Del.icio.us founder Joshua Schachter, now a Google engineer, contemplated violence. (There's some kind of thing about guns going around on Twitter! We don't get it, but we sure hope that's what Schachter's referring to!)
KNBC TV personality Shira Lazar corrupted the youth of America.
Associated Press managing editor Lou Ferrara expressed an entirely legitimate concern.
Bizarro right-wing conservatrix Michelle Malkin made it official: She is not PC.
New Yorker writer Tad Friend cried in public.

See something worth noting on Twitter? Please email us your favorite tweets — or send us more Twitter usernames.

I was largely sidelined by the decisions of my management. So that was mostly the result rather than the cause, if that makes sense. It was an incredibly frustrating experience and I wish I was a lot more like Stewart [Butterfield] in terms of pushing my point of view.

Our question is what took him so long? With a $15 million pay day from the sale of his startup, he could have walked away from the start to enjoy "glorious unemployment." Butterfield could have told him there was no room for tinkers at Yahoo. (Photo by Enrique Dans)

Here's the problem: Entrepreneurs need to get paid. Those who finance need return on investment. It's nuts to take any company public that cannot deliver consistent and predictable growth and earnings quarter over quarter for years. We've sold Del.icio.us, FeedBurner, and Tacoda, to Yahoo, Google, and AOL, respectively. Were we happy to take their money? Yes. But look deeper. Del.icio.us: the user base has fallen off. FeedBurner: I don't see any integration between AdWords and FeedBurner. Tacoda: top members of the Tacoda team are gone. I am wondering if there is a better way: a place for private equity investors to trade securities. The companies remain private, do not file with the SEC, and do not trade daily. When an entrepreneur or investor wants liquidity on a position they own, they come to these private markets, offer their position or part of their position for sale, and a trade is made.

Paul Levine, the GM of Yahoo Local, the group in which Upcoming found a home, left earlier this year for AdBrite. Cameron Marlow, a much-respected thinker in Yahoo Research, is also leaving, we hear. And Flickr cofounder Stewart Butterfield, who played a large role in Upcoming's acquisition, is not leaving Yahoo, as we previously reported. Sources familiar with Butterfield's thinking now say he doesn't plan to go back to running Flickr after his current paternity leave, instead finding another role within Yahoo.

(Photo by Scott Beale/Laughing Squid)

Notable bombs like Pets.com and Kozmo.com at the height of the Internet bubble scared Amazon.com CEO Jeff Bezos out of the acquisition business. But he now appears to be cautiously filling up his cart again. So far this year, he's done three publicly announced acquisitions of or investments in startups — more than he did, as far as we can tell, in the Internet-depression years of 2002 through 2004. And that's just through Amazon.com — we're not counting any of the deals he's made on his own through Bezos Expeditions, his personal investment vehicle.

Data
8/6/2007 - Amie Street (demand-based pricing music download service)
2/25/2007 - Shelfari (book-centric social networking)
2/16/2007 - Atomic Moguls (fantasy sports)
12/5/2006 - Wikia (search)
10/2006 - TextPayMe (wireless payment system)
2/27/2006 - Shopbop.com (women's apparel retailer)
6/1/2005 - CustomFlix (download and burn DVDs)
4/10/2005 - Del.icio.us (social bookmarking, later sold to Yahoo)
4/4/2005 - BookSurge LLC (on-demand book-printing)
4/1/2005 - Mobipocket.com (eBooks for mobile devices)
2/9/2005 - 43 Things/Robot Coop ("goal" blogging/social network)
8/19/2004 - Joyo.com Limited (Chinese web retailer)
12/1/2001- Egghead.com (electronics retailer)
12/1/2001 - OurHouse.com (online hardware retailer)
11/9/2001 - Catalog City (catalog merchants)
2/1/2001 - Living.com (online retailer)
4/18/2000 - WineShopper.com (win retailer)
3/28/2000 - eZiba (handicraft retailer)
2/18/2000 - Basis (internationalization technology for web sites)
2/3/2000 - Greg Manning Auctions, Inc. (collectibles)
1/31/2000 - Audible (audio books)
1/24/2000 - Drugstore.com (online drugstore)
1/21/2000 - Greenlight (online car retailer)
1/11/2000 - Kozmo.com (grocery delivery service)
12/1/1999 - Ashford (luxury web retailer)
11/4/1999 - Convergence Corporation (mobile connectivity)
11/1/1999 - Tool Crib of the North (online and catalog tool and home improvement retailer)
11/1/1999 - Della.com (gift registry and suggestions)
11/1/1999 - Back to Basics Toys (toy store)
7/14/1999 - Gear.com (sports merchandise)
5/18/1999 - HomeGrocer.com (online grocer)
4/25/1999 - Accept.com (financial transactions)
4/24/1999 - e-Niche Incorporated (Exchange.com, Bibliofind.com, and Musicfile.com - online marketplaces)
4/1/1999 - LiveBid.com (live internet auctions)
3/29/1999 - Pets.com (online pet supplies)
2/1/1999 - Drugstore.com (online drugstore)
2/1/1999 - Geoworks (wireless communications)
1999 - MindCorps Incorporated (web applications - exact date unknown)
8/4/1998 - Sage Enterprises/PlanetAll (web-based personal management)
8/4/1998 - Junglee (web-based databases)
4/27/1998 - Bookpages (UK online bookstore)
4/27/1998 - Telebook (German online bookstore)
4/27/1998 - IMDB (movie and television directory)

