth.

What we’re actually talking about today: Giving you more control. We want to build a social platform. It’s hard to get this dynamic right, but what’s more challenging is building a platform so you have a set of connections and can bring those connections across all of the applications you want to use in a seamless way.

If you want to play games, then you only want to do that with people who play games. On a running site, only want to share with people who do jogging with you. It’s hard to do a platform that lets you connect across these different things. If we can nail this, then we can enable kind of innovation you see on best platforms.

Over last few years, we’ve been focused on Connect. There are over 1,000,000 sites with Connect.

A lot of times people want a copy with all of their information. Right now there hasn’t been a way to download all the information you’ve put on Facebook (this could be really big — sounds like Data Portability). Have built ‘Download Your Information’. Built on top of your graph API. Allows you download a copy of you information.

Launching a dashboard that shows you all the apps you use, and shows you the last time that app accessed your information. These are two changes that we think are important for giving people control of their information.

Download Your Information

• See Our Full Post On The Download Feature Here

Facebook’s David Recordon has taken the stage. Today FB is starting to roll out ‘Download Your Information’. You go to FB, get to the page from your account settings. Hit the download button and FB will zip up all of your messages, notes, photos, etc. and send you an Email when it’s ready for you to download. You should understand that this is all of your information. Profile info, friend list, wall archive, your photos and videos, your notes, events and messages. Will have a few security hurdles to keep safe.

This is built to be easy for regular people to use. Click it and it will pop open your web browser.

New Application Privacy Dashboard

• See our full post on the Application Dashboard here

Dashboard – combines two previously separate screen for managing app privacy settings. You have full control over platform privacy settings as well as a list of apps you’ve used.

Can manage permissions that an app has over time. You can revoke an app’s ability to post to your wall after initially granting it permission. More granular control.

Also a detailed access log that shows all the API calls apps have been making.

“The Biggest Problem”
Zuckerberg has taken the stage again. Says internally they talk about this as the biggest problem in social networking. The basic issue: one of the great things FB has enabled is ability to stay connected with all of their friends. In a lot of contexts helpful to update everyone at once. But in reality, people’s social worlds is broken up into different groups of people — people you grew up with, family, etc. (this sounds a lot like what Google is supposedly working on with Google Me).

Reality is, sending something to ‘Just Friends’ isn’t actually very private. Sometimes you want to just share with a small group of people. Sometimes it’s not just a privacy thing — you just don’t want to send an update to people who might not care about your morning jog. Applicable to other applications in the ecosystem too (Twitter, anyone?).

How do you map out these subgroups? Naive solution is to do something where you have to individually invite people on a per-post basis (like for events). Second naive solution is friend lists. Most we’ve gotten is 5% of people to make a list. Nobody wants to make lists.

Next possible solution: Algorithmic solution. We have a lot of tech around this already — have ‘coefficient’ that has an index for each relationship. But there are limits to algorithmic solutions too. Easy to get it wrong and have devastating effects. Just because you talk to someone a few times doesn’t mean you’re close. Also can be creepy when it’s right: don’t want a list showing that these are the people you’re most interested in. Costs to getting this wrong can be catastrophic. We never show an interface where we show the people we think are closest right at the top.

Social solution. This is what Facebook does right. They gotten people to tag friends in photos instead of having to rely on face recognition. Just need a good UI and get people to do it. If this was UI or algorithm problem someone else would have solved it. But it’s a social problem and that’s why we solved it.

Social Solution:
Want to build best set of tools for people to communicate that’s easy for friends to set up. Have built a whole suite of products around this.

5-10% of people will make groups and invite friends, and they’ll invite all their friends, and then lots of people will be in groups.

Groups:

• See our full post on the new groups feature here
• And a quick first look here

A shared space with group chat and email lists.

Product Manager for groups Justin Shaffer (who just joined from Hot Potato) has taken the stage. He’s PM for Groups. Groups are built around how we’re living our lives today.

You  can create groups for family, friends, sports teams. Could post a message to family. Or send an email to people you’re cycling with which works like mailing list. Or group chat if you need a faster response.

Click on a group (which appears in left sidebar) and you’ll see a feed for that group — looks like a News Feed for your group. Also has group chat.

Also releasing Graph API for groups.

VP Product Chris Cox has taken the stage.

