• There's some developer camp at Adobe. Flash! Air! Leah Culver might even show! [Adobe]
• Go for a walk with egoblogger Robert Scoble and Zooomr evangelist Thomas Hawk as they take pictures and yammer on and on and on and on and oh my god, I can't believe we're recommending this to you. Never mind. Take a camera and photowalk your way to your closest bar and take a shot of tequila to make you forget about this travesty. [Upcoming]
• Set your TiVos! YouTube founders Chad Hurley and Steve Chen will be on megatalkshow Oprah tomorrow. But, if you miss it, we wager you'll be able to catch clips online. [Oprah]

Got a to-do that's a must-do? Send it to calendar@valleywag.com. Check out more events on our Google Calendar:

(Photo of Kris Tate by geodog)

On the day of the iPhone launch, Zooomr founder Kris Tate was waiting in line with everybody else. A cute young girl was talking to the guys there and asked Kris what he did. He said he was a successful entrepreneur who ran a popular photo website (pointing to the Zooomr stickers that were stuck everywhere). Jokingly, she asked him how much he was worth and he told her that he is worth "around $3M". Very ironic considering what happened next.

Yahoo vs. Google
Tension: 2

The two search giants are obviously direct competitors in most of their businesses: search, mobile, mapping, and online ads. But the competition only trickles down so far down the ranks. Most of the dozen or so Yahoo employees I know (from several departments) have good friends at Google (and — duh — vice versa).

Employees do bristle when anyone would: a friend in Yahoo Mobile hates seeing me pull up Google Maps; and everyone likes to point out their company's advantages or the other's flaws. (Both Yahoos and Googlers prefer to talk about Google.) But with such huge companies, most cross-company friends know that they have more in common than in contrast. (Valleywag publisher Nick Denton even thinks Google VP Susan Wojcicki was married to a GM of Yahoo Music.)

Microsoft vs. Apple
Tension: 2

The rivalry between these two has obviously had longer to fester than the feud of a couple of dot-coms. It's more personal, too: No one thinks of Larry and Sergey from Google tag-teaming Yahoo's founders (wossname and the other guy), but Bill and Steve have their own cartoon deathmatch. The two companies' employees, skewing older than the young socialites at dot-coms, are less likely to bump elbows.

While Google and Yahoo have similar cultures that compete in nearly every division of their business, Microsoft and Apple have quite divergent cultures based on different approaches to computing. The Apple designers and developers I know have well-though-out criticisms of Microsoft products; the Microsoft employees point to their dominance. It's actually a bit like the Mac vs. PC ads, except PC is as smug as Mac and he doesn't wear a jacket.

Journalists vs. bloggers
Tension: 3

For the most part, this rivalry is overblown. Bloggers know they need journalists or they'll have nothing to link to. Journalists need bloggers to get traffic online and cover the stories too small for professionals. Of course, there are those utter cocks like anti-blogging blogger Andrew Keen and Old-Media-hating videoblogger Andrew Baron. But they're easily taken down a peg — by bloggers, of course.

Also overblown is "Journalists vs. Craigslist," as the news business has far more to worry about than the loss of classified-ad revenue (which, let's admit it, was doomed once the Internet reached the average home). Journalists mostly see Craigslist as a fun company to write about (over and over again).

Sun Microsystems vs. Hewlett-Packard
Tension: 5
Crazy hatred. Sun got rankled that competitor HP managed to sponsor Sun's conference, but they got back by buying statues of HP's founders.

Flickr vs. Zooomr vs. Photobucket vs. Smugmug vs....
Tension: 4

Hell yeah, there's tension! The founders of these photo sharing services like to make a big deal about their willingness to appear at a party together. In this photo by Zooomr CEO Thomas Hawk, Photobucket marketer MJ Kim, Flickr co-founder Stewart Butterfield, and Zooomr founder Kris Tate demonstrate their love:

And how much do they love each other? I can't repeat all the gossip these three have told me about the others, but Stewart and his Flickr cohorts are engaged in an extended game of teasing with Kris and his one employee at Zooomr. When Kris spent a week upgrading Zooomr, Flickr sent him pizzas; at a Flickr photo auction, Kris bought one of the photos for his wall; and of course there's Zooomr's CEO drunkenly defending his company on Flickr's message boards.

Photobucket has apparently stayed out of this, preferring to squabble with MySpace, who occasionally blocked Photobucket from its site before finally buying the company. SmugMug fights not the other photo sharing sites but the press and bloggers who ignore it.

Gawker Media vs. Weblogs, Inc.
Tension: 3

Okay, these two blog networks (Valleywag is part of Gawker Media, and in fact Gawker's founder and owner Nick Denton edits the site) do have personal rivalries. After all, early Gawker employee Peter Rojas left the company's blog Gizmodo to found one of Weblogs's original sites, Engadget. The latter has long since been the more popular of the two gadget sites. Since then, Weblogs and Gawker have sparred over a half-dozen of their competitive properties, even after AOL bought Weblogs.

