The Startup Scene Has All Been Downhill Since Color Bombed

Well, the TechCrunch “Disrupt” conference in San Francisco has ended. And no one is talking about the drama surrounding TechCrunch founder Michael Arrington’s sort-of dismissal any more, because a legal agreement was clearly made with AOL, his former employer, and everyone’s obeying the NDA. Plus the vaguely promised self-immolation of the staff of TechCrunch didn’t materialize in the slightest. But wait, who won TechCrunch Disrupt???

Of 31 startups competing to be the “winner,” they came up with… this thing. “Shaker is a mixture of Second Life, The Sims, and Turntable.fm all mixed together using your Facebook data and connections. Your Facebook profile becomes a walking avatar, your pictures are placed on an virtual wall, you can choose what music is playing in the room for everyone to hear and you can even buy people drinks…. Disclosure: TechCrunch founder Michael Arrington is an investor in Prism Skylabs and is a pending investor in Shaker.”

What a lot of hot garbage! Facebook 2D virtual reality party chat? BUYING PEOPLE VIRTUAL DRINKS ON FACEBOOK??? Makes me miss the heady days of the end of quarter one, when Color got a bazillion dollars and nothing happened. Back when a bubble really meant something. Oh well. It’s been fun. Meanwhile, this quote from a 22-year-old at the TechCrunch conference, regarding whether there’s a bubble or not, IS SOLID GOLD: “I don’t think it’ll be anything like what I read about happening when I was 9 years old.”