Social Design

We feel like there’s a brand new field getting started. First designers for web were print designers. Now you can take classes in human/computer interaction. And we think this is the next step. We’re calling this social design.

For the Questions product: instead of synthesizing, automating, we found a way to help people connect with others who wanted to share their knowledge. Translations: instead of going with algorithms, we found people who wanted to help translate.

Q&A:

Q: Are groups replacing friend lists?

A: No. 5% of people have taken time to make them, so we’ll keep them. But going forward Groups will be by far the biggest way.

A: If you invite someone to a group, everyone else in the group will see who invited whom, so social norms will help govern how this works.

We’re keeping old Groups, but you can’t make them any more.

Even if only 5-10% of people make groups, and each group has 10 people… I think we’ll get 80% coverage at least.

Three privacy settings: Open, closed, and secret.

You’ll be able to quickly invite a group to an event.

The mysterious Facebook event is going to start in a few minutes. Part of this would seem to be a redesign of the site itself, with all major aspects getting a new coat of paint. But a last-minute tip coming in suggests that Facebook will also be altering the social graph, making organization easier.

Specifically, this tweet by a Facebook designer, and a Facebook Places check-in by Mike Schroepfer seems to confirm this. The tweet reads: “We’ll be announcing a new organizing principle for the social graph in just a few minutes.” While the check-in reads: “Sugar delivery to tribes team — at Facebook HQ.”

Could it be that this new organizing principle is called “Tribes”?

Says our tipster:

This could solve the problem of work vs. friends vs family vs. those-old-friends-from-high-school-you\’d-like-to-be-connected-to-but-don\’t-care-about-their-farm

Expect privacy and the feed to be be tunable to these parameters.

We should know more shortly. Stay tuned.

Update: Well, it’s not called “Tribes” (that may be a codename), but here’s the new Groups: Facebook Overhauls Groups, A Social Solution To Create “A Pristine Graph”

Product: Portege R705-P25

Manufacturer: Toshiba

Wired Rating: 4

What on earth is Toshiba thinking with this rendition of the Portege series, the R705-P25?

Incredibly flimsy construction. An atrocious, nearly unusable keyboard. No graphics processor. Average performance.

For this, Toshiba wants $890, a price tag which, for this feature set, is downright silly.

The R705’s 2.27-GHz Core i3 and 500-GB hard drive are the only specs of note that warm the heart on this machine. Everything else is either mundane or simply bad. Let’s start, though, with the build quality. Sure, Toshiba has done a great job at keeping the weight down (3.1 pounds) and the machine slim — just an inch thick. These are, after all, the hallmarks of the Portege line. For a 13.3-inch laptop (screen resolution is 1366 x 768) with an optical drive, those are impressive feats, but sadly the tradeoffs just aren’t worth it.

In an effort to keep weight and thickness down, Toshiba has trimmed design to the bone, giving the R705 a largely plastic chassis (with modest bits of magnesium alloy) that flexes liberally under strain — not good for a laptop designed for travel. Considerably worse, though, is the keyboard. The island-style chiclet keys are too small and have too much distance between them, and their rubbery action is more reminiscent of dialing a telephone than pleasantly touch-typing on a real keyboard.

Performance on the machine, while acceptable, is uninspired. Its benchmark scores are fine for a latest-generation Core i3-based computer, but naturally graphics (integrated here) are a no-show. Battery life of 3.5 hours is also about average for a 13-inch machine, and far from the promised 8.5 hours.

The net results of Toshiba’s efforts are a computer designed for busy travelers but which neither looks particularly good nor works particularly well in day-to-day use because of its keyboard issues. Repackage it as a $500 executive netbook, and maybe we have a deal.

WIRED Slim and extremely lightweight. USB-eSATA combo port is handy. Touchpad responds well.

TIRED Keyboard is tragically designed. Chassis feels cheap and looks unappealing. Overpriced for its feature set, despite slim profile.

Product: PRS-350 E-Reader

Manufacturer: Sony

Wired Rating: 6

Sony hasn’t exactly upstaged anyone in e-reader theater. But, the company’s pocket-sized PRS-350 is looking to change that. The impetus was clear: Make an attractive, travel-sized, idiot-simple e-reader for the masses.

Unfortunately, though the PRS-350 does many things right, there’s still a lot of room to kvetch.

