Who wants to hang around with a guy best known for drinking beer on camera while discussing tech news, and a 17-year-old whose chosen profession is talking about startups and going to conferences? For all its tiresome, self-congratulatory puffery, TED at least offered tech veterans a respite from the Web 2.0 cool-kids crowd. Next year, we won't have to bother publishing TED's attendee list: We'll just copy it straight from the list of top Twitter users, as Anderson seems to be doing.

Recently in Amsterdam Scoble brought great embarrassment to the conference organization by not keeping his hands to himself. Every woman that had her picture taken with him was squeezed against him with his hands going everywhere.

What got people really upset was that he couldn't keep his hands of 17 year old Jessica Mah during the conference after party. He was all over her in the VIP room. The organization was paranoid about pictures being taken, which is why you hardly will find any. In this picture she is laying on his lap.

But unlike our tipster, we're inclined to give Scoble a pass. He a Silicon Valley archetype: the high school nerd unhinged by newfound digital fame. In his mind, he's still 17 himself. Having never had the experience of popularity in high school, he's recreating it now. And by that logic, there's nothing wrong with him snuggling with a girl who, if not so precocious, would be in high school herself.

PlaySpan's executives say it's a "publisher-sponsored in-game commerce network." Whatever that means. In-game item sales are the hot new trend in massively multiplayer online games. Since these virtual items — say a shiny coat of dragon-scale armor — can be made at virtually no cost to the publisher, they're extraordinarily high in margin. Some developers are, in fact, now offering their games for free, making ends meet by shilling fashion accessories. Since open-market trading of these items on, say, eBay is often deemed "illegal" by the developers, it makes sense to create a sanctioned forum for sales — similar to Sparter, LiveGamer and a bunch of other external marketplaces.

PlaySpan isn't forthcoming about how its commerce network will actually work, but the very idea is plagued by problems. For one, replicating PlaySpan's software tools isn't exactly difficult when looked at in the wider context of game development. Also, PlaySpan encourages users to chat on third-party servers about a wide variety of games — hardly a boost to the developers' goal of winning players' exclusive loyalties. It's like a company that comes in and offers to set up kiosks in a mall's parking lot, diverting shoppers before they even set foot inside. All the big multiplayer games, like World of Warcraft, have their own proprietary commerce systems. In-game traffic is too valuable to hand over to a third party.

Why get into gory details, though, when you have a story about a cute kid who's got a startup while he's still in elementary school? PlaySpan has made garnering publicity look like child's play.

Nick Douglas: 1. Tell me your company in three sentences. Take your time.

Jessica Mah: Our company sets out to be the eBay of services. Whether you're looking to hire an interior decorator or DJ or website designer, we'll provide a reliable and safe marketplace for buyers and sellers.

Nick: You've mentioned that journalists want to write about your company. what's the bit they always want to talk about?

Jessica: My age! It's not too frequent that you see a 16 year old girl networking with middle-aged men at business-related conferences and mixers.

Nick: You do work with older people though, yes? As well as some other young people?

Jessica: I work with mostly older people - the average age of my team members (excluding myself) is 32. Young people I play with.

Nick: I'm impressed that you already ran another company. Tell me about that.

Jessica: When I was 13, I worked on a hosting and dedicated server company. I was running C's in school, but I didn't think much of it because I was making more than my teachers were. I'd get support and sales calls in the middle of biology and have absolutely no problem walking out. And I did - many many times.

Nick: So you have experience running, well, a real business, so you're possibly more qualified to run a fake one. Which is what every dot-com is before it finally IPOs, right?

Jessica: Totally!

Nick: What's your exit plan?

Jessica: Ideally, I would be the CEO of a "fake" company that IPOs.

Nick: For how much money?

Jessica: I'd love to exit with a good $1B - hopefully by the time I turn 25. Of course, everybody tells me that it won't happen and that I'm being unrealistic. Screw that, I'm gonna run a business and make a billion dollars and nothing can stop me!

Nick: Picked a name?

Jessica: Not yet - that's actually been our hardest problem. [We thought of] Servio.com, Prodessa.com, and plenty of names that none of us seem to really like.

Nick: Why will you gain ground when Craigslist, Elance, and a billion other sites seem to handle services just fine?

Jessica: None of them have solved the initial problem. Our idea for the company actually sprung up after having used Craigslist and Elance for so long. I've mentioned on my blog, Jessicamah.com, many times that I see way too many websites and technologies that forget the problem they're trying to solve and concentrate way too much on monetizing.

Buyers need a means of finding a service provider - they want to be able to compare reputation and prices on the spot. Service entrepreneurs want a way to market their services, but craigslist and elance make it no easier to do so from our personal experience.

Nick: Why hasn't anyone started this company before?

Jessica: I've spoken to a lot of people who claimed to have thought of the same exact idea, but I truly doubt that they can execute the way my team plans to. Many businesses may be in the same market, but the problem is, they put their business model before anything else.

Nick: When will your site launch to the public?

Jessica: We're scheduled to launch a beta release this summer. Buyers will have free access, but service entrepreneurs will eventually have to pay in a similar way that sellers have to pay on eBay.

Nick: What happens if eBay, Elance, or Craigslist implements all your improvements this fall?

Jessica: It's doubtful that they will. All of them seem focussed to do what they've been doing in the past decade. There are plenty of startups that are trying to "copy" us, but my team welcomes any competition.

Nick: If the whole thing goes tits-up, what will you do next?

Jessica: We'll say we learned from the experience and move onto the next big idea. No biggy. But until our business goes tits-up, we're putting all of our energy into making this the next big thing.

Nick: Why is this the next big thing? Why is service exchange a billion-dollar business? After all, eBay and Craigslist may not be perfect, but why do you think you can break the inertia?

Jessica: Services account for 55% of the US economy, and its rising. eBay concentrates on tangible goods, and that market is shrinking.

Nick: Are you going to take funding, and whose money will it be?

Jessica: At the moment, my COO and I plan on funding the seed round ourselves with the money we've made on previous businesses.

Jessica: And once we need money, we'll call up our angel investor friends. Raising money is currently on the bottom of our worry list.

Photo courtesy of Jessica Mah.) Nick Douglas writes for Valleywag, Prezzish, and Look Shiny. Honestly, a billion dollars? Hey, if shooting for that means making $100 mil...