"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]