We had hundreds of active users and you could feel the buzz around it. We threw a few parties that continued to support the good mood all around. Hell, our CTO Sam even met his current girlfriend at one of them.

But since someone will be filming all of these events, at least we'll have video when someone from imeem pulls a Walter Sobchak.

Bowling 2.0 [Blip TV]

"You didn't miss out," a Bowling 2.0 Kick-off attendee told me. "Like no one showed up." Meetro product manager Vincent Lauria invited a crowd to the kick-off for his Web 2.0 bowling league, but the only ones to come were Meetro staff, a few Flock members, and some assorted curious parties.

"Not many people bowled," says the unimpressed attendee. "Most were drinking and crowding around the one Facebook girl there." He didn't see league member WordPress at all.

Of course, the San Jose Mercury News, always the first to a dog-bites-man story, sent a reporter. The journo talked to Flock coder Lloyd Budd, who had trouble explaining the social browser his team is developing.

After the jump, what the flop means for Meetro.

You'd think if anyone could pull off a Web 2.0 party, it'd be Meetro — these guys have the party animal inside. These guys were the only ones to make the Super Happy Dev House coding nights vaguely interesting to outsiders, when they got drunk and picked fights at SHDH 8.

Meetro, along with other social IM startups like imeem, seem to base their entire marketing program on party-throwing. So what does this failure bode for their business? Nothing, if the actual league shows up for games. Then Meetro can actually make some industry connections and write off the custom-fit bowling shoes.

Earlier: Crash this bash: Bowling 2.0 kick-off party
Photo: Bowling 2.0 [Paul Stamatiou on Flickr]

• Premature geolocation: Unasked-for proliferation of location-aware services such as Dodgeball, Plazes, Meetro, Placesite, Platial, and porn banner ads ("Find hot chicks in SAN MATEO")
• Evil: A social construct transcended by the ubermensch, who constructs his own morality and, through the will of power, imposes it on humanity. Sources: Nihilist Friedrich Nietzsche and Google co-founder Sergey Brin
• Skeptimistic: Waffling in a review, unwilling to trash a product (lest the launch goes huge and the reviewer doesn't get invited to the IPO party), but unwilling to extol it (to keep the competition inviting the reviewer to their parties). TechCrunch editor Michael Arrington (the Skeptimystic) is running out of skeptimism and has lately delegated reviews to newer, more ambivalent writers.

Get your game on and don't fuck with the Jesus! One of the Web 2.0 crowd forwarded this invite to the Valley's new dot-com bowling league. E-mail prefixes redacted to prevent spam.

From: Vinnie Lauria
Date: May 19, 2006 5:07 PM
Subject: Bowling 2.0
To: xxx@riya.com, xxx@themintpage.com, xxx@imvu.com, Seth Sternberg , xxx@zazzle.com, xxx@box.net, joseph@plaxo.com, xxx@sixapart.com, xxx@3bubbles.com, xxx@gmail.com, xxx@stormventures.com, xxx@weekly.org, xxx@jot.com, xxx@renkoo.net
Cc: Paul Bragiel

Is that the smell of bowling shoes and varnished floors I smell in the air?
Bowling 2.0

I think so... we're starting a little web2.0/startup bowling league out here in the valley. We looking for some friendly competition, and who knows, maybe some cash prizes to go along with bragging rights.

So do you think your team has got what it takes? Meetro has been staffing bowling ringers for months now preparing for this moment. This would be a weekly league, with teams around 4 ppl (all teams should be the same size.) Typical leagues run 10 weeks, but that might be too much commitment for some (hell, startups live and die in that about of time.)

So if you think you're company is interested, please send me a note. Details to follow.

Feel free to pass this on to other companies, but I may have to close off the invite list at some point.

I haven't even mentioned the best part.... Bowling shirts with your name and company logo... Now you can finally fit in with that hip swingers crowd.

—
Vinnie Lauria
Meetro HQ

Ah, yes, you're here for the April Fool's gags.

¬ Gizmodo Gizombo shepherds you through the night of the living dead.
¬ MAKE rebrands as BUY.
¬ WEBringr is a joke, right? RIGHT?
¬ Google WTF search: It'd be funnier if Bruce Sterling didn't already believe in it. See, Bruce, this is why we can't have nice jokes.
¬ China buys Google; searches now done by hand in Beijing sweatshops.
¬ Google buys the French National Library. Confused Parisian Muslims revolt.
¬ Simply Hired has an opening for Guy Kawasaki.

And after the jump, Meetro buys Friendster. Ha! How impossible and humorous! Everyone knows Friendster's free to tow.

Press Release: Meetro Acquires Friendster

San Francisco, Calif. - April 1, 2006 - Meetro, the world leader in Instant Messaging software announced today it has entered into an agreement to acquire Friendster, one of many social software sites for keeping in touch with friends and hooking up with new people.

Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.

"We're excited to be acquiring Friendster because we can leverage their web 2.0 technology," said Paul Bragiel, CEO of Meetro. "This acquisition gives Meetro another brand name in its warchest, similar to Infogrames purchasing Atari a few years back."

Friendster will provide Meetro users the ability to see who's looked at their profile to encourage a greater number of 'random hookups' without the need for alcohol. Leveraging Meetro's location-based technology will allow users to see other members in 'real-life' and avoid a common photo profile pitfall known as "the angles."

Bragiel finally remarks, "If you're still reading this and believe this, then you aren't good at spotting April Fool's jokes."

For more information, please visit http://www.meetro.com

About Meetro
Meetro is a location-aware Instant Messenger turning traditional IM on it's side. It's photo and profile driven around your location, designed to facilitate real-time meetings with people locally. Meetro bridges the gap between traditional instant messengers and the next-generation local meeting place. Meetro works with AIM, Yahoo, MSN, and ICQ protocols.

About Friendster
Friendster is the leading social site for keeping in touch with friends, and meeting new people. Friendster is a privately-held company based in San Francisco, California, backed by the venture firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers.

Time to blow your kazoos. So far, I've gathered the following predictions:

Blog Herald: News aggregator Newsvine is "rumored" to be the sellout. But why would someone buy Newsvine when, well, when Digg exists?
Silicon Beat: Who knows, but is Spy Media next?
Stowe Boyd: Tagged. No, not Tagged? Damn.
Good Morning Silicon Valley: Riya? Newsvine? Goowy?

A Valleywag commenter named "Mensch" says Meetro's lackluster presentation was far below par, and the only explanation is MORE COWBELL. I mean the only explanation is that Meetro already got the deal.

And from the TechCrunch peanut gallery:
"Markus" says Eurekster.
"Ted" says Zvents.
Jason Baptiste, "noob," and Dogster's Ted Rheingold say Meetro.

But Meetro has its own picks: Eurekster, Popist, and Sphere. Come on, Meetro, if you're trying to cover your ass, just give up and admit it — you make a tasty addition to Myspace, with your geo-located IMing and your "kinda cool, kinda stalker" vibe.

Fox Announces Acquistion; Exclusive Video [TechCrunch]
Earlier: Who did Fox buy? [Valleywag]
Image: Meetro HQ [Meetro]