Charles Forman (URL) said:Oct. 13, 5:59 PM
I don't like my name being dropped this many times without a picture of my pretty face attached.

Ah yes. The alley insider is up to rousing rabble for page views from my Google Alerts? Awesome. What's this? Detective Retardo is on the case - the champion of the underdog, and the morbidly obese? Totally fucking awesome.

Did I fail to entertain you? Did I fail to show something interesting? Of
I spent 2 days preparing my presentation so everyone wouldn't be bored to death. I doubt there has been another presenter that has put as much love into their presentations as I have.

Do you not understand what we am trying to do? Of course you do. You know how difficult and truly amazing it is.

I think the real problem is that you are jealous of my ability to run a mile in under 3 days. Maybe its that I date hot girls? Honestly, I don't understand how your beef with me - or your petty, passive aggressive approach.

If you have a problem with fairness, why aren't you paying $20? You very realistically take up 2 seats.

Seriously, if you have such a problem, why don't you just do your own democratic tech meetup and watch as no one shows up?

You are a sad, lonely, disgusting man. I hope you don't die of a coronary before we have a chance to patch things up.

*Kisses*

(Photo of Forman by Charles Forman)

Kevin Rose—"an old, old man," to quote Cashmore—never planned on going to the Mashable party. "I'm all partied out," he says. People magazine readers probably wouldn't know who Rose is, but among the Internet-savvy he's Brad Pitt. Rose, who dated Julia Allison a few years ago, is remarkably low-key compared with his younger counterparts. Drinking tea out of a mug covered with skulls and crossbones, he perks up when the talk turns to rock climbing (he's in a group called Geeks Love Climbing). He says he doesn't know what the term fameballer means. He also says he doesn't do things like wedge himself into nightclubs to have his picture taken with founder fetishists.

Those would be the women who this sort of scorn is usually reserved for: Julia Allison and her heiress apparents.

The Details profile is predictably overblown, but its core message is clear: There's a new generation of men in tech who no longer feel it's enough to just launch a product people want — unless that product is themselves.

Note to Forman: 111 Minna, which he says is a celebrichaun hangout, is actually in San Francisco's Financial District, just south of Market Street — not in the Mission. But thanks for the Valleywag shoutouts, Chuck!

If his casual-games venture goes well, he'll have more free time to spend squiring Allison around Manhattan. (She even sometimes gets Forman's name right when introducing him to strangers.) And every moment Allison's out and about is a moment when she's not online obsessing about Rose. Less drama, more money? Rose had better hope Forman's startup takes off.

(Photos by b_d_solis)

Consider the value of other companies that deliver entertainment: Disney (DIS), Time Warner (TWX) and Sony (SNE) have a combined market cap of over $168 billion. Gross revenue for the NFL and MLB last year exceeded $12 billion. Apple (AAPL) made nearly $2 billion through iTunes music sales alone. Social networks benefit from increased activity, advertisers benefit from an exuberant audience, and widget users can, well, share favorite "American Idol" moments, send virtual margaritas or trout slap each other.

We're just not sure Slide or any other of the widgetmakers are there yet. Scrolling through Facebook's application directory, we mostly find the Web's version of road-trip distractions like the find-all-50-states-license-plate game or the one where you guess the name of the person I'm thinking. They pass the time, sure. But are they the next American Idol? No.

Or not yet. Rabois, and his boss, Slide founder Max Levchin, will work until they get there. For an idea how they might, we suggest they and you check out Draw My Thing from Iminlikewithyou, a sort of Pictionary for the Web. Just remember, Keith: You type the answers rather than call them out.

You probably aren't working on something as cool as this. You probably don't make as much as I can pay you. You probably don't have a boss this good looking. We offer a great benefits package including bigotry and racism. Oh yeah - you have to live in New York City or move here or convince us to move into your apartment.

Headlined "Fenton High computer whiz bringing school life online," it's about Forman's plans to "help users connect directly to areas they're interested in, similar to the format used by America Online." Just like iminlikewithyou!

Click on the article to expand it.

"Dumping them is a pain in the ass," Forman told me by IM. "I would if i had the time, but I don't."

Here's four reasons why he'd switch if he "had the time."