Sony clearly nailed the hardware on the PRS-350. As the company’s flagship pocket reader, it’s small and feather-light at 5.5 ounces, while also supporting a spanking new 800 x 600 e-ink Pearl display. Nestled into the frame is a functional (yet cheap-feeling) stylus, and resting below the five-inch screen is a set of functional (yet cheap-feeling) soft keys. An aluminum and plastic chassis and an infrared-driven touchscreen add a touch of class, and at a little over four inches wide, the device sat comfortably in our hands during marathon reading sessions.

A lot of the PRS-350’s hardware high-points come with counterpoints. Though reading text on the screen is a delight thanks to 16 adjustable contrast levels, getting titles onto the device’s 2 GB of memory via a mini-USB cable and clunky proprietary software is old hat. And while it sports meat-and-potatoes ePUB, PDF, and TXT support, the Sony Reader Store pales in comparison to its competitors. As if that weren’t bad enough, the PRS-350’s lack of 3G or even Wi-Fi connectivity underscores all these issues.

Despite our issues with the PRS-350 as an all-around gadget, we can’t deny it’s a solid e-reader. Not only does it feel comfortable when you’re actively poking through the menus — or better yet, double-tapping words to pull up the integrated dictionary — but it also completely disappears into the background while you’re reading. Turning pages with mere finger whisks became second nature, and transitions were smooth thanks to a capable processor. Complaints aside, this is essentially what one wants in an e-reader, so we can’t fault Sony too much for its utilitarian delivery.

Of course, there’s the two-ton e-reading elephant in the room: How does the PRS-350 stack up against competitors like the Kindle and Nook? When it comes to important features like connectivity and software, Sony is clearly outmatched. But if you’re looking for an aesthetically pleasing bare-bones reader you can certainly do worse.

WIRED Compact design is both eye-catching and travel-friendly. Touchscreen makes highlighting passages and notation a breeze. Sixteen contrast levels makes outdoor reading a cinch. Screen stays smudge-free even after numerous swipes. Battery only needs a quick bi-weekly charge.

TIRED Missing Wi-Fi and 3G makes it $50 too expensive. Sony’s online store leaves a lot to be desired. Comes in robotic silver or cartoonish pink. No headphone jack means no audio books. Cheap-feeling buttons and stylus are unforgivable.

Product: GX660

Manufacturer: MSI

Wired Rating: 5

The only explanation I can guess at for why the MSI GX660 looks the way it does is that someone made a bet with an MSI engineer, challenging him to design the most horrendously ugly computer possible.

This engineer has succeeded admirably. Not since the original Dell Inspiron XPS has a computer this fugly been unleashed upon America.

It is a throwback to an era that has never actually existed except in the minds of ’70s sci-fi enthusiasts, with harsh angles, weird textures, and a combination of automotive inspirations and goofy octagonal designs attempting to live together.

It’s like someone saw a Battlestar Galactica highlight reel and just didn’t get it. Even the Windows desktop wallpaper is hideous.

And MSI, known for its dirt-cheap yet capable machines, wants to convince you to fork over $1,750 for this monstrosity.

Pushing past the design aesthetic, here’s what MSI is giving you for your investment: a high-res, 1920 x 1080-pixel, 15.6-inch LCD; a 1.73-GHz Core i7 Q740 CPU; two 320-GB hard drives in a RAID 0 configuration; 6 GB of RAM; and an ATI Radeon HD 5870 graphics card. Hey, looks pretty good.

Designed as a gaming laptop (complete with arrows on the WASD keys), the GX660 is powerful, but hardly a record-setter. Benchmarks were on target for a high-end machine, but we’ve gotten better numbers on both general apps and games out of a ThinkPad.

Props to MSI for at least putting a real battery in the system. With 1 hour, 51 minutes of battery life, the MSI is genuinely portable in ways that few gaming rigs are. Its mere 7.6-pound weight is positively gossamer for this category, too.

We also liked the MSI’s touch-sensitive control panel along the top of the base. These seem to be all the rage, but most barely work. The MSI’s icons are actually easy to comprehend, and they perform as expected.

We were less thrilled with the much-touted Dynaudio speaker setup, which puts very visible, oversized speakers on both corners of the base. They’re nothing to write home about. In fact, it would have been nice if they’d been even louder, so as to drown out the jet-engine–class fan that’s installed to cool the dang thing.

