TechCrunch40 Session 8: Entertainment for All Ages
We're live blogging each session, adding to the summary of each company direct from the floor of TechCrunch 40. Click Refresh to view. — FlowPlay — FlowPlay is a virtual world community built around browser-based casual games.
Context & Ripple Effects
TechCrunch is running TechCruch40 as a live-blogged launch pad: each session gets floor-level summaries as companies demo, with a $50,000 prize waiting for the top company picked at the event. Session 8 puts FlowPlay on that stage with a browser-based virtual world built around casual games — a consumer-entertainment counterweight to the morning's revenue-models and analytics and productivity and web apps sessions.
First-order effects
- FlowPlay gets immediate exposure to TechCrunch's reader base and enters the running for the $50,000 top-company prize announced in July, with its summary written up live from the floor rather than after the fact.
- The entertainment session gives judges and attendees a consumer category to weigh directly against the productivity and analytics companies demoed earlier the same day.
Second-order effects
- Third-party bloggers are already arbitrating which launches matter — CenterNetworks published a Day 1 recap with its own top picks, so a strong FlowPlay demo competes for slot in blogger shortlists, not just official judging.
- Other virtual-world and casual-game startups not on stage lose relative share of launch-week attention, since the event concentrates coverage on forty companies at once.
Third-order effects
- If demo conferences keep converting live coverage into launch momentum, startups increasingly route debuts through curated event slots instead of quiet betas, making a seat on stage a scarce distribution asset — and the $50K prize a template other events may copy.
The trend: Startup launches are consolidating around live-covered demo competitions where a single event slot, judge attention, and blogger picks determine which consumer products break out.