Personal rivalries (come on, you're still reading this one? Go reread the Google vs. Yahoo section) include:

• Nick Denton vs. Jason Calacanis: The two founders (Calacanis is now out of Weblogs) are "frenemies" who go out for lunch, then malign one another's business and personal decisions. Denton thinks Calacanis is cheesy but smart; Calacanis thinks Denton is too stand-offish (he is) but cunning. Calacanis sometimes jabs at Denton on his personal blog, while Denton takes it to the mattresses.
• Engadget staff vs. Gizmodo staff: Engadget wasn't too happy when new Gizmodo editor Brian Lam stole their photos. Both teams take digs at each other in their blogs; Denton's not above dropping a wry observation himself.
• Gawker staff vs. Jason Calacanis: He's just so fun to tease!
• Me vs. Jason Calacanis: We fight too.
• Gawker employees vs. Nick Denton: More hatred. In fact, Denton will comment on this post remarking how embarrassingly self-gratifying it is to include a section on Gawker, but while he will sincerely mean this, he will also secretly enjoy getting to write it.

Compuserve vs. Prodigy
Tension: 5

Just seeing if you were paying attention.

The drama culminates in this Flickr forum, where Hawk jumps in to defend Zooomr's one other employee, coder Kris Tate. But he does a pretty bad job of it, admitting, "I'm not a coder and quite frankly couldn't tell you computer code from newspaper type...I also don't really understand coding ethics and all that either."

Hawk then returns to invite all the angry Flickr users to Zooomr ("But even I'm growing tired of the negativity. Come play on Zooomr") in what has to be the world's most poorly thought-out marketing ploy.

Why is the CEO doing this poorly? Blame the drink. Hawk admits in one message, "I've had a couple of bottles of wine at this point."

Photo: Shhexycorin

Today, TechCrunch writer Marshall Kirkpatrick wrote an entire entry about Zooomr's upload limits. Why was this newsworthy? Because Zooomr compared its new limits to the smaller ones at a major competitor, Yahoo's Flickr.

TechCrunch loves a good David-beats-Goliath story, and pitting a two-man startup (18-year-old Kristopher Tate and photographer-spokesman Thomas Hawk, pictured) against the robust property of Internet giant Yahoo turns a boring upgrade into an item.

There are, of course, more reasons. I've seen Tate and Hawk attend more and more dot-com parties, building friendships with other party-circuit regulars like TechCrunch founder Michael Arrington.

And Tate made a brilliant move hiring Hawk, a talented photographer who delights fellow party-goers by shooting portraits — which he publishes on Zooomr. The upshot: Everyone enjoys Hawk's flattering photos and Zooomr gets a halo effect. Meanwhile, everyone meets Hawk, who introduces them to Tate.

So a startup can get attention from TechCrunch two ways:

• Spin every small step as a victory over the competition.
• Learn a party trick.

Zooomr Doubles Flickr's Monthly Photo Upload Limits [TechCrunch; photo by Thomas Hawk]

Make a lot out of the application's cool features. Much coolr than a certain othr company. Even more of how young the lead developer is. Make a _really_ big deal at how young the developr is. This is important-make sure that everyone knows that how this product will kick butt because of the youth of the developer (as compared to the old farts over at .... well, you know).

Yep, the whole list is about Zooomr. Terribly witty, especially if you know that Zooomr desperately denies that it's a wannabe Flickr killer. The Web 2.0 crowd (whom the Zooomrites hang with) is protective of Flickr, and everyone who joins the little company finds themselves on the defense. For example, Zooomr evangelist Thomas Hawk, whose reply to Shelley is below.

So much hatred and meanspirtedness. Wow. Sorry for letting you down. [...] Kris, by the way, didn't have any beer at our terribly depressing mislaunch party — although I did. Looking foward to your thoughts on our new features... not that I'm expecting anything positive of course.

Ouch. Shelley?

Thomas, that don't fly with me. If Zooomr is a company that's more than a couple of kids hacking around, you have to take your lumps...just like Flickr has to take its lumps.

I've watched you, Kris, and Mike Arrington put the Flickr folks through one hell of a time fairly recently. So, can we also call that mean spirited?

Will there be smackdowns with folding chairs? Tag teams? Stay tuned to Blogger Wrestling Championships at:

How to Rollout a Web 2.0 Product [The Bb Gun]

I was confused when, at an unrelated Valleyschwag party in San Fran's SOMA district, I asked some people where the Zooomr party was and they said, "This is the Zooomr party!" It took me a few hours to hear that Zooomr got a denial-of-service attack (known as a DDOS) on the day of the party. The site couldn't exactly launch Version 2 while Version 1 was forced offline.

Granted, this site is under a year old, and it's run by a famously young developer (Kris Tate). Critics say it's just Flickr with a black coat of paint, but it's slowly winning converts. Think evangelical Christianity for shutterbugs.

The history of the site is terribly interesting and storied. For example, the site's new evangelist, photographer Thomas Hawk, just got into an argument a Flickr founder that escalated into a micro-blog-war. In any case, this'll be a fun site to watch, whether it booms or folds before the year is out.

Zooomr [Official site, as long as it's still up today]