WIRED Quite affordable for a gaming notebook — it’s just too bad the performance isn’t top-notch, too. Dual USB 3.0 ports. Light and long-lived, considering the category.

TIRED So ugly you’ll keep it in a paper bag. Weak keyboard, with boneheaded numeric keypad layout.

Translating user data into useful information is now the cornerstone of LinkedIn’s product roadmap. For example, the company recently updated company profiles with additional data visualizations such as the most popular schools attended by employees, the segmentation of an employee base by skillset and more. Today, LinkedIn is launching a new data-focused feature, called LinkedIn Career Explorer, that provides college graduates with insights from other LinkedIn members to help them visualize a career path.

Career Explorer leverages data from the professional social network’s 80 million members to help students visualize and map successful career paths in a variety of industries. The product also shows college students job opportunities and salary information, the type of education and experience required, and will indentify people who can help them find these jobs.

So students can specify a type of job that they want to pursue or the company they want to work for and LinkedIn will show professionals who have succeeded in similar endeavors. Students can also access the best contact within their networks for certain fields or companies, and LinkedIn will recommend job openings.

The new feature will lead students to the Company Profiles (LinkedIn now has over 1 million profiles on the network), and encourage users to “follow” those companies to receive updates, including job postings, new hires and more.

Career Explorer is currently being rolled out to students at 60 universities in the U.S. and will eventually expanded to users from other educational institutions. The feature seems fitting for the platform and will no doubt provide a unique way for college students to see the career paths of those who have reached success in particular industries. Also, Career Explorer is a way to attract college students (and perhaps even ambitious high school students) as members of the community and perhaps gain loyalty among this age group.

One challenge the network faces is making the platform a destination for users to visit at least every day (in an effort to match the frequency at which users visit Facebook or Twitter). In order to accomplish this, LinkedIn is trying to make its platform more useful to its members. And there seems to be two ways LinkedIn is adding additional functionality to its platform: through social features and data visualizations. As we’ve written in the past, providing ways to mash-up and use 80 million members’ data is helping to democratize the massive amount of career data on the network.

Now that the craziness of the week is over, we can sit back and reflect on how great TechCrunch Disrupt was once again. And yes, even in the post-AOL acquisition world, we’ll keep on holding them — though sadly, not until next year at a place and time to be determined. But if you can’t wait that long, we’re happy to announce something that might interest you.

As you probably know, LeWeb is the premiere large technology conference in Europe. Last year, the Paris-based event attracted some 2,500 participants from 50 countries. It has gotten bigger each year since it began in 2004, and TechCrunch has happily been a partner since 2007. And this year we’re kicking it up a notch. LeWeb ’10 will feature a startup competition that will be a bit like a mini TechCrunch Disrupt.

Instead of the 25 startups launching onstage that we have at our Disrupt conferences, LeWeb will feature 16 startups which will pitch in the startup room on December 8, the first day of the conference. From those 16, a group of judges will pick the best 3 — and those companies will get to present the next day, December 9, on the LeWeb main stage.

LeWeb has done a startup competition in previous years, but it has always been relegated to this startup room, which has about 400 seats. This year, the three companies picked will now enter the big room, where they’ll present in front of nearly 1,500 people. And unlike previous years, the winners won’t be announced beforehand, so each company will present to win.

August Capital partner David Hornik will host the startup stage this year. And yes, we’ll be there as well — which always makes for interesting times.

Startups interested in applying to be one of the lucky 16 chosen to present should visit this page to sign up. Registration is free and selected startups will get two complimentary presenter tickets as well as a free DemoPod (presentation booth). Registration ends October 15.

Meanwhile, any TechCrunch readers interested in attending LeWeb this year can use the code TC2010 to get a 200 Euro discount. You can register here.

Again, LeWeb will be held December 8 and 9 this year in Paris. We hope to see you there.

[photo: flickr/robert scoble and Teymur Madjderey]

Perhaps you’ve heard that Microsoft is about to re-enter the smartphone fray with their new Windows Phone 7 phones in a few weeks. While Microsoft’s unique mobile OS makes it an interesting entry into the space, there is no shortage of thought that they may already be too late to a market dominated recently by Google, Apple, and RIM. And since Microsoft’s strategy for the new phones seems to be go after Android head-on, you have to wonder how on Earth they’re going to get away with continuing to charge a licensing fee for their software when Android is free? But Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer sees things a bit differently.