If you are aware of any other investments or acquisitions not listed, please send them in.

Wilson's investment in Tacoda actually predates the formation of Union Square Ventures, but partner Brad Burnham argues more ably than I can that Tacoda shaped his and Wilson's thinking in forming their current firm. Two years ago, Wilson told writer John Heilemann that media and marketing would be among the worlds most transformed by the Internet — and most lucrative for venture capitalists, making New York, not Menlo Park, the ideal perch for spotting new ideas and new companies. With hundreds of millions of dollars worth of portfolio companies sold, he's looking increasingly right.

In his book F'd Companies, FuckedCompany.com founder Philip Kaplan explains how a 90s dot-com boasted of a nonexistant user base.

SixDegrees.com was also a study in dot-com PR hype—they claimed to have 3 million members, when really, a "member" was just an email address. Users of this site sign in all their friends, who sometimes signed up (after being bombarded with spam), never to return to the site again—yet they were counted amongst the regular users. Righteous.

The site Forever Geek published a brilliant piece today trimming MySpace's user count from 100 million registered accounts to under 50 million users who actually logged in in the last month.

FG also refers to Facebook, the site that "85% of college students" supposedly used — back when the majority of U.S. colleges weren't on Facebook at all.

The takeaway: Don't spread user-number hype without checking the math.

Debunking the MySpace Myth of 100 Million Users [Forever Geek]

Facebook, for example, lived at Thefacebook.com before moving to Facebook.com. The PodTech podcast network uses PodTech.net, while an unrelated company, Pod Technologies, owns Podtech.com. How do sites like these make do?

• PodTech incorporates the .net into its logo and adds the word "network" to its name, though it's casually referred to without the .net.
• Similarly, Upcoming.org keeps the domain in the title. As a bonus, that turns a generic word into a brand name.
• The .tv domain is popular among online shows like This Week in Tech at TWiT.TV.
• Del.icio.us relied on a quirky name, but it didn't hurt to eventually buy Delicious.com.
• (Speaking of buying out the dot-com — hey, can't avoid it forever — PodTech.com might be for sale.)
• A high search rank beats a domain name any day. Pitchfork doesn't own Pitchfork.com, but it owns the search term. On most browsers, someone looking for this music review site could even enter "pitchfork" alone and go straight to the right site. (Farmers, however, are screwed.)

Just don't bother with .info and .biz. That's so trashy.

This round was put together by Caterina Fake and Stewart Butterfield, founders of Flickr, and includes Joshua Schachter, the founder of Delicious, and Albert Wenger, the former President of Delicious. These four people have been advising Rob and his colleagues for the past year...

Caterina and Stewart sold Flickr to Yahoo for a rumored $15 to $35 million, and Joshua sold Del.icio.us for somewhere in that range. So what are these mini-millionaires thinking? All but Albert are still in charge of their companies, so it's doubtful they want seats on Etsy's board — too messy, they'd rather just "advise." Maybe these Yahoos hope to adopt another dot-com into the Yahoo Web 2.0 family.

Etsy [Union Square Ventures]

But the real problem: what does this quiz have to do with Newsweek's "Putting the 'We' in Web" cover story? If someone can honestly answer "What browser do you use?" with "What's a browser," they have no business taking a web quiz anyway. So here's the real quiz — user-generated, if you will — that Newsweek should have run.

1. How many times did you check in on Dodgeball last week? Take a half-point for each.

2. Take a point for each social-network site where you have a profile:
- MySpace
- Facebook
- LinkedIn
- Yahoo 360
- 43 People
- Consumating (two points, you damn hipster)
- Friendster (extra point if you deleted it in protest)
- Dogster or Catster
- Tribe
- Orkut (on second thought, subtract a point)

3. Take two points for each community site you're on:
- Upcoming
- Flickr
- YouTube
- Buzznet
- Last.fm
- Odeo
- Digg
- del.icio.us
- Metafilter

After the jump, finish the quiz (or get offline and, I don't know, play baseball, or whatever you non-web people do).

