So that was day one of Techcrunch 50. The best tech conference in the universe, that pays my wages.

And what did I learn today? Today I learned that the Rocky soundtrack makes any technical hitch a million times more dramatic. I learned that Yossi Vardi believes that any disaster can be solved with a show of hands or a forced round of applause. I learned that, where other entrepreneurs quote Sun Tzu, Calanis prefers the wise words of Disney’s Ratatouille. I learned that when Arrington and Calacanis squabble, they sound like a gayer version of Starler and Waldorf.

But most importantly of all, I learned that there’s no way any of us are going to make it through a second long day without downing some serious booze. And so, with that in mind, I’m delighted to announce the rules of the Techcrunch 50 Day Two Drinking Game.

The rules are simple – we start tomorrow at 9am (Pacific). Get up early, grab yourself a case of beer and then either sit in the room or, if you had better things to do with three grand, tune into the live stream and follow these simple instructions…

• Take a sip when…
  - Someone uses the word “freemium” or describes something as a “chicken-egg problem”.
  - Someone makes a borderline misogynistic remark to the only female judge: (e.g. “That fashion company really made Marissa perk up”)
  - Someone claims that their aim is to change the world.
  - Someone claims that their aim isn’t to change the world.
  - Someone says “that’s a great question” in response to a judge, when they clearly want to say “go fuck yourself”.
• Take a swig when…
  - Someone actually tells a judge to go fuck themself.
  - The wifi works so well that it breaks someone’s pitch.
  - Yossi Vardi forces everyone to give an awkward round of applause for absolutely no reason.
  - Someone makes a joke about Michael Arrington in their pitch. (And take a second swig when that joke inevitably falls flat)
  - It becomes clear to everyone that the success of a particular company would result in the world becoming a terrible, terrible place.
• Drain your whole drink when…
  - Two founders walk on to the stage wearing identical shirts.
  - Someone sings during their pitch, or a lady starts to dance.
  - Jason Calacanis alludes to his personal wealth, mentions Tesla or quotes a Disney movie when giving advice to a startup.
  - Someone tries to bribe the entire room with cupcakes.
• Drain your drink and chug an entire fresh one when…
  
  - Someone tries to bribe the entire room with a car.

Good luck everyone. And – hey – let’s try to be wasted by noon!

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• Zynga Accuses Playdom of Stealing Trade Secrets; Judge Issues…
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There’s no love lost between competing social gaming platforms Zynga and Playdom. Earlier this year Zynga sued Playdom over what they called misleading ads. That litigation appears to remain outstanding, but Playdom has since changed their advertising practices.

Now there’s a much more serious dispute between the companies. Yesterday Zynga filed a lawsuit against Playdom and a number of other defendants in California state court. Among the many causes of action: misappropriation of trade secrets, breach of contract, breach of the duty of loyalty, tortious interference with contracts, tortious interference with existing and prospective economic advantage and unfair competition. The defendants include four ex-Zynga, now Playdom employees as well.

What this boils down to: Playdom has allegedly hired away a number of Zynga employees, and those employees have allegedly taken key information and documents from Zynga and have given them to Playdom. Among the most important documents that were supposedly stolen: The Zynga Playbook:

The Zynga Playbook is literally the recipe book that contains Zynga’s “secret sauce,” and its contents would be invaluable to a competitor like Playdom. The Zynga Playbook constitutes a collection in one document of many of the most material non-public commercially valuable concepts, techniques, know-how and best practices for developing successful and distinctive social games. The Playbook is the result of years of testing, development, trial and error, analyzing customer behavior, game behavior, optimizing past successful techniques, and collective know-how that Zynga has spent millions of dollars and more than tens of thousands of man hours developing and devising, and which could only be compiled by developing and deploying successful games over a period of years to millions of them. In the hands of a competitor like Playdom, this document alone creates huge exposure to Zynga as it breaks down in detail and memorializes the company’s key and collective efforts to develop and fit games to the social networking platform in the most successful manner. It is a “how-to” manual that belongs to Zynga.

Zynga accuses Playdom of actively soliciting Zynga employees to turn over proprietary information:

…Playdom recruiter Jennifer Farris emailed Defendant Martha Sapeta, a then-current Zynga employee who owed her undivided loyalty and best efforts to Zynga, with a “small assignment” as part of an upcoming and lengthy recruiting and interview meeting. Playdom instructed Defendant Sapeta to “compare and contrast” the precise Zynga games she was working on to corresponding competing Playdom games. Sapeta was offered “bonus points” if she could “propose a feature in [Playdom's competing] game that [she][thought] whould improve [user] growth.” Playdom even suggested the feature “can be a straight up ripoff from our competitors [i.e., Zynga's] app,” but with the caveat that Sapeta would “still have to explain in detail” how the ripped off features would work in Playdom’s competing game.

Specifically, Zynga accuses an ex-employee of downloading 70 files to a USB storage device two weeks before leaving to join Playdom. Three of the files were proprietary Zynga documents. Another defendant mailed 22 proprietary documents to his personal email account before departing to Playdom. The Zynga Playbook was among them.

The judge granted the request for a temporary restraining order against Playdom and the other defendants. Those defendants are prohibited from destroying any of the files allegedly misappropriated.

Neither company would comment on this story.

