Silicon Alley Gets Its Close-Up

At last night's NYC Tech Meet-Up, the prevailing theme was that old Web 2.0 saw "You make the content, we make the revenue."

The event at Cooper Union drew an estimated 450 of New York's technorati-- most from startups, as a show of hands revealed. Ladies and gentlemen, this is your Silicon Alley.

The most serious pitches all focused on harnessing user-generated and external content, as well as the latest in social networking, to drive online ad sales. (Portfolio.com caught the event via Ground Report's great webcast and hilarious backchannel.)

There was Henry Blodget imploring potential "contributors" to write for his new NYC-focused tech website, Silicon Alley Insider ; a Gawker Media rep discussing how Gawker plans to capitalize on its rabid hoard of commenters; and the Iminlikewithyou.com dude, who spoke of leveraging external blogs to create custom dating portals.

The pitches sounded a common theme: the desperate land-grab for free content against which to run advertising. Open casting call: These people want your content, folks -- blogs, videos, whatever -- just don't expect to be paid for it.

Or, as Harry Shearer, doing his best Arianna Huffington impression, quipped the other night on Real Time with Bill Maher: "Daahhhling, write for me for free, won't you?"

With all the talk of "newsfeeds" it was clear there was a specter haunting the room -- that of Facebook and Twitter, whose micro-blogging features have become a mainline of mundane details about what friends are doing at any given moment. (Do I really need to know that so-and-so just "left the group 'I'm reading Natalie Haynes' new book and I don't care who knows it'"?)

The monthly meetings are kind of like speed dating for NYC tech startups, with each company getting under ten minutes to make its pitch.

When the audience discovered that the two fresh-faced young entrepreneurs from Bookswim, or "Netflix for books," failed to come prepared with a product demo, it booed them off the stage, drawing comparisons to Apollo Amateur Night and The Gong Show.

"We can give you a book," as one of the offered, just wasn't going to cut it.

Perhaps the funniest moment of the session occurred when Gawker's rep likened working for Nick Denton -- who was in the room -- to getting hit in the head with a surfboard, drawing guffaws from the crowd.

Emails to Denton seeking elaboration were not returned immediately.

Sam Gustin