“It’s not like Android’s free,” Ballmer told WSJ in an interview this weekend about Windows Phone 7. “Android has a patent fee,” he said. “You do have to license patents,” he continued.

So Ballmer’s stance is that while Google may not charge a licensing fee for Android, there is a hidden free — one compliments of none other than Microsoft.

Ballmer noted that HTC recently signed an agreement with his company to grant them rights to patents for things they wish to do with Android. A few days ago, Microsoft sued Motorola, clearly attempting to get them to sign a similar deal.

It’s interesting that Microsoft has yet to sue Google for Android, and instead they are focusing on the OEM partners. It’s also interesting that HTC is also making Windows Phone 7 phones right out of the gate, while Motorola has said they won’t be working with Microsoft on phones until next year at the earliest. Instead, they’re focusing on Android. So this lawsuit is purely coincidental, I’m sure.

In other words, this is all political nonsense and a pathetic play by Microsoft.

The software giant hasn’t been successful in mobile phones, so they’re attempting to ride on Google’s coattails with some software patents. Those patents may very well be legit — it’s not exactly clear what they are — but this is a great example of why software patents in general seem to be pretty much a load of crap.

Where has Microsoft been the past couple of years with these suits? I’ll tell you where: waiting to spring this on OEMs when they had their own device out there that they need to gain traction against Android. Microsoft is giving phone makers a choice: pay us to use our software, or pay us to use Google’s software. Or pay your lawyers to fight us in court. (Motorola is apparently choosing the latter — no doubt at Google’s urging.)

When WSJ suggested to Ballmer that the licensing fees aren’t even that big of a financial opportunity for Microsoft, he seemed to get defensive. “It’s one of the opportunities. One,” he said. Okay, then why not just make your software free as well and fight Google on the grounds of better execution, rather than with litigation?

[photo: flickr/aanjhan]

Just when the tech community wet its rap pallette with MC Hammer (backed by the notorious dance moves of TechCrunch editor Erick Schonfeld), Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh follows up with a ditty of his own (featuring the talents of Laura Lombardi). Hsieh has been on a nation-wide bus tour promoting new book, ‘Delivering Happiness: A Path to Profits, Passion, and Purpose,’ with a team of over ten happiness agents (read our review of the book here).

Along with his Chief Happiness Officer Jenn Lim, Hsieh, who sold Zappos to Amazon for roughly $1.2 billion last year, organized the bus tour as a quirky alternative to the standard book tour. With stops in Boulder, Chicago, Boston, New York and more, the tour lasts for three months, visits over 20 cities and ends in November in Seattle.

There were two surreal moments for me at Disrupt last week. The first was during the SV Angels Party when Hammer was dancing. It wasn’t just because MC-Freaking-Hammer was doing to Hammer dance in a tux and nerd glasses in front of me. It was because the CEO and founder of the media company I work for were on stage looking awkward and white, but dancing none the less. It was because I’ve hung out with Hammer at parties and conferences like the Lobby– two unlikely people sucked in to the Web 2.0 vortex. It was because I ran into the founders of Digg, separately and in different rooms at the party. They were like brothers the first time I met them, and now– no matter what they politely say on stage– they were estranged, with one ousted and the other trying to turn the once-hot company that helped start the Web 2.0 wave around. It was a feeling that something was ending.

The feeling was echoed the next day watching Kevin Rose and Michael Arrington on stage. For my corner of the Web 2.0 world these were two of the most seminal figures. I put Rose on the cover of BusinessWeek at the beginning of the wave, an article that got me a book deal that ensured I’d spend the next year surrounded by people like Max Levchin, Peter Thiel, Mark Zuckerberg and others. And Arrington was the only other reporter I knew back then who wasn’t a total cynic about Web 2.0 companies’ chances. Eventually I’d find we were so like-minded that I wanted to work with Mike– finally leaving my old-media roots behind. One word has summed both of these guys for a while now: Tired.

The first wave of Web companies never got here, most grew so fast they went public or raised an unsustainable amount of money, hiring an unsustainable amount of employees and when the spigot of free capital was gone they had no choice but to implode. But that didn’t happen in Web 2.0– precisely because it had happened so recently in the late 1990s. People like Kevin and Mike were cautious. They ran their businesses at break even, raised money cautiously, and outsourced business processes– like ad sales and even some underlying technology– that weren’t core to the business. For all the talk about a second Web bubble, most of the companies on covers of magazines were pretty conservatively run. As a result they had plenty of money in the bank when the recession hit. Sure there were employees cut here or there, but most of that was to get rid of people who were underperforming or make a show of belt tightening for investors.

