For some people, Friday night is the night to go out.  Had a long week, rally with the troops, get a few drinks, and get out on the town, hoping to get a little ac-shun at the local brewpub, bridge-and-tunnel club, or after-hours lounge.

For others, it’s the perfect night to be at home or at a casual dinner party.  Had a long week, want to be with the loved ones (or at least liked ones), Netflix has season 3 of Six Feet Under at your door, and if you should happen to drift off on the couch, so be it.

But a few hundred tech nerds and venture capitalists (and visionaries, philanthropists, etc), Friday night is the time to suck up to some bloggers (or try these things out).  They call it “TechCrunch7″.

Myself being one of the gang, I came on down to (shudder) Sand Hill Road for the hallowed, fabled, much-ballyhooed, overly-wikied, not-very-podcasted, social networking event of the, well, week.  And there I drank, I laughed, I schmoozed, I watched, I listened, I chatted, and mostly, I internally guffawed. Party pictures are making their way to Flickr, so if you want to relive the moments, go check them out.

Some of the “a-listers” were there.  Guy Kawasaki, Robert Scoble, Steve Gillmore, our host, and.. well. uh. Hm. I guess 696 other people (which included no fewer than 20 women!).  Some of them I had met before, some were new to me.  Some new ones I met.  Others I just stalked lurked around and listened to.

Robert Scoble seems like a genuinely nice guy.  I think he’s a little caught up in his nerd-elebrity status right now, but hey, he’s allowed.  I maintain that I found his blog much more interesting about a year ago than I do today (okay, bad example on both counts), but now I feel genuinely bad for picking on him at all.  But, like most good-spirited people, he sure seems like he’s able to take it, and I respect that.

Guy Kawasaki sounded a heck of a lot more into himself than I would have predicted.  I like his blog (well, I like it when he’s writing lists and stuff, not when he’s talking about how cool he’d be if only more bloggers linked to him) and felt he’d be one of those people who gets excited by meeting new folks.  Maybe I was there at the wrong few moments, but that sure didn’t seem to be the case.  I also learned that due to a mild bone structure defect he never stops smilling.

Mike, mike, mike.  I had no first-hand experience with Michael Arrington before writing this post last week.  For had I known, I honestly don’t think I would have written it.  Don’t get me wrong, I don’t like when people pick on others just for ‘making it’ and still think it’s the wrong reason.  But Mike. Mike! What on Earth have you accomplished in your life that could possibly give you such unbelievable attitude??? 

Does someone have to be one of your sponsors for you to give them the time of day? 

You, my friend, should wake up every morning, and say a little of prayer of thanks that you are able to do what you do.  I have seen movies stars with more graciousness than you demonstrated, and they have audiences larger than 92167 (feedburner “statistic”). I saw no fewer than ten people just try to say hi to you, or praise you, or congratulate you, and you had this look of disgust in your face.  What the heck is wrong with you? Being nice doesn’t take extra effort!!! I think I understand why you get into all these fights now.  Here’s some advice.  It’s free.

Sooner or later all these 2.0 PR monkeys will stop kissing your ass to get a mere trifle of a blog post.  Hopefully before that happens you’ll have been nice to a few people.  Because when the fall comes, anyone you didn’t have the time of day for isn’t going to be around to help keep you up.

It was like watching a bunch of 12-year-olds go up to Barry Bonds for an autograph and instead of signing he literally spat on their faces.  Without all the spittle.

ps - I could be way off here, I could’ve seen you at a bad moment, or you might have just been nervous or something… and if that’s the case, well, let me know, and I sure hope that’s the case…

UPDATE: here are some more ‘party reviews’ from Alex Moskalyuk, Thomas Hawk (and his photos), Mario Sundar, Scott Beale, Joel Sacks, Kristopher Tate, Martin Wells, Robert Scoble, Om Malik, … oh.. hey!  where was Om???

UPDATE 2: I received the following note from Michael Arrington.  Now I don’t know what the heck I’m supposed to think!!! 

i wrote a long comment on your post but it didn’t show up. maybe i forgot to hit a submit button or maybe it’s in your spam queue. Either way, I’m really sorry if I came across as a barry bonds type. The whole night i just kept saying to myselff how lucky I was to be in the middle of so much positive energy and how thankful I was that people wanted to be at my party. No idea when you saw me acting like a jerk, but I apologize. That’s the last thing I wanted to happen!

Thanks for the note, Mike, I sincerely appreciate it, and hope to have the opportunity to meet you again in the future and fix any misimpression I may have.  I guess I’ll have to have my own 2.0 party, and hope you attend, right?

Hot topic of the day I found on two blogs I read.  Nick Carr talked about unread bloggers, and Sterling objected to the metaphor Nick made about peasants.  I also read this comment here (which I found quite silly). Got me thinking a bit about why I blog, so I thought I’d take a moment and pontificate.

First - my thought on why most people blog today.  Ego.  People are blogging to get themselves heard.  They want readers, and I think most crave readers.  In reality, most people out there tend to feel a bit lonelier than they want to (myself included), and I have a hunch blogging is a way to try to gain a little warmth in the cold darkness of Earth 2.0 (just like the first one, but with more Ajax).

Next - my thought on the quality of most blogs today. Crappy.  98% or more are poorly written rants or lovefests.  Unreadable dreck.  Bad grammar abounds (and then excuses about how we should ignore grammar).  Well, I can’t.  I can’t ignore it, and I can’t ignore empty rants on how the lines at McDonald’s should be shorter, or Apple should give away iPods to homeless people.  I just don’t care.  And by the way, I don’t profess to be any better than anyone else at this.

The question - so why do I blog? It’s fun.  Seriously.  I love writing.  Maybe I can’t hack it professionally, but I don’t care.  Furthermore, I can’t stand the hype train (about anything by the way, not just Web 2.0).  I chose 2.0 as my topic because I felt it was the one thing I could blog about that nobody else was at present.  Or at least not with the tone I felt was worth taking. 

So - Do I care about readership numbers?  I enjoy them, but don’t focus on them.  I like the compliments I receive (and don’t mind the flames either), and I like to hear that others like what I write.  I enjoy the fact that I appear to be causing intelligent discussion on the topic.  That is truly meaningful to me. 

To summarize: I’m an egotistical bastard who, like everyone else, writes a crappy blog but usually finds it fun to do and enjoys the occasional link from the outside world.

But that’s me.

In today’s piece we shall compare and contrast high school, generally a time which represents a few miserable years of ostracism and humiliation, with Web 2.0, which represents a few miserable years of pretty much the same thing. Only Web 2.0 has better GUI, more geeks, less wedgies, and the only malls to hang out in are virtual ones.