Held at Buffalo Billiards in downtown Austin, the Mashable team threw a soiree that rivaled all others that night and the entire venue was nearly filled to capacity, or at least it seemed it was pretty hard to move around. With free drinks (<$4) and entertainment put on by DJ Chicken  George, who said that Mashable can’t throw a lively party. All sorts of ce-web-rities showed up, including Leo Laporte, Robert Scoble, Brian Solis, Michelle Feldman, Drew Olanoff and even Pete Cashmore (well…it was his party, after all).

The party started at 9pm and kept going until 2am when Buffalo Billiards kicked everyone out and we dispersed into the streets seeking the next source of entertainment. The Mashable party was definitely one that I looked forward at my time at SXSW. Definitely something worth going to if you get a chance.

Here are some photos from the event:

Team Mashable

The crowd at the MashBash

Jeff Pulver

Gregarious Narain, Drew Olanoff & Jenn Van Grove

Wm. Marc Salsberry

Pete Cashmore & Leora Israel

Robert Scoble with Leo Laporte interviewing Lisa Bettany

Chris Heuer & Pete Cashmore

Khayyam Wakil, Drew Olanoff & Brett Petersel

Having fun at the MashBash

Stephanie Agresta and Pete Cashmore

DJ Chicken George

Many more photos from the Mashable MashBash photos can be found online by clicking here.

Photo Credit: Kenneth Yeung

If you spend 60 minutes reading his stuff, you’ll be street smart by St Patrick’s Day.

By Larry Chiang

8 Mistakes Big Brands Make Fighting a Social Media War

Nothing attracts human interest more than conflict.

Mammals love watching mammals fight and its the most popular stuff on Animal Planet. Well, Twitter status updates are all the rage so naturally conflict here attracts the most coverage.

Big brands are notoriously bad at this new medium where the exception is more notable than the norm. The norm = bad

Here are the biggest mistakes I have viewed first hand

-1- Non Transparency.

If you’re a big brand tweeting, who exactly is the voice.

PB Works does it right using a great employee spokesperson David Weekly. And that hottie that does community Christie

-2- Using a logo as your Twitter Pic

Nothing says corporate more than an effen logo as an avatar. Have you seen the graphic designers joke, “Use the cream, ‘Make my logo bigger’”. It’s hi-larry-ass but sad because its true.

Have you seen Duck9 website. We made and keep making that mistake.

-3- Forgetting Sex Sells

Yelp has an incredibly hawt smart female running community.

I don’t know exactly what my point is or was… but I read in a Stanford business book that sex sells. Ka-pow, I just saved you

-4- Learn to Say Sorry

If your brand was a big donkey, apologize.

There was a big venture capital firm that told me I was dumb and that my idea would never work. I wrote a Yelp review and paid $3k for inbound links to my review. They apologized and I dropped it.

-5- Don’t Fire Back

After my review of State Farm, a review was written about my company to mock my experience.

Never fire back.

Cite defendable truths and at least claim to “continue investigations of this internal business practice”

-6- Empower All Employees to Tweet

Remember, in a time where nearly everything records and nearly everyone is part of the media, your employee statements

-7- Remove the Disclaimer

“I’m an employee of Duck9 but these words are my own” is a legal disclaimer that my night school trained attorney can pierce.

-8- The Ostrich, Camel Toe and MooseKnuckle

In short don’t stick your head in the sand if you’re a big brand. In the comments, add your thoughts

-9- How to Recover From a Black Eye
Business is about not hitting the panic button.
One consumer with 20 twitter followers can stain your reputation with a compelling story.

Social Media War party is happening at South by Southwest (SXSW). For the first time at SXSW, there is the Social Media War party. It has the food tab supported by State Farm. And just like life, if State Farm doesn’t pay, I Larry Chiang will.
http://bit.ly/buster10

I wrote this in 30 minutes. If I missed something, email me… larry @larrychiang dot com and include your cell in the subject line.

DISCLOSURE: I kick a lot of butt. Text or call me during office hours 11:11am or 11:11pm PST +/-11 minutes on my cell: 650-283-8008.