But it was still a wave, an unsustainable ride of hope, big dreams, a feeling of invincibility that had to crash– and for me, mostly ended last week when TechCrunch was sold. But the recession didn’t crash this one– exhaustion did. Building media companies– which is what most Web 2.0 businesses are– is a grind. You can’t build a huge business with less than 20 million monthly uniques and getting there is a brutal day-in, day-out grind of producing great work, making the site as intuitive as possible and continually finding reasons to remind people you are worth 5 minutes of their day everyday. This is the part of the story we don’t tell enough on TechCrunch. We make startups sound easier and more glamorous than they are. Everyone in the game knows that–but we probably do a disservice to people who think all they need is a Super Angel and in two years they’ll get a deal from Google.

On stage Mike asked Kevin what the most amount of money he’d walked away from was and he said $80 million. Mike asked if Kevin regretted not taking it, and he didn’t really answer the question. It was clear from his body language that at least part of him did. In that moment, they looked like two men both slightly jealous of each other– one because the other said yes and one because the other said no.

In any Silicon Valley wave there are the clear huge winners– Facebook and likely Twitter and Zynga. There are a few clear huge businesses, and I’d argue LinkedIn is in that category. And loads of companies that are clever-but-doomed. And then there are a bunch where we just don’t know. They are clearly worth something, in the case of Slide or TechCrunch and, hopefully, Digg they’re worth enough that the founders who worked so hard for so long make a life-changing amount of money. But in some ways, when these founders finally succumb to the grind, it’s almost sadder for those of us who were along on the journey– whether investors, employees, friends or just users of their sites.

I remember the day when the Industry Standard– the magazine that chronicled the 1990s bubble and held weekly rooftop parties– went out of business. I covered the news for the tiny weekly business journal I wrote for back then, and drove up to San Francisco as employees were forlornly cleaning out their offices– all of them. It reminded me of the last day at college, when everyone takes every scrap of their life out of a dormroom never to return. I did an interview with the Editor that made me feel like an ambulance chaser. His dream was in shambles all around him and his staff of hundreds were out of jobs. Media people are impossible at faking how they feel. I couldn’t do it when TechCrunch announced it was selling, and this guy couldn’t do it now. One of his star writers told me it was like that scene in Goodfellas where the crew feels on top of the world like they own a town– and then they get sloppy and everything goes to hell.

Back at the Hammer party, it was my Goodfellas moment, albeit a far less dramatic one. I didn’t have an office to pack up and we all still have jobs, but I couldn’t help feeling like it was all over. Not TechCrunch or Digg or Facebook or the other companies we associate with the wave, but the wave itself. It has crashed on a beach of exhaustion, and people who said they’d never sell for less than $1 billion doing just that. More of it is coming.

TechCrunch has been unlike any other media organization for which I’ve worked– whether newsweekly, magazine, television, or big media portal. We could all leave in three years and start another one but it won’t be the same, Web companies are organic things shaped by a million little small decisions and dozens of people who pass through that companies life every day. There’s a magic that catches or doesn’t. Business professors and journalists can later dissect what companies did right, but frequently at the time pivotal decisions were a fluke.

There’s an endless debate about the good and bad of selling a company that’s still growing in the Valley right now. There’s the obvious macro-economic answer: Everyone selling too early is bad, because no new tech giants are created. There’s the obvious micro-answer: A few million dollars is life changing for most people, and those entrepreneurs deserve to make a life-changing amount of money. In a lot of ways, Disrupt was in the middle of that debate all week. The same Michael Arrington who called out investors who just fund “dipshit $40 million companies” sold his company for a reportedly similar figure the next day. Like most people, I find both arguments compelling. But the important thing to know is this: You can do it again, but you will never create the same company twice.

At that Hammer party I ran into a friend who has built several successful companies– and always refused to sell at their headiest point. He asked me what I thought of the AOL deal. I asked what he thought. He laughed and said, “You’re talking to someone who has managed to evade seven successful exits, don’t ask me.” Yeah. That sums up the end of the Web 2.0 era angst.