The Social

AUSTIN, Texas--Despite having plenty of blogging work still to do on Friday night, I decided to check out some of the South by Southwest Interactive Festival's notorious after-hours scene. Man, it's enough to give anyone a headache long before the aftereffects of the free drinks set in the next morning.

Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos (center) in a photo op with Mashable's Tamar Weinberg (left) and PaidContent's Joseph Weisenthal

(Credit: Caroline McCarthy/CNET News.com)

Friday night promised to be the least party-heavy night of the week, with only one "official" party on the books: PR firm Porter Novelli's happy hour at the massive bar called Six Lounge. Probably because of the lack of other SXSWi parties, the line outside the door at Six soon stretched round the block and satellite soirees popped up at several other bars, like the zillion-beers-on-tap Ginger Man down the street. Nevertheless, the onslaught of Twitters and text messages saying that everyone should hit up a certain bar--or even more specifically, a certain floor of a certain bar--got really, really nuts. And if you left one bar for the next only to decide to go back, you had to hop back in line.

But the company was worth keeping. The most unexpected socializer of the night was arguably Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos, who said he wasn't in town to host a panel or make a high-profile appearance at SXSWi--he was just around to socialize and talk to people, which everyone seemed to think was pretty darn cool, and was also an effective strategy in convincing bloggers that it would be rude to ask him prying questions about Amazon.

Blog entrepreneurs and perpetual Valleywag gossip targets Pete Cashmore and Robert Scoble.

(Credit: Caroline McCarthy)

Spotted at either Ginger Man or Six: uber-blogger Robert Scoble, Digg founder Kevin Rose (who told me in jest that his company doesn't have a buyer but is up for sale on eBay), WineLibrary.tv host Gary Vaynerchuk, PaidContent blogger Joseph Weisenthal, Gawker's Nick Douglas, AllFacebook's Nick O'Neill, Pownce co-founder Leah Culver, and a whole crew from social-networking blog Mashable, whose founder Pete Cashmore was passing out business cards and swag rather than dancing this time.

At least thus far, it appears that Twitter is the new Twitter. The microblogging service managed to hold up in the wake of Friday night's SXSWi activity, and was getting used nonstop across the board. But Saturday night's parties will be about an order of magnitude bigger, so we'll have to see if it manages to survive another evening out.

See more stories in CNET News.com's coverage of SXSWi (click here).

For those who came in late, Blu-ray has won the format war.

On Wednesday, online retailer Amazon.com became the latest to declare its support for the victorious high-definition technology, announcing that it "will more prominently promote Blu-ray hardware and software products on its Web site." The company will not, however, discontinue its sales of HD DVD products.

"The high-definition landscape is rapidly changing, and consumers are looking for guidance on how to make the best high-definition buying decisions," Peter Faricy, Amazon's vice president of movies and music, said in a statement from the company. "Our customers have clearly voiced their support for the Blu-ray format."

But in a sense, Amazon is also an indicator that Blu-ray's struggles aren't quite over. With its Unbox movie download service, Amazon is among a number of major Web retailers that offer digital downloads of movies and TV shows. Some have said that with all the bickering over HD DVD and Blu-ray for so many months, digital downloads from companies like Amazon, Netflix, and Apple's iTunes were able to find a steadier footing.

Luckily for Blu-ray overlord Sony, your average digital movie download isn't nearly up to par in the quality department.