And the Battle of the Sexes is on! In one corner, @michaellamb states the obvious: that the woman is getting the press because she's easy on the eyes, not because she's competent. @kimbjo wades in and shows her great vocabulary with this zinger: "And enough woman bashing you misogynist misanthrope." Oh, and for the less literate, she has just accused him of not JUST hating women, but hating ALL humankind! @leahculver joins in that said lady is edu-muh-cated, unlike most Valley CEOs????? (That's a story all by itself, Owen!) Oh, and she can't resist calling him a "jealous sexist asshole." @kimbjo also can't resist comparing the WidgetLab guys to a "disgrunted ex boyfriend," a high school one no less. (You don't have fond high school memories, then?) @skycut then confuses the issue by calling Gina a GUY (perhaps this is a creative attempt at staking out neutral territory). @michaellamb, undaunted by this very serious drubbing from the chicks, comes back and basically says, it isn't that she's a WOMAN, dumbasses; it's that she SCREWED UP. And @emnem follows up with the most beautiful, detailed heartfelt rant against feminism I have ever had the pleasure of reading. To which @raincoaster rejoins that she doesn't fuck her boss and none of her friends do either, and that @emnem must patronize two-bit whores. And @michaellamb makes one last plea: it's what she did, is anybody listening?

Terrific wank; good job everybody, and it's a very sad day when I have to satirize the Valleywag commenters. Please don't make me do this again. Thanks.

• Letter 1, August 2 From WidgetLaboratory cofounder Spencer Forman to Ning CEO Gina Bianchini: Widgetlaboratory wants to know changes coming to Ning before they happen and to not be blamed when things go wrong.
• Letter 2, August 2 From Bianchini to Forman: Ning and Bianchini want to talk on the phone clear up any "conspiratorial" thinking. "We just want you to succeed in a way that scales. Time and time again it feels like you are trying to threaten us into something that is never exactly clear." Let's work together if we can, if we can't let's move on.
• Letter 3, August 2 From Forman to Bianchini: We have 1,700 networks and millions of users, when we fail you fail. "Considering the fact that we are the only Network that provides any real products to your customers on the Ning "platform," do you really think we are being unreasonable to believe that Ning might keep us notified before you decide to pull the plug on using Dojo [a software toolkit used by JavaScript developers] in the header of every page?"
• Letter 4, August 3 Bianchini to Forman: I'm happy to talk on the phone, but the sniping has to stop.
• Letter 5, August 3 Forman to Bianchini: "Let's get to work."
• Letter 6, August 3 Bianchini to Forman: BTW, you were right we should have let you know about Dojo. Our bad.
• LetterLetter 7, August 7 Bianchini to Forman: Good talking on the phone. No we can't always alert you to when we're about to pull one of your widgets. No you can't ask your users their username, passwords or pins.
• Letter 8, August 7 Forman to Bianchini: No, please call us before you pull our widgets. Even at 3 in the morning. We have a million users! We're not phishers, please let us ask our users for passwords.
• Letter 9, August 7 Bianchini to Forman: Argh, I can't handle this anymore, I'm delegating.
• Letter 10, August 22 Ning general counsel Robert Ghoorah to Forman: You've been removed for TOS violations.
• Letter 11, August 22 Forman to Ghoorah: Our lawyers say: WTF? You can't do this.
• Letter 12, August 22 Ghoorah to Forman: You were booted. "Use of Ning is a privilege not a right. We do not intend to debate our decision."
• Letter 13, August 22 Forman to Ghoorah: Please, therefore, provide "any" specific details as to the "unduly degrading" of your network.
• Letter 14, August 22 Ghoorah to Forman: Your code breaks all the time. We called you last night about it. You were mean and unhelpful.
• Letter 15, August 22 Forman to Ghoorah: It took two minutes to fix the problem when you finally called at 3 a.m. last night.

Previously:

• A is for Adelson, who cofounded Digg

Ning does have people in the Valley, as Fast Company claims, "buzzing," but not because of the "viral expansion loops" which Andreessen talks up in the piece. Penenberg's thesis: Andreessen has fused viral marketing with social networks, and therefore Ning's current fast expansion rate will continue ad infinitum, or at least ad acquisition.

This is a fashionable delusion fostered by people with something to sell. Supporting Andreessen's argument are Union Square Ventures' Fred Wilson and Sequoia Capital's Roelof Botha, both of whom make the argument for compound growth. Wilson is an investor in Twitter; Botha backed YouTube. Both profit from the notion that a site's current growth rate will continue unchecked.

The reality? Growth always slows. Facebook used to crow about how its user numbers grew 3 percent a week. By the time Microsoft sank $240 million into the company, that figure had already dropped; it may now be around 1 or 2 percent. Still impressive, and still fast-growing — but any projections based on 3 percent weekly growth are now dead wrong.