1. Their uptime used to be good. But now it's normal.
   
2. Their support used to be good but again, everyone offers the same shit now.
   
3. They've turned lazy and they are basically like — 'yeah — we forgot to do this shit — it will be 3 more days."
   
4. During that outage in their datacenter I didn't get one fucking phone call. I got a fucking mass mail apology and thats it. Their shit was down for like a full day and restarted like 3 times. We probably aren't a major account, but its $8k/month. It's a lot of money to me.

• Facebook is slower than a bunch of social networks you've never heard of, according to Watchmouse. Yes, Zuck's baby is slower than RateItAll, Infield Parking, Buzznet and most especially, Consumating. Which is of course everyone's favorite. MySpace is not on the list.
• The Pew Internet & American Life project discovered that Web video was more popular in 2007 than in 2006.
• Robert Scoble appeared on television. Twice.
• Iminlikewithyou founder Charles Forman told an audience of 450 that, despite what you've heard, he's not actually an asshole.
• Jupitermedia CEO Alan Meckler posted seven times. 6-word version: Things are great. Ignore stock price.
• Jason Calacanis has 11,900 friends on Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook. And 495 on Mahalo. By the way, he wants to have dinner with all of you.
• Yahoo's CEO unveiled a new mobile Web platform at CES that will save the company. Just like it did last year.
• And, most notably, the Flight of the Conchords performed at CES:

Compete.com says Iminlikewithyou, Forman's online dating site, has grown 58 percent in the last month. But that's only up to 21,000 or so "people," so big deal.

Even if growth keeps up at that rate, marketing expert Seth Godin — who otherwise raves about Forman's site — will tell you, "There's no way, none, that tradtional online ad models will generate revenue for sites like this."

No revenue? No problem! Forman just wants to own the market, he says: "You look at games on the internet in the U.S., and they are all shit. I will own the casual gaming space in the U.S. within the next year."

Keep in mind, this is the guy whose business card reads, "So ... chances are, you were in like with me. And ... chances are, I gave you this card because I didn't feel like talking to you anymore. Just kidding! LOLZ!"

His business plan is taken straight from VH1: I Love the '90s provides him with Pop-Up Video, whileI Love the '80s leads to Tetris clone Blockles. We await the Iminlikewithyou version of Pong when Forman finishes watching I Love the '70s.

Turns out Forman fired Albritton, though Albritton characterized his departure as voluntary. But despite the disagreement, when I reached out to Albritton, I didn't get much out of him. The only real shot he took at Forman was a softie:

I'm not going to slag on [Charles] because there is no reason to do it. I'll let him do the damage to his own reputation.

iminlikewithyou started from a simple, playful idea I had 3 years prior to starting the company, while I was living in Korea. The beginning of the company itself was, in some sense, an accident. I went alongside Dan Albritton to help him pitch his mobile business idea to Y Combinator as a favor to Dan. Within minutes of presenting, Paul Graham at Y Combinator told us that Dan's idea wouldn't work and that they weren't interested. They were, however, interested in us, as people. Paul asked if we had any other ideas.

I said, "How about a dating website?"
He said, "Whats the spin?"
I said, "Auction dating."
He said, "Great. Do you guys want to work on that?"
Dan looked unhappy and said, "I guess so."

Could there be a better way to start a company? Probably.

I pressed Forman a bit and he said he specifically asked Albritton to go because he needed a "doer," not a "thinker."

For his part, Albritton described the Forman version of Iminlikewithyou's creation as "completely accurate." He maintains, however, that his departure had more to do with the fact that his "interest in a dating site was finite.... There was a piece I was really interested in. We built that piece and it was cool. Now, I've actually found something I'm more interested in."

And what's that? He didn't elaborate, but there's a set of photos on Flickr called "Dan Albritton's Secret Project." Check them out — and let me know if you no more.

Here it is. Forman told me he made it to parody some of the custom business cards he'd been seeing around Manhattan. Fine, but truth in jest, right? Click to see it in its full glory.

The Y Combinator guys may be acting starstruck, but maybe its MC Hammer who's playing the fanboy here. Y Combinator's coterie of entrpreneurs could easily return the favor by providing the rapper with real video services. Everyone, including MC Hammer, knows they can. Why would the startuppers reduce the Hammer to begging for volunteers — if not to subtly put him in his place?

(SnapLayout Demo Video by Dan Veltri)