Last week Sophie and I went to Paris for the Le Web event. Whereas ETRE probably has the best networking and is over-the-top elegant, and DEMO Germany is a must for anyone wanting to enter the German market, Le Web is easily the coolest tech event that I’ve ever attended (Essential Web is probably second).

By cool, I mean that it felt like I was at a cool, exclusive party — kind of like when my friends and I snuck into Puff Daddy’s VIP Party when the MTV Awards came to Barcelona. But that’s another story . . .

At ETRE, the guests are important but not really focused on being cool. It’s more like being invited to a world summit where you can actually meet and interact with world leaders. At DEMO, you have all of the German VCs available to you. At Le Web, the speakers and other guests are cool, public figures but probably not the main attraction. Some of them gave 20-minute extracts of what should really be much larger discussions. In fact, in a world where almost everyone has a blog and has posted his or her best presentations on YouTube, you usually don’t learn anything new at large conferences geared to general-interest audiences full of non-entrepreneurs. If you want to participate in longer, more substantive conversations with entire micro-communities of commentators, analysts and entrepreneurs, go read your favorite entrepreneur or VC’s blog or become one of her “friends” on Facebook or search for her presentations on YouTube. There are a lot of options that are cheaper than paying the hefty entrance fees and travel expenses to go to a conference.

But if you do go to a conference, it’s nice to feel welcomed, as if you are a VIP guest. And that’s what Le Web excels at. It’s clear that they spent lots of time designed to make the event feel special and singular — making it comfortable and elegant, as opposed to just functional and boring.

A few highlights:

• The networking lounge was full of modern art work and live artists drawing while entrepreneurs networked on comfortable couches and/or watched the main conference on large plasma TVs.
• There was the Michelin-star type lunch, with chefs preparing foie, shrimp, fondues, raclettes and other great meals, and other waiters serving wine, cocktails or whatever beverage might capture your attention.
• Each guest was introduced with electronica / house music, which certainly woke me up at 9AM in the morning
• Loïc Le Meur graciously introduced himself to each guest at the party, smiling broadly and being a good host, even when Phillipe Starck spoke about 1 hour more than his allotted time.
• Kevin Rose had a very intimate and personal conversation with a Business Week journalist, who asked him about Digg’s groupies.
• Most of the presentators cursed and spoke in a lot more “vulgar” terms. It was surprising on the one hand, but it lent to the atmosphere that the audience was being allowed to hear open and honest conversations between influential Internet opinon-makers. No bullshitting. Just the real deal with lots of cursing.
• Most of the attendees were dressed stylishly and intelligently, as if we were all part of an exclusive Rive Gauche soiree.
• And, of course, there was the fact that so many people went. Bloggers. VCs. Tech analysts. Entrepreneurs. It seems that we all go to the same conferences, but people seemed a lot happier and cheerful at this one. Various blogs had speculated that there’d be 2000 people attending (clever, aggressive marketing). At the event, however, Loïc mentioned that 800 people would attend, and it seemed to me that there were fewer than that. A good showing, but fewer than 1000 people in the same room at the same time. And a lot of the tickets seem like they were comped — i.e., free for friends of friends of Loïc and certain bloggers.

That being said, it was definitely a very cool event. The coolest, most elegant tech event around by far.

One country, one vertical.

That’s what I thought as I read the news that Deutsche Telecom had exercised its right of first refusal to buy Immobilienscout24 for €500 million.

Back in late August, Jesus announced that PBL and Macquarie Bank had formed a joint venture to buy 66% of Immobilienscout24 for €357 million, which would have valued the company at €540 million. PBL is a traditional media company that is apparently trying to enter the online classifieds space more aggressively. They already own Australia’s second most important real estate portal: MyHome.com.au.

Axel Springer, a large German media group, was also in the running, but dropped out when the price got too high.

There’s no doubt that Immobilienscout24 is Germany’s biggest online real estate portal. The company boasts some monster numbers:

• Revenue of €53 million in 2006
• EBITDA of €21 million (meaning that the acquisition price was about 24x EBITDA)
• 1.2 million ads
• 70,000 customers
• 2.5 million visitors per month

Again, this is one vertical, one country.

We will soon launch our property search engine in both Germany (www.nuroa.de) and Spain (www.nuroa.com). As we embark on this journey, Immobilienscout24’s numbers will no doubt serve as both a challenge and an inspiration.

It was also interesting to note that, as Nicole from Blognation points out, the rationale for the transaction was to diversify Deutsche Telecom’s business model. Apparently, the company is losing money from its traditional telephone business and wants to promote a more modern image by focusing more on Internet-based businesses.

It seems that it’s not only the traditional media companies that see the value of online classifieds businesses.

