Can someone help clarify this meetup's topic for me? To me, "monetization" means "extracting more revenue/sales/profit from each user"... a kind of general business issue. But it looks like this is more about virtual currency systems in game and game-like worlds. Is that right?

My understanding is that it's around Virtual Currency trying to monetize your applications (facebook, myspace, etc). And you still monetize a 'user' as you make him buy Virtual Currency via either

i) Real Dollars. (you get the money)

ii) Doing Offers. (The Offering company pays you)

Many VC's think it's a proven model for at least Social Networking Applications. (See Offerpal Media, Peanut Labs)

I will be heading there tomorrow, so I will update you guys how it went.

Thanks!

you can use the #mnw2 to get tweets on the topic OR I'll blog the main points when I get some time.

I'd love to see more posts like this directly on HN.

BTW there is also a NewTech meetup every 1st Tuesday of the month at Palo Alto on the DLA Piper Buildings(near 101).

Typically it consists of 3 or 4 demos of products(pretty much Web based applications). I saw Evernote, FluidApp, Retrevo to name a few in these meetups. It's then followed by Networking where you can look for fellow founders or even hire developers etc etc ...