Through voting rights, Zuckerberg controls both the seat Andreessen fills and the remaining vacancy, so it's not surprising to see Zuckerberg picked an entrepreneur-friendly, don't-sell-if-you-don't-have-to mentor like Andreessen to join the board. Some Facebook shareholders are already offloading stock, perhaps growing impatient with Zuckerberg's slow progress toward an IPO. Other CEOs might be worried about retaining investors' goodwill. Zuckerberg, free to pack the board with another ally after Andreessen, doesn't have to. Jealous?

Weiner did meet with Zuckerberg over dinner to discuss a top position at Facebook — the COO spot that Sheryl Sandberg now occupies. But Weiner bombed, we're told, ordering a fancy bottle of wine (Zuckerberg's not a big drinker) and generally playing it slick. The two utterly failed to connect.

The notion that Facebook's venture capitalists could install a CEO over Zuckerberg's head is nonsensical. Greylock's David Sze doesn't even have a board seat; Jim Breyer of Accel is on the board, but he's easily overruled by Zuckerberg and Peter Thiel, the entrepreneur-friendly former PayPal CEO. Zuckerberg has the right to appoint two more board members, and one of the seats is rumored to have gone to Netscape cofounder Marc Andreessen, who strikes me as an extremely unlikely ally for Weiner.

So where does that leave Weiner? Zuckerberg may not like him, but Zuckerberg's VCs do, which leaves him with the consolation prize of an EIR job. And Yahoo's conspiracy theorists in need of something new to talk about. How about Flickr cofounder Stewart Butterfield's gonzo resignation email?

Speaking of which, the crowd included Chuck Phillips, the president of Oracle; Accel Partners' Jim Breyer; Google angel investor Ram Shiram; Gavin Newsom; former California governor Jerry Brown; Jessica Guynn of the Los Angeles TimesBarron's; AllThingsD's Kara Swisher; former Chronicle editor Phil Bronstein; MarketWatch's Therese Poletti; Craig Newmark; and renowned San Francisco socialite Denise Hale, who rather liked my tie.

Zittrain's book is about the tradeoffs between freedom and control, security and creativity. New devices like the iPhone provide a safer, smoother experience than the uncontrolled Web — but at the cost of having a gatekeeper, Apple, dictating what can and can't run on the device. That kind of chokepoint, in turn, makes it far easier for government regulators to get involved. The alternative, though, is not particularly attractive: an Internet ruled by spammers and hackers.

Like his counterparts in politics, Zittrain is seeking a third way. I couldn't help but think this impulse is driven by an early experience he related at the party: Getting beaten up in high school. (He thanked the hostess, Melanie, "for not beating up on me.") Having been bullied, Zittrain doesn't want revenge: He just doesn't want anyone to bully, or be bullied. This moderating impulse is seen in a passage where he discusses how neither governments nor citizens ought to be able to wholly circumvent the law through technology:

Perhaps it is best to say that neither the governor nor the governed should be able to monopolize technological tricks. We are better off without flat-out trumps that make the world the way either regulator or target wants it to be without the need for the expenditure of some effort and
cooperation from others to make it so.

And yet Zittrain's career could well exceed Lessig's. That he was able to fill a room — an impeccably furnished, tastefully modern room in one of San Francisco's wealthiest enclaves, at that — speaks to his draw. Liberal San Francisco politicans, self-made entrepreneurs, and the Web's wacky fringe can all find things they agree on in his work.

The danger for Zittrain is that his work might be nothing more than a justification for compromise and tradeoffs. Will he find a third way for the Web — or just point out the middle of the road? His calls for a "generosity of spirit" are reminiscent of the assumptions that turned eBay, a marketplace of strangers, into a very profitable community of traders. Hoping for the best really can pan out, as it happens. But the answers Zittrain will have to find, or inspire, are far more complicated than asking someone to be on their best behavior.

Previously:

• A is for Adelson, who cofounded Digg

Because Zuckerberg doesn't have to. Microsoft owns 1.6 percent of Facebook; Li, even after doubling his take, only 0.8 percent. Neither stake is large enough to merit a board seat. Andreessen is, like Thiel, the former CEO of PayPal, an entrepreneur-friendly choice; he bypassed Sand Hill Road altogether to raise Ning's $100-million-plus in funding.

Just yesterday, we'd heard that Zuckerberg, who owns 27 percent of Facebook, had the right to appoint two board members. That leaves him one more seat at the table to fill. Anyone want to take odds on the moneymen getting left out once again?

(Photos by Will K.)

AT&T exec Susan Johnson said she hopes the fund will focus on "mobile opportunities." Siminoff told the Times the historical friction between Los Angeles and SIlicon Valley won't be a problem. "The ethos of this fund is about reducing the friction," he said. "Hollywood people are not stupid. They are just not technology people." That line of argument will be a tough sell in the Valley.

My assumptions:

• Microsoft's revenue guarantee has been estimated at $50 million to $75 million for this year. I'll generously peg it at $75 million.
• Sarah Lacy paid Facebook a buck to give me a can of whoop-ass. If the supposedly mature (and smolderingly hot) former BusinessWeek reporter is doing it, so are other users. And since the goods are virtual, the profit margins must be insane. Call it $20 million.
• Marketers are eager to survey Facebook's young demographic. Whether the users are as eager to respond? Doesn't matter. Facebook will soak big companies for some money to run the polls anyway. Call it $4 million.
• Okay, okay. I'm sure Facebook actually manages to sell some advertisements that work. I hear the sponsored newsfeed ads actually have decent click-through rates. And I'm sure they'll continue to do so until users figure out that they're ads, too, and start ignoring them like the banner ads. In other words, for a month or so. I'll grant Facebook a token $1 million for this line of business.
• And then there's Peter Thiel, who seems to think Facebook will do $150 million in revenues this year. Fellow board member Jim Breyer says it's $100 million. Who's right? Who knows. But I'm going to chalk up $50 million of Facebook's supposed revenues to Thiel's belief in the power of positive thinking.

And the real numbers? I'll believe them when I read them in the S-1 filing.

We're told that Accel is looking at investing in Facebook app developers. Naturally. Breyer's $13 million investment in Facebook two years ago was seen by some as a sign of a building bubble. Now with estimates of Facebook's value ranging in the billions of dollars, of course, rival VCs like Bay Partners are jealous.

But Breyer can't possibly be content with just one home-run investment. It stands to reason that he wants to build a keiretsu — a network of startups which partner with each other to build their businesses and boost their common investor's returns. John Doerr and his colleagues at Kleiner Perkins did this in the 1990s, with AOL, Netscape, Amazon.com, Intuit, Excite; Michael Moritz, at Sequoia, likewise, parlayed his firm's investments in Cisco, Yahoo, and Google into other moneymakers. Breyer's only real '90s hit, meanwhile, was RealNetworks — a thin reed on which to lay a keiretsu.

You have to admire the evil genius of the plan, if true: Breyer, a Facebook board member, can cherry-pick only the most successful app developers before rival venture capitalists have even heard of them. And Breyer, too, can guarantee favored startups something no one else can — protection from an abrupt decision by Facebook to block or cripple their apps. That power — implied, never spoken — also would bear a concomitant threat: Startups who don't play along with Accel, and accept the valuation they're given, may suddenly find Facebook an unfriendly place to write software.

So, Facebook developers, report in — is the rumor true? Has anyone gotten an offer they can't refuse? A hard sell from Accel? Drop us a word.