Online videos (and a tabloid-worthy personal life) killed the untalented pop star.

Britney Spears is over. She’s amassed an amazing fortune based on limited talent and her ability to glamorize normalcy. Her unique trait seemed to be her hunger to succeed and her Janet/Michael Jackson-like performance skills.

But that was two kids and a rushed marriage ago.

Her performance at the MTV Video Music Awards were profoundly normal but decidely unglamorous. It was like a bad Karaoke night in little Tokyo. The lip-synching sucked. The dance moves were limp. She was sporting a beer gut, despite being dressed skimpily in “sexy” lingerie.

The most interesting part of the entire performance was to see how MTV is now using online videos to pump up its declining relevance and to combat YouTube.

In addition to the Britney performance, MTV’s website boasts Kanye West’s meltdown (he complains that a black man apparently can’t win an MTV award — with his bank account, I hardly feel sorry for him. I don’t think that his failure to win an MTV VMA is the biggest struggle facing the black male population).

And there was the all-out, “white-trash” slugfest between Kid Rock and Tommy Lee, both of them ex-husbands of the even more sordid Pamela Anderson.

Apparently, the fight was for Pamela’s virtue. A losing battle.

And it was all caught by MTV’s cameras and streamed via its online player.

Of course, I didn’t watch the MTV Awards. I read about them online in the New York Times and perezhilton.com, before redirecting myself to MTV’s website to see the highlights.

MTV apparently understands that you won’t view the awards on regular TV either. They’ve completely revamped the format to focus on the YouTube generation that wants more performances, fewer speeches, and all of it in short video snippets. And they’ve promised not to rebroadcast the show 100 times on their channel.

Instead they’ll let you stream it from their website, based on your preferences.

And they’ll sue anyone — in particular, YouTube — that attempts to broadcast their content without permission or a good revenue-sharing plan.

Once again, it’s clear that Internet is disrupting media — some of it traditional, and some of it more provocative and youthful like MTV once was. (For a less pop-culture review of the disruptive force of online videos, see Ollivier’s post (in Spanish)).

Simon Waldman, Director of Digital Strategy for the Guardian Media Group in the UK, has posted a very insightful presentation about the intersection of the Internet and Web 2.0 on his blog. The text reflects a speech he gave to a German general media audience in Berlin. There is also a pdf version of the script of the presentation.

Simon makes the following arguments:

• Newspapers that want to survive need to embrace, exploit and excel in web 2.0. “There is no denying that our industry — particularly in Western Europe and North America — is structurally challenged, and that is almost entirely down to the net. . . . But I fundamentally believe that newspaper publishers who are prepared to experiment, innovate and invest online will create significant cultural and commercial value as a result of their efforts.”
• Internet moves quickly and probably a lot more quickly than the pace to which traditional media groups are accustomed. “Being online is like having a shop in a mall– you have to keep up with everyone around you, even if they’re not a direct competitor. Otherwise, you seem very tired, very quickly.”
• There are four axes of Web 2.0. “I know that there are all sorts of definitions of Web 2.0, but in my mind there are four key characteristics in the boom: Social networks, search and aggregation, collaboration and video.”
• Google is a frenemy. “Google and its impact on every sector of the economy’s attempt to grapple with the Internet are undeniable — and the newspaper industry perhaps more than most. Some of us see them as a competitor and a stealer of content; others see it as a source of traffic and revenue . . . . [B]ut all I will say is that defining and understanding a relationship with Google and other search players and aggregators is a crucial part of operating effectively in the online world.”
• There’s no turning back, even though most newspaper companies and traditional media groups might wish otherwise. “I wish Google would go back to being a nice, cuddly search engine that does no evil, rather than a global advertising bohemoth. Or at the very least, I wish they had to pay big bucks to carry our headlines and first paragraphs on Google News. I wish free classifieds sites would go away, or that the Internet has recruitment advertisers rushing to spend more rather than less. . . . [B]ut I also know that they are not going to happen. . . . The point is - this is about change. Not a gentle, start of the new school year, kind of change — but disruptive, shifting of tectonic plates kind of change.”

It’s good to see this kind of realistic optimism from the traditional media. There are obviously a lot of synergies between newspapers / media groups on the one hand, and search engines on the other. Indeed has The New York Times as an investor and strategic ally. Simply Hired has News Corp. Yahoo and Google are also increasingly trying to create cross-selling opportunities with newspaper groups.

But it’s also true that when we spoke to some investors initially - and even more recently - people seem to have the concern that search engines and aggregators “steal” their content, rather than they are partners that can redirect traffic to their businesses for less money than traditional media outlets, like newspapers, that charge a lot more for reaching target audiences.