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Linda Avey, one of the two founders of personal genomics company 23andMe, is leaving the startup to start a new foundation dedicated to studying Alzheimer’s disease. Avey, who has been with the company for over three years, writes that the new foundation will make use of 23andMe’s research platform to “drive the formation of the world’s largest community of individuals with a family history of Alzheimer’s, empower them with their genetic information and track their brain health using state-of-the-art tools”.

Avey notes that the foundation will be starting with the connection between Alzheimer’s and ApoE4, which helps in the breakdown of peptide plaques associated with the disease. The decision seems to be driven in part by personal reasons, as Avey’s father-in-law suffered from Alzheimer’s.

Avey sent the following Email to the 23andMe team:

Dear all-

As I trust you all know, 23andMe is very special to me. I also recognize that the company has reached a critical point in its growth where new leadership can take it to the successful heights we all think it can achieve.

I’ve decided that I’d like to focus my efforts on an area that is personally significant and will continue to have a huge impact on our healthcare system–Alzheimer’s disease. Effective today, I’m leaving 23andMe and have begun making plans for the creation of a foundation dedicated to the study of this disorder. The foundation will leverage the research platform we’ve built at 23andMe–the goal is to drive the formation of the world’s largest community of individuals with a family history of Alzheimer’s, empower them with their genetic information and track their brain health using state-of-the-art tools. We’ve always planned to include Alzheimer’s in our 23andWe research mission…I’m just approaching it from a new angle.

Some of you might be aware that my father-in-law suffered from Alzheimer’s and passed away last year. For this reason, Randy and I are motivated to do what we can to improve the understanding of what leads to the debilitating symptoms and what might prevent them from starting in the first place. The ApoE4 association is barely understood but gives us a great starting point.

I’ll miss working with you but will be excited to hear about the progress I know you’ll be making!

All the best,
Linda

Anne Wojcicki, who founded the company with Avey and is also noted for being Sergey Brin’s wife, sent out the following letter.

Team:

As Linda has told you, she will be leaving 23andMe to focus her energy on transforming Alzheimer’s research and treatment, leveraging the 23andMe platform. While I am quite sad to see her leave I am excited and hopeful as she takes on this mission. As Linda’s co-founder and partner over the last three years, it has been clear that revolutionizing research has been a primary passion. Our drive to change health care has always had roots in our personal lives and we have tried to structure 23andMe so that any individual or organization could actively participate in research. Linda and I have talked about doing research in Alzheimer’s since the inception of the company and the need for the Alzheimer’s community to have a strong leader. With Linda’s involvement, I believe that the APOE4 community could be the first asymptomatic community to successfully develop preventative treatments. I hope that going forward we’ll both be able to shake up and transform the health care space, making health care and treatments better for all.

Linda’s departure is also a sign of 23andMe’s maturation. When we started the company, the personal genetics industry did not exist; now it is a thriving and competitive landscape. Our company has grown and we continue to be an innovative industry leader. While our success has been exceptional, it is also clear we have a lot of work ahead. We have created a significant and empowering tool, but we must find new and better ways to promote the value of knowing your DNA. In the weeks ahead, we will outline a strategy for the company that we believe will make genetics a routine part of health care and will lead us to making significant research discoveries.

Linda has been instrumental in making 23andMe what it is today and we thank her for her passion and dedication to the company. We have many exciting opportunities before us, and I look forward to working with all of you to make 23andMe a spectacular success.

Anne

Worth pointing out is Wojcicki’s statement that 23andMe needs to find “better ways to promote the value of knowing your DNA”. That may be tricky — while there are some traits that are well understood, this is a field that is still in its infancy and the relationships between our genes and most traits are murky. At some point personal genomics will play a key role in our health care system, but I’m not sure we’re there yet.

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SocialToo, a startup that lets you manage your personal connections on Twitter and Facebook, has launched a new Facebook application that lets you post updates to your Facebook wall, to Twitter, and any Facebook Fan Page you manage. This feature is particularly interesting after Facebook just released a feature that will allow Facebook Page owners to syndicate their updates from Facebook to Twitter — something that users have been asking for for ages. At the moment, it’s unclear whether Facebook will be extending this feature to Facebook Profiles.

Here’s how it works: after installing the application on your Facebook profile, you will be given a prompt in the Publisher’s drop down menu to publish via SocialToo Status. After authorizing your (via oAuth) Twitter accounts, you will be able to select a publish to Twitter option each time you post an update on your Facebook feed via the SocialToo Status option. You can also publish to various Facebook pages (if you are the administrator). When you publish via SocialToo Status, your updates will appear in your personal stream, along with a link to each destination, i.e. Twitter and Facebook Pages. There will also be a little green SocialToo quote icon with each post, differentiating the posts from a regular status update.

There a couple of other roundabout ways to publish updates from Facebook to Twitter that have emerged. An app called FB2Twitter lets you Tweet from Facebook’s Publisher to Twitter. But when trying the app out, I wasn’t able to publish to my Facebook feed. Another way to update Twitter from Facebook by pulling in the Facebook RSS feed into TwitterFeed but the whole process sounds confusing.

SocialToo’s app seems like one of the easiest ways to post from Facebook to Twitter at the moment. That is, until Facebook allows the ability to do this from your profiles and news feed. But its unclear if and when this will happen.

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