Larry Chiang is the founder of Duck9 , which educates college students on how to establish and maintain a FICO score over 750. He is a frequent contributor to BusinessWeek. His earlier posts on GigaOm include: How to Work The Room ; 8 Tips On How to Get Mentored ; and 9 VCs You’re Gonna Want To Avoid . You can read more equally funny, but non-founder-focused-lessons on Larry’s Amazon blog .

Is this the way in which television finally contends with the internet? By joining forces? For the past few years, the differentiating lines amongst consumer electronics has been getting fainter. The functions of cameras, television sets, radios, computers and cell phones are being fitted into a single device, unifying our multiple media access points.

Finding a way to incorporate more on-demand media options, which can be run through the internet, is another monetization option for brands. Finding another way into the homes of consumers, traditional and new media sectors can act as targeted ad channels. The continued support of these distribution channels will lend some relief to areas such as broadcast television. Cable and satellite companies have been prepping for this era for some time as well, moving into bundled packages providing several data and communication services.

All of this enables the television to run the internet as well as a computer, as well as additional platforms upon which applications can be run. In doing so, the application economy will be encouraged as it expands into yet another media sector.

Interesting stuff, to say the least. Yet Google’s platform is still relatively young and unregulated. On mobile phones, Android still has its own shortcomings when compared to standards such as Apple’s platform. Open-source, Android comes with a slew of potential pitfalls when considering its expansion at this stage in its development. As Apple provides an example for how consumers may react to certain content, the unrestricted accessibility of certain content through Android is a concern Google will need to deal with.

Nevertheless, it seems important for Google to continue to create a presence across many consumer electronics. Finding a way to gt those devices to talk to each other is how Google continues to become a unifying factor for consumers, steadily making it a viable option for an application economy.

All the digerati were out in force this night and surely the TechSet Party help set the tone for the parties during the rest of South by Southwest. From seeing folks like Sean Percival, Robert Scoble, Dave Mathews, Jess Berlin, Chris Heuer, Scott Beale, Adam Ostrow, Adam Hirsch, Wm. Marc Salsberry and many others, the TechSet party was definitely the place to be.

Here are some photos from the event:

The hosts for your evening: Stephanie Agresta & Brian Solis

Welcome to the TechSet & Windows Phone Party

The Speakeasy

The line of people waiting to get into the TechSet & Windows Phone Party

Jess Berlin, Frank Gruber & Jen Consalvo

Chris Heuer, Khris Loux and Nancy Cole

Jess Berlin, Melissa Rowley, Brian Solis, Laura Fitton, Reem Abeidoh and Rick Calvert

The band entertaining the crowd at the party

Hey look! It’s part of Team Mashable with other attendees!

More photos from the TechSet & Windows Phone party can be found online by clicking here.

Photo Credit: Kenneth Yeung

It’s the downloading capabilities that will set Blockbuster apart from the rest, as most other movie rental services don’t allow content downloading for on-demand movie rentals. Netflix, for instance, only offers streaming for its mobile apps. Other contenders such as DirecTV enable users to remotely interact with their satellite service, but the movie streaming is even less of an option for mobile devices.

On the other side of things, Blockbuster is still competing with the likes of Redbox, another physical kiosk that offers easy and cheap movie rentals on the fly. Though Redbox doesn’t have a digital presence (especially on the mobile front), it has become a threat to Blockbuster over the long term.

It is because of these other options that Blockbuster has needed to turn to technology in order to regain a foothold in the movie rental business. Always trying to one-up its competitors, Blockbuster’s Android and Windows mobile app will, for the most part, be a viable alternative to iTunes movie download rentals. Content will be DRM-protected, giving Android and Windows mobile users their own version of iTunes.

Being that kind of iTunes alternatives has its own downfall, however. The Blockbuster OnDemand app can’t run on Apple products, as it voilates Apple’s terms for saving movies on its devices. So while the Blockbuster OnDemand app will be available on Android devices (many of which are being manufactured by Motorolla) and the upcoming HTC Mini which is running Windows Mobile, Blockbuster can’t launch its app on the iPhone or the media-centric iPad, currently undergoing pre-sale orders.