How geeky are you? [Newsweek]

4. Who cares how many friends you think you have? Add a tenth-point for every Flickr user who counts you as a contact.

5. Take a point for each blog post you made today.

6. Open your feed reader; divide your unread items by 100 and round off. Add those points, dude.

7. Grab five points for every private beta you're in.

8. Do you have Flickr clusters? Take a point for each one. One bonus point if you have a preferred Flickr tag other than your full name.

9. Own your own dot-com? Five points. Dot-org? Six points.

10. And if you've registered a joke site (FancyTrousers.com, anyone?), grab five more points.

11. Four points for every place you own on Plazes.

12. Three points if you've been tagged on Riya.

13. One point for every thing you bought, sold, or fucked through Craigslist.

Now add those points up, divide by your Google employee number, and figure out where you fall:

0-9: Look, since you're not actually doing anything, Valleywag's looking for a writer...
10-19: So you have a few old Fakester accounts, and you lurk in Casual Encounters. Either get a life, or give up and dive in.
20-29: Well aren't you special, Ms. Didn't-drink-the-Kool-Aid.
30-39: Okay, count your dot-net and that'll put you over 40.
40-49: Good job. Now stop reading blogs and call that hottie from Consumating.
50-59: Can danah boyd please touch you?
60+: Mena Trott, get the hell out of my quiz.

Stewart Butterfield and Caterina Fake: Founded Flickr, a photo-sharing site. Sold to Yahoo. Current occupation: showing that Yahoo can nurture the Flickr brand.
Joshua Schachter: Founded social bookmarking site del.icio.us. Also sold to Yahoo. Current occupation: reminding people where those dots go.
Mary Hodder: Founded Dabble, a video-sharing site. Current occupation: hopefully pulling Dabble out of private beta to play with all the other vid sites.
Tim O'Reilly: Defined "Web 2.0" in an epic essay. Current occupation: Running O'Reilly Media; secretly crafting "Web 3.0" essay.
Dalton Caldwell: Founded social IM service imeem. Current occupation: throwing parties.

Next up: Wow, Newsweek gets it.

The New Wisdom of the Web [Newsweek]

On Sunday, Yahoo's "got bought and loving it" group — Upcoming, del.icio.us, and Flickr — threw the most star-studded SXSW party after the official Interactive Finishing bash. Among the sparkling attendees: Craig Newmark, the San Fran developer crowd, and a gaggle of Internet-famous folks. Beer, margaritas, and t-shirts flowed freely. Here are the people worth jokin' about, with photos from Scott Beale's SXSW gallery.

Flickr community wrangler Heather Champ. So cool, even her margarita is too hot to hold.

CSS Zen Garden tender Dave Shea: "My preferred Flickr tag, of course."

After the jump, Dooce flips a double-bird.

Rubyred Labs UE guy Thor Muller isn't sure what he's eating, but that shirt will hide any spills.

A rare and mysterious photo of Valleywag's outsourced photographer: The ruling tentacle of Laughing Squid, Scott Beale.

Heather Champ (another meme photographer), Heather Armstrong (Dooce to you), and Mighty Girl Maggie Mason do a stunning, if seated, Charlie's Angels Blogger Edition.

Jimmy Wales and Craig Newmark: Mr. Wikipedia and Mr. Craigslist show off matching facial hair and balding patterns.

"Just some last-minute changes...like adding that guy to the acknowledgements. That should earn me another free beer, right?"

Bryght's Kris Krug: "Get Hammer on the phone! Yeah, it's an Interactive party, but I'm dressed like a SXSW Music attendee!"

New York superblogger Jason Kottke likes being out with people. He really likes it. PLEASE DON'T MAKE HIM GO BACK TO THE BAD BLOGGING PLACE.

The Rocketboom team: OMG Amanda Congdon! (Oh, hi Andy.) (No, seriously, Andrew Baron also rocks.) (Bonus story: Amanda wasn't sure she could wear the GETV "I was Internet famous once" shirt. Amanda, you will ALWAYS be Internet famous — wear that shirt with proud irony.)

Photos: SXSW Interactive 2006 Photos [Laughing Squid]

del.icio.us
digg
Valleywag
Measure Map
CNET
danah boyd (for typographic beauty)
BoingBoing (or Boing Boing or boing boing, they're too hip to care)

And one not worth getting right, because using it at the end of a sentence sounds stupid:

Yahoo!

No need to thank me for the service journalism. Post your own anal-retentive spelling specs in the comment salon.

Yahoo!, Digg Acquisition Rumors [Jiboneus]