In any case, it seems that the “slow death of newspapers” at the hands of search engines, aggregators and online classifieds sites is in the news a bit this week. Don Dodge has also an interesting post entitled “Online classified ads take $3.1 billion from newspapers,” which is review of an article in the Washington Post about the same topic. The post article is particularly interesting because it examines how vertical search engines such as Edgeio and Oodle are disrupting traditional classifieds businesses.

The bottom line: Search engines and aggregators are here to stay. Not all of us will survive, and most of us will be co-opted or bought. A few may become large, independent IPO-friendly companies. But the technological and economic disruption to traditional media companies can not be ignored or denied.

Ever heard of ConnectU?

Neither had I until I read about the lawsuit that they’re bringing against Facebook in today’s New York Times. It’s an interesting addition to the cloning vs. innovation debate, as it shows that both European and American start-ups “borrow” innovations from their competitors. Technology companies exist within a free marketplace of ideas. Facebook, the current media darling, is perhaps an exaggerated demonstration of this reality.

Here are the facts that no one disputes:

• In 2002, Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss, twin brothers at Harvard, wanted to start a social networking site called HarvardConnection.
• In November 2003, they “hired” Mark Zuckerberg, a computer science student at Harvard, to develop the software and database for their site. They never paid him anything but told him that they’d compensate him if the project ever became successful.
• In January 2004, Zuckerberg registered the name “thefacebook.com” (Zuckerberg didn’t invent the name. The “facebook” is what students at Ivy League schools call their student directories.)
• In February 2004, Zuckerberg abandoned the Winklevoss brothers’ project. By the end of the month, he had registered half of Harvard’s student population for his project, and by April his success had spread to other Ivy League schools.
• ConnectU (the Winklevoss brothers’ project) eventually launched in May 2004. They claim that Zuckerberg purposely delayed delivering their technology so that he’d gain a competitive advantage over them.
• Today, Facebook has 30 million users, lots of buzz and is worth upwards of $900.000.000 (the price that Yahoo was willing to pay last year); ConnectU has 70.000 users and the only buzz that it’s generated is largely because of its lawsuit against Facebook.

So the Winklevoss brothers came up with the idea. They trusted Mark Zuckerberg to implement it (at least with the regard to the technical elements). He told them that he would but never actually delivered the promised technology, all while secretly plotting to use the Winklevoss brothers’ concept to create a competitor website.

It sounds like the Winklevoss brothers have a good case, right?

Wrong.

As famed intellectual property professor (and noted proponent of diminished intellectual property protections) Larry Lessig notes:

“The general rule is that ideas are free unless strapped down by contract or patent.”

In other words, the free market — and not the courts — tend to determine who owns a great idea, unless there is a very clear intellectual property protection (like a patent) in place.

No one disputes that Zuckerberg got the idea from the Winklevoss brothers. Morally speaking, he should probably give them something. Without them, Facebook never would have happened, and he’d probably be working as a junior programmer at Google. But he wouldn’t be on the verge of becoming mind-numbling rich before he turns 25. Why can’t he just give them a few million dollars? It seems wrong to say that the Winklevoss brothers are entitled to nothing.

That’s just tacky.

And it certainly makes me reflect a little bit more on the moral implications of “Greed is Good” argument.

But the US legal system is clear: without a binding contract between the Winklevoss brothers and Zuckerberg, the brothers don’t have a case. As the judge hearing the case advised the brothers before giving them 2 weeks to come back with a stronger argument, “Dorm-room chitchat does not make a contract.”

Say what you will about Zuckerberg. He might not be the most morally upright person. But he knew how to spot a great idea and run with it, regardless of who he had to stab in the back to achieve his goals. His cut-throat actions remind me of the best and the worst of the US business culture.

The Winklevoss brothers’ problem is that they were too trusting with what turned out to be literally a billion-dollar idea. If they had gotten Zuckerberg to sign a non-disclosure with a non-compete clause, the case would be entirely different. But telling someone your trade secret — and forgetting to get them to sign a non-disclosure agreement — means that your trade secret is no longer legally protected.

Likewise, if the Winklevoss brothers had paid Zuckerberg for his work — if he had been their employee — they would have some claim to it. But given the lack of compensation and/or employee status, Zuckerberg’s work all belongs to him.

Bottom line: If you have a good idea, don’t trust anyone. People are funny when it comes to money. Try to put everything in writing. Get all of your service providers to sign NDAs with non-compete clauses, or you might find that today’s collaborator is tomorrow’s competitor.

I know that most start-ups think that lawyers are a waste of money, and money is often tight, but as the old saying goes, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. In other words, it’s better to pay a lawyer a few dollars today, than end up like the Winklevoss brothers, watching a former collaborator make billions of dollars off of your idea.