According to ReadWriteWeb, Blockbuster may be working on an alternative app for the iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad. In that case, a streaming and downloadable option may be the way in which Blockbuster actually gets a leg up on the majority of its competitors. The presence of such apps further validates mobile platforms outside of Apple’s, and enables consumers to have a few more choices when it comes to the diverse media capabilities of non-iPhones.

If you’re at the South By Southwest (SXSW) interactive festival this year and you haven’t had a chance to swing by the Circus Mashimus lounge, I suggest you do. It was a smash hit at last year’s SXSWi and I’m happy to see Mashery CEO Oren Michels and team are back at this year’s SXSWi.

The Circus Mashimus lounge is not only a great place to grab free coffee in the morning while you check your email, and then beer and popcorn in the afternoon; but it’s the place to be to talk mashups and visit with the Mashery team and its customers and sponsors to learn how to get more from your data by opening it up to developers.

Mashery offers customers a flexible, secure and effective way to manage their application programming interface (API) programs. Offering developers open APIs is an ongoing process from performance and security to registration and provisioning, so having a way to manage it all is critical to the success of an API developer program. And nowadays it’s all about the apps and giving information to customers in new and creative ways, and in the manner and places that they want it, so having an efficient API management platform, such as Mashery, can greatly contribute to the success of an API developer program.

Mashery has an impressive list of customers from Best Buy, Netflix and Etsy to CafePress, among many others. Best Buy, with its Best Buy Remix, and CafePress are sponsors of this year’s Circus Mashimus lounge, so swing by and grab a coffee or beer (depending on time of day) and check out the cool mashups being created by developers and how it’s all managed easily through Mashery.

The Circus Mashimus lounge is open from 9:30AM-6:00PM through tomorrow and is located on the first floor in room three near the Screenburn Arcade in the Austin Convention Center where SXSW is being held.

And check out Bubblicious Reporter Alison McNeill interviews with Oren Michels and Best Buy’s Michele Azar from last year’s Circus Mashimus at SXSWi 2009.

SXSW: Interview with Best Buy’s Michele Azar

SXSW: Interview with Mashery CEO Oren Michels

The battery replacement policy will charge iPad owners $99 to swap out the device’s battery, upon which time they will also receive a new iPad. The policy is similar to the iPhone battery replacement system, save for the fact that your iPhone battery is the only thing that gets replaced. But the debate about whether or not the customers should pony up the cash to have their iPad replaced is of concern.

Several of Apple’s devices have limiting battery options, as they cannot be replaced on your own. The modified verbiage on the iPad, however, has raised a few brows. Compared to the jargon used for the iPhone battery replacement, it appears Apple may be expecting some issues with the batteries of its upcoming and heavily anticipated device.

One issue with the policy is that replaced devices could be refurbished. This is a relatively green (economic and otherwise) method for Apple, but should the company be charging so much for that process? The other issue is that your data will be lost, so backup of your iPad will be necessary for anything you want carried over to your replacement device.

The biggest issue, however, may be the iPad battery itself. Already the expectations around it have been compromised, so consumers and pundits alike will be looking for problems. The service fee, too, is a matter of debate, especially as the recall nation seeks retribution for faulty products. From Toyota to Pringles, the consumer trust level is waning for a few companies out there. With all the hype around Apple’s latest, will the iPad be something else to be distrusted?

If there really are battery problems with the iPad, consumers may be leary to purchase something with a known problem. Especially as they are made aware of the battery replacement policy beforehand, some consumers may want to wait until the next generation of the iPad all together.

Unless the iPad has major issues with its battery, I doubt this will become a major issue for sales or the legal system. Nevertheless, it’s important for Apple to protect its brand. Doing so will ensure the health of its media-changing potential with the iPad device itself.

What makes Zoetica different than other news aggregators is that Beth Kanter, Social Media and Nonprofit expert, hand selects the blog feeds that are ultimately aggregated into the app, ensuring the user will receive the most relevant information in the space. The app was created through a partnership with AppMakr and is in itself an example of the possible use of such a tool for a nonprofit. The service makes app development possible for groups with limited budgets and limited tech skills, something many nonprofits can use. AppMakr offers different price points that allow for almost any marketing budget to include an app in the plan.

For more information about the application as well as possible uses for nonprofits, please visit Beth Kanter’s blog