2001 and 2002: With the emergence of "the warbloggers" post-9/11, as they were called, everyone feuded with everyone. Seriously. Everyone! (N.B. that account includes some serious misreading.) It was sheer chaos, a mass freakout that distended psychoanalytic space and time. There were even Denial of Service attacks. Dave Winer, the feudiest of all internetters, took on the world, briefly.

You won't click all those links, so just read the one where Instapundit agrees with Denton.

(Photo via Wonkette)

But Facebook built their social graph on college campuses, and college is where you learn the schoolyard is no place for sharing anymore. At least the company gave a clear reason in language that echoes its official terms of use — unlike eBay's obviously anticompetitive moves to block first PayPal, and (after buying that company), Google Checkout, from leveraging its marketplace.

Is Facebook's move motivated by competitive rivalry? Probably. Can Google complain publicly that it's unfair? Nope. Looks like Facebook's hire of Elliot Schrage is already paying off in terms of dishing Google the company's own PR medicine. Ultimately, while Google's embrace of open standards makes it attractive to developers, users only care about one thing: whether websites work as expected, and don't surprise them by making their data pop up on other sites unawares.

We've been known creative tagging for comedic purposes ourselves, but in this case, doth Wired protest too much? Perhaps so. Asked if "ButtMunch" was Wired's internal nickname fro Arrington's site, business editor Dylan Tweney said, "I don't think it has come into general usage around the Wired.com office. We can always hope, though."

But Newmark and Buckmaster have always operated Craigslist more as their private money machine than a real company. That they issued shares to themselves without discussing the matter with eBay, a major shareholder, is merely typical for them.

Here's one more thing that's interesting. A source familiar with Craigslist's stock ownership told me that, of the shares left over after eBay's stake, Newmark owned roughly 60 percent of the remaining shares, and Buckmaster 40 percent. That means Newmark's owns 41 percent of Craigslist, and Buckmaster 27 percent. Here's a disturbing thought: If Buckmaster were ever to switch his loyalties, he and eBay combined own enough of the company to outvote Newmark.

The two appear utterly sympatico, so a Buckmaster defection seems unlikely. But Buckmaster has taken the lead in Craigslist's dealings with eBay. The auction giant, so far, has been the target of Buckmaster's Machiavellian scheming. But he is the swing vote. If Buckmaster turned against Newmark, Craigslist would no longer be Craig's.

[B]reaching their fiduciary duties of care, loyalty, and good faith by implementing certain self-dealing transactions challenged herein which were designed specifically to benefit themselves to the detriment of eBay.

• In 2005, Buckmaster complained that eBay's unfortunately-named classified service Kijiji competed directly with Craigslist, telling then CEO Meg Whitman "we are no longer comfortable having eBay as a shareholder."
• Whitman responded that eBay loved Craigslist, and that "we would welcome the opportunity to acquire the remainder" of the company.
• In October of 2007, Buckmaster and Newmark met with lawyer Edward Wes, and issued themselves "reorganization shares" which diluted eBay's stake under the 25 percent threshold that gave eBay special rights in the election of board members.
• They further tried to poison the share well through right of first refusal clauses that eBay alleges would "make Newmark, Buckmaster, or the Company they control the only possible acquirers of eBay's shares."
• Newmark and Buckmaster didn't bother to tell eBay about these moves, as well as changes to the corporate charter, until January 3rd of 2008. Now eBay wants the moves overturned in the courts.

A decade and a half ago, Diller was cast out of Hollywood's Paramount studio with nothing more than a PowerBook and a Gulfstream. He set out to become an entrepreneur, running his own show and building something new. Instead, he became a trader of assets. His first big trade: obtaining a hand-me-down home-shopping network, HSN, which Malone helped him buy. There his troubles began.

Since then, Diller's career has been of buying low and selling high: Ticketmaster, CitySearch, Match.com, Expedia, Ask.com, and the like. (He bought and sold Ticketmaster, in some form, an astounding seven times.) Can you name single hit that has emerged from Diller's own mind? Exactly. With Diller steering the wheel, IAC-borne startups like Gifts.com, Zwinky, 23/6, and the like have gone nowhere.

And yet Diller steadfastly fancies himself an entrepreneur, not a trader. Profiles constantly talk about how he zooms in on particular businesses, eager to offer the real managers running his businesses advice, desperate to somehow leave a mark on the things he bought with other people's money, as if they somehow belonged to him.

Starr posted his kiss-off letter to Sethi on the BlogNation site, knowing it would be quickly removed, and also posted the long-winded missive on his own site.

In short, Starr charges, Sethi hasn't funded BlogNation, can't pay his contributors, lies to the press and his employees, and will have a hard time raising funding because he is a liar, not a CEO. Imagine that: Oliver Starr, burning bridges?

In this case, no one wins but Arrington. Never one to shy from a nerdfight, the prickly blog impresario has had a running feud with his former coworkers. If BlogNation ceases to exist, they'll be missed — if only for the entertaining feud. (Screenshot by TechCrunch)

What's likely going on here? A snark offensive, with editorial consistency sacrificed on an altar of witty barbs. Feeling pressure from gadget blogs, CNET is trying to mimic their tone by going negative. The manufactured edginess, of course, has inadvertently hilarious results, like the one above. What's sad is that despite the blog buzz, CNET's doing just fine. Why the sudden panic?