With absurdities about compound growth and viral expansion stripped out, Penenberg has little to offer in Ning's defense. According to figures in the piece, Ning is making roughly $1.7 million a year in the $20-a-month subscriptions some social-network creators pay. The rest of the money they make comes from Google's AdSense ads, the familiar fallback of hopeless startups. Bianchini admits as much in a blog post. And yet she and Andreessen commanded a $214 million valuation for their creation.

What Penenberg doesn't explore: The laughable reputation of Ning's software within the Valley. The piece quotes exactly one Ning user. Had Penenberg asked around, he'd have heard from scores of disgusted social-network creators who walked away from the service after trying it out. Pointing that out would get in the way of discussing the appearance of Ning's creators. Really, Adam, I thought that was our job.

(Photo by Fast Company/Art Streiber)

[Andreessen] also joined the board of Harmonic Communications, a software company that tracked and measured advertising. [Sequoia Capital VC Mark] Kvamme introduced him to Bianchini, a former Goldman Sachs analyst who had co-founded Harmonic. She and Andreessen dated briefly, then became good friends.

It was the same small talk, the same pitches, and the same scanning of nametags before faces as any other Valley networking event. With one small hitch — partygoers were asked to fill out their own nametags, and most neglected to include their company information. That omission perplexed at least one venture capitalist in attendance. "I feel like I'm walking socially blind," he confessed. "I don't know how important these people are to me." You mean Arrington's velvet rope-holders let in some hoi polloi who aren't worth your time, let alone your capital? Quelle horreur!

Still with a headcount inching towards quadruple digits, there were bound to be a few gems in the crowd. MySpace cofounder Chris DeWolfe was on hand to support Fox Interactive alumna Heather Harde, now TechCrunch CEO (and proud owner of a a blinged-out TechCrunch rhinestone nameplate necklace). Ning CEO Gina Bianchini, while sampling the samosas, warned me away from the sickeningly sweet frozen margaritas doled out by an overeager PR firm.

But for the most part, it was midlevel business developers trolling the crowd for victims. The pitches from official TechCrunch9 sponsors and invited guests mostly went ignored, but it was harder to miss some pushier in-person come-ons. One annoyed CEO told me, "Three times I've been talking to people and interrupted by pitches. These people just don't get it!"

Confession time: Yes, I went to the party even though I was technically disinvited. I thought it was a cute Valleywag tradition, but apparently Mike wasn't kidding about taking my name off the list. Other guests were well aware of this, and commented on my presence, often, once I graced the patio. One guest half-jokingly said to me, "Arrington's right there, I can't be seen talking to you." At least, I think he was joking. As soon as he pronounced that, he turned and bounced away to the next conversation. Wanker. I'm hoping he got cornered by biz-dev types in blue shirts for the rest of the evening.

Digg, of course, was infamously profiled in BusinessWeek last August, which assigned the company a value of $200 million. Most of Silicon Valley found that number spurious, but the credulous executives who run big media companies actually believe what they read in magazines. With Rose launching Pownce, a new Twitter-like file- and bookmarks-sharing service, and Adelson increasingly focused on Revision3, now would be a good time to offload Digg, whose noisy community of users is just getting more and more fractious.

Then there's Marc Andreessen and Gina Bianchini, the chairman and CEO, respectively, of Ning. Ning, long an ill-defined Web 2.0 startup, has found its purpose in life — making Facebook apps and other social-networking tools easier to build. Along with the purpose came $44 million in funding, in a round orchestrated by Allen & Co. And hence the invite. It's a bit early for Andreessen to sell, so we'll bet he'll content himself with hawking his build-your-own-MySpace tools to everyone besides Rupert Murdoch.

Why build when you can buy, though? Facebook, the former college-kid social network which has been growing spectacularly since it opened its doors to everyone last fall, has all the buzz right now, prompting Murdoch himself to diss MySpace. Facebook, of course, has been showing every sign of wanting to go public. The IPO option gives CEO Mark Zuckerberg, rumored to be attending Sun Valley this year, more leverage in any negotiation.

Rounding out the tech corps: Bill Gates of Microsoft; Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang, CFO Sue Decker, and even the gone-but-not-gone Terry Semel; and Mike Volpi, the former Cisco executive who's now running online-video startup Joost. Oh, and the usual old-media suspects.

There's one puzzling omission on the guest list, if reports are true: Quincy Smith, president of CBS Interactive. Smith is himself a former Allen & Co. dealmaker, which makes his absence curious indeed. Anyone know why people are saying Quincy won't show?

(Photo by briancaldwell)