Kevin Rose’s online-video outfit, Revision3, has launched a show based on the top video picks on Kevin Rose’s social-news startup, Digg. The show launched tonight at 9, while Kevin Rose’s messaging and file-sharing venture, Pownce, threw a party. How does Kevin Rose find the time?

Probably by not watching shows like the newly launched “Digg Reel.” Instead of letting you just watch the top-rated videos on Digg, “Digg Reel” shows them to you — but not before it wastes 96 seconds of your life with a bumper and chatter from overly loquacious host Jessica Corbin.

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This photo, taken right at 10 p.m. shows people still waiting in line to get into tonight’s Pownce party at the Madrone Lounge, two hours after it started. Are they that desperate to hoist a beer with Kevin Rose? And do they realize they may be exposed to the jarring powers of Leah Culver’s voice? One bored queue-stander has cracked open a laptop. That’s hot, whoever you are.

A fictional character on The L Word, Megan Swisher, was named after power-lesbian couple Kara Swisher, the AllThingsD blogger, and Megan Smith, a vice president at Google, Mombian readers note. Not mentioned: That Swisher serves on the board of OurChart.com, a lesbian social network tied to the show, a fact she prominently discloses. [Mombian]

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Was there a single stereotype of this fogbound city missed in last night’s party for the Electronic Frontier Foundation? Full-arm sleeve tattoos, white people with dreadlocks, Web poseurs, old guys in tie-dye shirts. Hands off the Internet — and off me, you dirty zippies! Capping off the party’s self-congratulations, the world’s most pretentious new chocolatier, Louis Rossetto, founder of Wired, catered the event. These aren’t just chocolates, people — they’re a Bengali typhoon of flavor.

Photos by Randal Alan Smith

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Alexander, Oliver, and Marc Samwer, founders of a German eBay knockoff, have invested “$10 million to $15 million” in Facebook, joining Microsoft and Hong Kong billionaire Li Ka-Shing in a financing round that has valued Facebook at $15 billion. We hear Li Ka-Shing could double his investment in the company, bringing the total raised to almost $400 million. [Silicon Alley Insider]

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Introducing the MacBook Air, or at least its ad campaign (13 comments), Macworld 2008 Steve Jobs keynote (5) and The weapon used to beat the man Google helped arrest (5).

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Poor Ars Electronica and Gizmodo. The gadget sites invited San Francisco’s thirsty class over for some pre-Macworld booze at Harlot in SoMa last night, and the assembled crowd drank the hosted bar dry in 35 minutes flat. I ran into a host of familiar faces there, including a certain Farker who goes by the unforgettable login of “catbutt.” So unforgettable that I called him … well, something else instead. And no, I’m not throwing David Ulevitch the shocker — just a gesture that looks a lot like it. Fake Steve Jobs blogger Dan Lyons, making his Macworld debut, drew a tight bubble of fans around him everywhere he went.

Photos by Randal Alan Smith

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“Google’s Search Party,” Ken Auletta’s 6,264-word opus on the search engine’s grudging embrace of D.C. lobbying, has proved tough to condense. Until I reread it again this weekend, and realized it can be boiled down to the final observation made by CEO Eric Schmidt:

What kills a company is not competition but arrogance. We control our fate.

Control fate, or tempt it? Google, improbably, is managing to do both.

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No, I don’t understand Paul Boutin’s fixation with Bono, either. But he brought a fistful of sunglasses to Moose’s on Friday, and before we knew it, everyone was putting them on. The bar’s lighting is already moody, and let me tell you, when you put on a pair of Bulgari, it gets murkier than an open-standards discussion list. Things got even geekier when the boys from Uncov rolled in. And then, out of nowhere — well, out of Las Vegas, really — Julia Allison and Meghan Asha showed up to glam up the evening. Did we say “happy hour“? Our apologies. We practically closed the place. Next Friday: Natali Del Conte’s going-away party.

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The SEC’s website is the new location of the New York Times’ corrections page. NetSuite stock is up 12 percent today after its $26-a-share IPO debut, a long-awaited victory for the Larry Ellison-backed software company, as the Times noted earlier this week. But it appears that the paper got several things wrong.

Normally, a prissy letter to the editor would be in order. But since the story ran while NetSuite was in a quiet period, the time prior to an IPO when a company can only communicate through the smoke signals of SEC filings, NetSuite had to issue a “free writing prospectus” instead. While some of its complaints seem like quibbles, others seem like easily checked facts, such as when CEO Zach Nelson, shown here, joined the company. As far as I can tell, Times has not yet corrected the story. When the SEC has become your newspaper’s unofficial ombudsman, you have a problem.

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According to the latest Pew Internet study, 35 percent of teenage girls who use the Internet blog, compared to only 1 in 5 teen boys online. Teen boys are twice as likely (19 percent to 10 percent) to post a video online, however. All of which is to say teen boys like to watch people being kicked in the ‘nads, and teen girls like to write endlessly about their relationships. Can I get the 20 minutes I spent reading this report back, please? (Photo by Mighty mighty bigmac)

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Can a city go, in a year, from geek to chic? Unlikely. But consider this: A year ago, Stirr held its holiday mixer in the Exploratorium, a children’s museum full of science exhibits. This year, the place was the Julia Morgan Ballroom in the Merchants’ Exchange Building, right on the California Street cable-car line. Last night, as I made my way in, I was thinking to myself, “2007, or 1907?” Alas, the aura of gilded-era chic didn’t last much past the elevator ride up to the 15th floor. The first person I met was ubiquitous egoblogger Robert Scoble. Check out our gallery for pictures of actually-not-bad swing dancing — Stirr cofounder Sanford Barr, above, showed off his moves — and people in formal attire playing Wii.