This is how they get you. When a reporter has a personal axe to grind, he or she goes out and finds three people who agree. In journalist-math, three's a trend. Here's my edit of CNET's take: I'm insanely greatly jealous that Dan Lyons has a book deal. Don't buy the book! I'm so tone-deaf to good writing that I can work at CNET all day. So are three other people. Namaste, Dan. I honor the place where your book and my rave review for The Wall Street Journal — have you heard of it? — become one.

AdBrite is keeping the network's current customers, and, yes, moving them to BlackLabelAds. Which means, as of December 1, AdBrite will officially be in the porn business. AdBrite serves 678 million impressions on its regular network and 267 million impressions on AVNads.com, which means porn ads make up roughly 28 percent of AdBrite's business. That may decrease, of course, if AVN is successful at luring away customers. (AdBrite founder Philip Kaplan has not yet responded to a request for comment, but I'll update the item when he does.)

From the tone of AVN's press release about the split, it seems like the squabbling pair has someone else to blame for their troubles: 365 Main, the troubled datacenter in San Francisco whose backup power system failed during a July power outage. AdBrite's ad servers were among those brought down. AVN goes on at length about its plans to host its network in multiple datacenters, with 24/7 monitoring. One wonders: If 365 Main's failures led, ultimately, to the demise of this relationship, would AdBrite and AVN have a claim for lost revenues?

Isn't it just like Woz to show up and try to steal the spotlight from me on my big day? He's like the ex-girlfriend who shows up at the wedding dressed in a really hot sexy red dress, trying to take attention away from the bride. Fair enough. Apple geeks love Woz better than me. Always have. So of course he can't resist showing up on iPhone day to steal some of the love that was supposed to be aimed entirely at me. Plus, and this is really sad, Woz just thrives on the adulation and can't get enough of it. It's almost a sickness, the way he needs it.

I don't need a costume. I'm just going to go around telling people I'm the Valleywag, to see if they jump out of their skins. Trick or treat!

(An aside here I need to get off my chest: Yes, I listen to mainstream country music like Craig Morgan — not that bespectacled alt.country stuff. Valleywag's liberal-arts-major staff wince at my rural Maine roots, which I've refused to cover up to appease their HuffPo-reading demographic. Yes, I pronounce idea as ideer. I drop my g's like a redneck champ. I voted for Reagan. Twice. And I can drive a '79 Silverado pickup backwards on ice one-handed without spilling my Dunkin' Donuts coffee. The bluebloods at the New York Times made fun of white-trashy Rick Bragg, too, until he won the Pulitzer prize. Think you'll win one of those? Yeah. Put a sock in it, fancypants.)

Anyway, Scoble at the bat:

Strike 1: "I don't trust those numbers." For some reason it's important to the Scobleizer to convince people that he's widely read and Valleywag isn't. Fine, until he says our front-door stats are rigged. Pick a metric: Compete, QuantCast or Alexa. Sure, I don't believe those sites either, but you get the point.

Strike 2:"If Valleywag makes something up about TechCrunch ..." Makes something up? Here's a quiz, Robert: Find one story Valleywag ever made up, rather than reporting from credible sources or clearly declaring as informed, honest speculation. Send me the URL. I'll be out on my BlackBerry, because this one's going to take you a while.

Strike 3: "Think about what you're saying: That a fake blogger is more credible than me on the state of MY business." OK, I thought about it. Scoble can't accept that based on past performance, Fake Steve has more credibility than he does.

If El Scobso had said it's lame of Valleywag to waste our time reporting on Web 2.0 quasi-celebrities' mundane love lives, I'd have agreed with him. Instead, he states as fact that we fabricate facts. This from a guy who went to journalism school.

He also gripes that we write about him all the time. Robert, your wish is granted: No more Valleywag posts about you from me. Ever. It's been fun repurposing your blog onto mine, but I have a rule I learned in hick-country Maine: I only pick on people bigger than me. Clearly, hoss, that doesn't include you. Valleywag regrets the error.

Vista sucks. Vista is being kept alive by corporations. They tried to make everything backward compatible and there is too much bullshit now. Mac OS X is what it is, closed. Google is completely dependent on that PC. That's a bet I'm not willing to make. Companies are public and they get yelled at for making [broadband] investment. The markets are about the big funds wanting returns and that will hurt us.

Rubash noted that, though the new job would have given him authority over Glaser's group, he believed life would be "more enjoyable and rewarding elsewhere." Wow. As unpleasant as Glaser is to work for, could she really be that unpleasant to have as an underling, too? Apparently. Rumor has is that former Yahoo CEO Terry Semel banned Glaser — like Semel, an air commuter from L.A. to Yahoo's Sunnyvale HQ — from the corporate jet.

"Revenue is down 10-15% in this group year over year," says one tipster, of the marketplace unit. As part of the reorganization, Weiner's getting most of those businesses back, except for Yahoo's job-listings site, HotJobs. But here's the rub. To do any moneymaking deals, Weiner's group will have to "partner" with Schneider. That's unlikely to go over well, given the clear rivalry between the two. So much for Decker's claims that the reorganization will speed decisionmaking.