VentureBeat

VentureBeat threw a party last night to celebrate the launch our new digital media blog. (In truth, the blog is still a glorified tab on our main site, but we’re headed soon to a more separate offering.)

Held at the Ambassador club in San Francisco, hundreds of movers and shakers in digital media arena showed up — entrepreneurs, PR folks, even Warriors basketball star Baron Davis (below), an investor in IBeatYou (which also had an announcement at the event).

Kara Swisher, who runs the Wall Street Journal’s AllThingsD, showed up and took some footage, and writes a post here. See video below.

People in the video talk about this being the “surest sign there’s a bubble.” But thankfully, Kara comes back to interview me, and I tried to explain other reasons why that may not be the case. Had I been more articulate, I would have gone into more depth about why exactly some of these new media companies are creating so much value. Companies like Adify are creating sensible, targeted networks that advertisers want. Music, TV and gaming, and social communication are all being transformed too — there’s plenty of opportunity. Although its true I’m a skeptic about some of the frothy financings that are happening, and have to eat my hat from time to time.

Finally, I’d like to thank VentureBeat’s business manager, Jacob Mullins, who brought in the sponsors who made it all possible to have the fun last night. Many thanks to Sun Microsystems, venture capital firm Mohr Davidow Ventures and law firm O’Melveny & Myers.

Below are a few of Brian Solis‘ great shots. Check out the rest of his set here.

[Above: Baron Davis speaks to the crowd as Matt Marshall (right) looks on.]

[Above: Dan Farber of CNET.]

[Above: Three partygoers having fun.]

[Above: Michael Arrington of TechCrunch and guest.]

[Above: The VentureBeat team.]

[(CC) Brian Solis, www.briansolis.com, bub.blicio.us.]

Competition exists in all walks of life. Ibeatyou capitalizes on that idea with a site that allows users to set up competitions across a wide range of fields, everything from dancing to comedy to music to yes, sports (checkout our full coverage here).

As an example, basketball star Steve Nash posted a video challenging users to see who could hit the most free-throws in a minute. Users watch the competiting videos and judge each on a scale of one to five. The video with the highest average score when the competition ends is the winner.

Now the site will find itself in a competition of its own. The Ibeatyou logo will be placed on the Luczo-Dragon Racing car during this year’s Indy 500. Steve Luczo, the chairman of hard drive manufacturer, Seagate, and an Ibeatyou investor, is the owner of the car. The car finished 5th in last year’s Indy 500 and looks to continue that success given the competitivness of Ibeatyou.

As part of the marketing relationship, Ibeatyou will also set up a competition between the Luczo-Dragon Racing car and other prominent drive around the time of the Indy 500 event. The actual race will take place on May 25.

Ibeatyou isn’t stopping there. The site has also announced a partnership with the popular social network application Watercooler. Watercooler brings together fans of popular television series and various sports to interact on sites such as Facebook, MySpace and Bebo. The over 20 million people who use the Watercooler application will now have a chance to compete against one another via Ibeatyou competitions.

Given the built-in relationships inherent in social networks, those networks seem like a natural breeding group for web-based competitions.

Ibeatyou faces some competition in its business model from Strutta, another online site which asks users to vote on their favorite videos in different competitive categories.

Ibeatyou raised angel funding from Prism VentureWorks and two former partners at Crosslink Capital. Angel investors also include Baron Davis, a star on the Oakland-based Golden State Warriors professional basketball team as well as retired professional football star Ronnie Lott’s investing arm, Champion Ventures.

IBeatYou is a web site launching today where any user can make up a contest, like “best group lip-dub music video” or “best beard,” then submit entries and compete with others to be voted the winner. Interestingly, it includes a number of celebrities among its early users, including actress Jessica Alba and local NBA basketball star Baron Davis (who’s also an angel investor), that may help give it some extra traction.

Of course, sites from MySpace to YouTube already are talent contests of sorts — the best underground musicians get big (and get discovered) through MySpace; the most entertaining video creators get lots of pageviews through YouTube. MySpace itself grew big through being a way for fans to interact with celebrities. So the fact that Alba, the fiancee of cofounder Cash Warren, spends hours on the site could bring in more users early on. For example, Alba and some other celebrities appear in the Santa Monica company’s entry in the “group lip dub” competition. (Note: The star presence at the company’s Los Angeles offices resulted in the paparazzi showing up, something they’ve never really done to Silicon Valley startups’ offices.)

Generally, IBeatYou’s site includes a variety of features seen on other social sites, an almost overwhelming number of them (see screenshot below the article). You can vote on your favorite entries. There’s a points system and a leaderboard of the top winners — common methods of fostering competition on casual gaming sites of any sort. There’s a full-blown social network profile page, where you can “friend” other users and then, via a sort of newsfeed “ticker,” keep track of their activity as they play the site. You can also leave comments, or “talk smack” on entries or profile pages. Separately, there’s a “pulse” or a public feed of all activity on the site. There’s also a “featured” and “MVP” users section on the front page. The contest featured on the front page changes every day to keep users coming back for new contests.

The company also plans to offer a Facebook application and widgets for the contests that run on other sites, which should help the company reach more users faster. In the meantime, the site seems to have started off well, having gained around 4,000 users through private alpha invites, with its most popular users being top contestants, not the celebrities.

The company has raised angel funding from Prism VentureWorks and two former partners at Crosslink Capital. Angel investors also include Davis, a star on the Oakland-based Golden State Warriors professional basketball team and a childhood friend of Warren’s, as well as retired professional football star Ronnie Lott’s investing arm, Champion Ventures. And, yes, Davis entered his beard in the “best beard” competition.