Liveblogging Unveiling of the SFund at Facebook (With Guest Stars: Kleiner, Amazon and Zynga)

BoomTown had to park a badillion miles away from Facebook’s suburban HQ in Palo Alto, Calif. and hoof it here for an event that will apparently unveil the sFund.

What’s that? A $250 million fund for social start-ups.

Let’s get to it.

10:40 am PT: The excitement is building–well, not really–at the Facebook cafeteria, as the press gets to see the name of the sFund on screens throughout the room.

Kleiner Perkins power VC John Doerr starts off the proceedings with some microphone snafus, when he tries to get out from behind the podium.

“John, sometimes you have to stay in the box,” joked Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, who is sitting onstage in an Internet Hall of Fame group.

The others would be Facebook CEO and co-founder Mark Zuckerberg, Zynga CEO and Founder Mark Pincus, and man-about-Web Bing Gordon.

Doerr goes on about the importance of social, related to the Internet.

Then, he intros Zuckerberg, hoodie-less, who agrees with him, talking about photos and how social made them hot on Facebook.

Apparently, everything is going social. Personally, I am now contemplating becoming a hermit.

Doerr goes all Oprah on him, asking what would inspire him if he were starting out today (and presumably no Winklevii around to “borrow” an idea from).

“If you take any passion and map it to an industry,” said Zuckerberg, it will result in disruption.

Then Doerr goes Barbara Walters on Pincus, tossing him a softball about the fabulousness of it all.

For example: “What’s inspired you to be a CEO at this amazing company?” (Note to Walt Mossberg: Let’s file that tough one away for D9!)

11:01 am:Thank goodness then for Bezos, who simply says he hopes these new companies will take some of that $250 million and use Amazon Web services.

He talks about how these trends grow virally and “sometimes violently.”

Ouch!

He moves on to some chemical explosion metaphor, and I am now certain I want to be a hermit.

Then, after a question about what he would do now, he veers to bioengineering! Doerr wants a social answer, but Bezos is talking test tubes and “engineered and synthetic life.”

But Gordon behaves for John “Diane Sawyer” Doerr and talks about how social is the only place to be for the cool kids.

He reels off the other partners, including Comcast, Liberty Media and Allen & Co.

One more question from Doerr: Five years from now, what is going to make you “delighted” about and for the customers you service.

Gordon: He can see the family.

Pincus: He has a set of 12-week twins, who are still too young to use Facebook. He is excited it is all getting wired. “When everyone is always connected to one another, rather than connected to the Web,” he said, that’s the bomb.

He calls the big companies “dial tones,” as in Zynga is the gaming dial tone, Amazon is the shopping dial tone and Facebook is the dial tone.

Zuckerberg: I am not sure he is actually answering the question. But I think his wish is about this social network getting to scale all over the place.

He goes on though, talking about how some companies are building a “light” social layer versus companies where social is “built fundamentally into the product.”

These, of course, have an advantage, according to the gospel of Zuckerberg.

Bezos: He talks about Amazon’s Web services some more–this dude is a retailer, so he is sure good at selling.

Gordon, who is apparently like Ed McMahon to Doerr’s Johnny Carson, rounds up the feel-good session.

11:17 am: Q&A.

Go Miguel Helft, from the New York Times, who asks a good question, about what took so long for Doerr to do this fund, since social has been around for seven years.

Doerr jokes, “Next question.” Ha.

But really. Doerr does not answer except to say that Zynga only exploded a year ago, so back off, Miguel.

There are two other dullish questions, about new partners.

“It’s a quarter-billion-dollar party,” said Gordon, which I am not quite wanting to attend.

Larry Magid from CBS asks about social responsibility around privacy, especially after the recent controversy around the leaking of Facebook user info to advertisers, via third-party apps companies such as Zynga.

Then, there is a question about whether this is not simply the “FBFund,” as in Facebook, since the social networking site is going to benefit the most.

No, it is not, declares Doerr.

More questions–about monetization, free versus paid and an off-topic one about rumors of Amazon launching an app store (of course it is!).

Zuckerberg takes the monetization one. All of the above, it’s great, money for all.

The event ends with a very odd poem by Gordon, which ends with a decent joke about the possibility that entrepreneurs, if they are lucky, get a movie “made about you.”

He is referring to “The Social Network,” which trashed Zuckerberg.

In any case, quarter-billion-dollar party on, Mark.