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You know, I’m perfectly fine with funtrepreneur-in-residence Jason Calacanis telling us to “please die.” I’m totally OK when Calacanis emails me “Subject: Idiot,” because I can take a joke, especially when it’s true. But dammit, Janet, Calacanis has stopped posting pics of his puppies. Valleywag has been forced to outsource to Professor Chips (above), winner of last year’s Babies vs Puppies showdown. After a week where the big stories were Larry Page planting one on new bride Lucy Southworth, Heidi Roizen singing her thighs thin, Google ripping off AOL — AOL? — the Times poaching yours truly, and Megan “Leggy” McCarthy leaving Valleywag for Wired, we could all use some face-blurpy time.

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Special correspondent Paul Boutin and I are at Moose’s, a historic bar in San Francisco’s North beach district. “23 people have posted on the Facebook wall for Megan’s farewell party, but no one’s actually shown up,” I tell Boutin. “So Web 2.0,” he says. “Fail.” The Uncov guys aren’t even here to give Boutin shit for stealing their line. Unbelievable. People, unplug already. Moose’s has a cool bar, a hot bartender named Valen (above), and even trippy vacuum-tube lighting for the geeks. After the jump, photos of the bash in progress, such as it is. Come on and join us!

Boutin checks Facebook by Blackberry.

I’m blogging, and yes, my cheeks are already a little red.

Holy hell, it’s 3:48 am? Owen Thomas, above, has kept things hopping for hours in our 13th-floor skypad by reading Peter Thiel’s mind remotely. Or at least trying to. More photos after the jump.

We’re humbled, just humbled to be allowed to snap photos of Googler Megan Smith, Splunker Christina Noren, and soon-to-be Wired reporter Megan McCarthy. In the background, Owen listens to Surya from LinkedIn — yes, same guy who was on The Apprentice.

Kara Swisher, please please please don’t ever change. Not that you’re planning to.

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We love a challenge. Supposedly Digg, Kevin Rose’s news-discussion site, is having a party in San Francisco tonight. But we haven’t pinned down the location. What is this, some top-secret rave? If you find out where it is, or just want to send in a report from the scene afterwards, drop us a line.

Source:Valleywag

Yelp, the local-reviews site, is as infamous in San Francisco as it is nonfamous anywhere else in the country. Its parties, always hedonistic rampages of drunken conversations, burlesque troops, and makeout sessions in the photobooth, helped establish its local reputation and cement the loyalty of hardcore users. (Even the founders get in on the action!) Last night, Yelp held its holiday party at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts. Upon entering, I was greeted by a mass of San Francisco Yelptards, each louder than the next, all laughing, cajoling, flirting, and hugging each other. Self-congratulations were clearly in order.

The insular crowd, however, all but ensured I’d meet up with Ghosts of Valleywag Past. No, not a spectral Nick Douglas or a scary Nick Denton — but other people I’ve read about, or written about. That vaguely familiar girl chatting with Jeremy Stoppelman? Oh! It’s his ex-girlfriend Liza, reportedly the center of love triangle involving Valley good-time-guy Sean Parker. There’s Steve Chen, the YouTube founder, with spiky hair and glasses, holding hands with his girlfriend while bidding Stoppelman adieu. Over there, by the bar, is Ooma CEO Andrew Frame, wearing a form-fitting leather jacket and sporting bangs. Bangs? Really? And Keith Rabois, the ex-PayPaler now at Slide, with the controversial Stanford history.

Then I met Snocap founder Jordan Mendelson, whose appearance with a bevy of beauties at last year’s Yelp party lead us to crown him the Valley’s newest bad boy. Boy did we peg him wrong. My first thought, after taking in his supreme untallness, was that he seemed like such a nice guy. And so unassuming. The expression of smug self-satisfaction in last year’s pictures was missing. As was, apparently, his job.

I asked about Snocap, the troubled music startup he founded with Shawn Fanning, whom he worked with at Napster. Mendelson confirmed our rumor that he had left for another project. So, was he going to indulge his Valleywag-created persona and party hearty all night? Sadly, no. Mendelson begged off early during the afterparty at Mr. Smith’s, in order to prepare for a venture meeting today. The bad boys are growing up — or at least learning when they need to put on appearances.

Users of LiveJournal call it “defriending.” As terrible as it sounds, defriending’s not really that bad; it just means you’re bored with someone and don’t want to hear about their issues anymore. Or share yours with them. That, in essence, is what Six Apart, the San Francisco-based blog-software company, has decided to do with LiveJournal, the online community it acquired from Brad Fitzpatrick in 2005. Andrew Anker, Six Apart’s vice president of chopping the company into little bits for convenient and lucrative disposition corporate development, orchestrated the sale of LiveJournal to Sup, a Russian media company which already runs a localized version of the site. With the sale, Anker and the rest of Six Apart’s team are letting LiveJournal know, as gently as they can, that they’re just not interested in its problems.

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Anker, LiveJournal founder Fitzpatrick, Sup CEO Andrew Paulson and some of his Russian engineers, a passel of Six Aparters, and one slightly bewildered goat held a bash at 111 Minna to celebrate the split. Also there: Fitzpatrick’s omnipresent ex, Pownce engineer Leah Culver. Culver was in good spirits, though, despite the rumor Fitzpatrick’s seeing someone in Russia. She too has a new beau, Justin.tv’s Kyle Vogt. We’re just waiting for the inevitable Leahcast.

Culver wasn’t the only camera-friendly type there. Natali Del Conte, CNET’s newly hired TV personality, stole the spotlight with a sparkling appearance just as I was leaving 111 Minna.