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Like Macworld, but without the iPhone
"Do you have a genocide map?", the man asked. "And what's your plan for profit-sharing?"

Welcome to the Q&A segment of last nights New York Tech Meetup. While the rest of the world was looking towards Macworld, The Browser snuck off to the once-a-month gathering of geeks and tech business types in lower Manhattan hosted by Meetup.com founder Scott Heiferman. (We make the rounds so you don't have to....)

The high points of last night's show:

  • The question above, which was directed at Di-Ann Eisnor, CEO of Platial.com, a social mapping start-up backed by the likes of Kleiner, Perkins, Caufield and Byers as well as the Omidyar Network. Heiferman nicely summarized the business as the "people's atlas," a free service that allows anyone to make a map. Eisnor received a warm ovation, particularly as her answers to the above were more or less yes and yes. (See genocide map here.)
  • The resolve of Citizen Image CEO Feargall Kenny in the face of a cool reception to his start-up, a company that intends to build a commercial market for amateur photos. It seems the Mac-toting, Web 2.0 faithful of the Meetup crowd are still suspicious of those that put business model first.
  • The failure of the web connection during the breathless presentation of DayLife, the much-hyped next-generation automated news aggregator. Nevermind that the young, dressed-in-black presenter modestly described the site as the "single place for the world to converge and do news the way it should be done," most of the audience was left wondering "what the hell is it?" Most amusing was when someone in the audience mentioned that Michael Arrington, an investor in the project, had actually panned the tool. To this, a protective Heiferman, who works across the hall from DayLife, retorted: "Michael Arrington is an ass." (For those especially interested in incestuous sniping by Web-world mini-moguls, please to see Nick Denton's post about Daylife on Valleyway...and Jason Calacanis' comments thereto.)
All in all, a successful gathering of roughly 356 New York tech-types. Think First Tuesday with a healthier ratio of geeks to MBAs. We'll return next month and keep you fully posted....
Posted by Oliver Ryan 9:33 AM 0 Comments comment | Add a Comment

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