See the hypercompetitive pattern? Hacks have always hustled to scoop rival papers. But tech blogs are being driven to distraction by the notion that they've been beaten by a story. In the rush to publish, they're not even stopping to check their own archives.

Checking actual facts is far more cumbersome. Jordan Golson, another former Valleywagger who now blogs at the Industry Standard, made a stink about a report on TheHill.com about iPhones coming to Congress. TheHill.com's overly sensational headline topped a report that merely stated that Congress's administrative arm was testing some iPhones. Golson called the flack quoted in TheHill.com's story, who backpedaled from his earlier statement that "lots" of Congressmen had requested iPhones.

Tom Krazit of CNET News, one of the guilty parties cited by Golson for reblogging TheHill.com, got to the bottom of things: Congressional IT administrators were testing a total of 10 iPhones, and all of two Congressmen had asked about getting iPhones instead of the standard-issue BlackBerry.

This messy process shows the blogosphere at its best and its worst. Through a series of iterations, the horde of bloggers arrived at the right result. In the meantime, however, a lot of people got the wrongheaded notion that Congress is switching to the iPhone any day now. (I'd note that TheHill.com has yet to retract its initial report; it would not be the first time a flack has said something, regretted it, and then claimed he was misquoted.)

There will always be a factchecking squad on the Internet. But I think the reblogging craze will fade over time, as the Web's writers learn the deep satisfaction of telling one's own story for the first time — not repeating someone else's for the nth.

Heiliger previously worked for Andreessen at Opsware. One would think the chrome-domed entrepreneur, now chairman of Ning, would prove a powerful ally in the fierce political battles that have roiled Facebook since the appointment of Sheryl Sandberg, a Beltway insider turned Internet executive, as COO. Nothing's certain, and Heiliger may well stay. But for him to be so unhappy as to openly entertain job offers? The social network's executive suite seems to be coming unplugged.

Wall Street is currently in a bubble of panic. The Valley is currently in a bubble of denial. Neither zone approaches reality. Members of the National Bureau of Economic Research — the only official arbiter of such matters — can't even agree if we're in a recession yet. "It's really hard to say if we're in a recession, because different indicators point in different directions," said Jeffrey Frankel, a Harvard professor and a member of the NBER's recession-calling commitee.

That technical measure of recession ignores the reality on the ground: Home prices continue to slump, gas prices are pinching consumers' pocketbook, and advertisers are aggressively cutting back budgets, even online. Layoffs are grabbing headlines.

But does this really affect the Web startups which so enchant the blogosphere's imagination? Schadenfreude demands that these tiny companies shutter their doors — or if they don't have the decency to close up shop, they should act suitably chastened by the cold economic winds blowing. There's a lot of contradictory advice being handed out: Rely on angel investors! Don't rely on angel investors! My advice: Don't rely on journalists and bloggers for advice on how to run your business.

One might think Valleywag, which eagerly chronicles the mishaps of misconceived startups, would cheer on the notion of a lot of startups starving to death because of an economic downturn. Far from it! Better that they choke on their own vomit — that excess and lack of self-discipline kill them, rather than factors outside their control.

Serious entrepreneurs should be tightly controlling their spending. But that is as true now as it was a year ago, and a decade ago. Retaining pricey PR firms, throwing lavish parties, hiring executives from Fortune 500 companies at mid-six-figure salaries — that can wait until the company turns a profit. If your startup is dependent on a bubbly economic cycle, then it's not being run like a startup.

By all means, those who were never meant to be entrepreneurs in the first place, who lack any real ideas of their own, or any interest in making money rather than spending someone else's, should take this occasion to make a graceful exit from the scene. Six months ago, closing your startup would have seemed cowardly if not insane; now, everyone will nod at your wisdom.

That brings me to the opportunists — the likes of Marc Andreessen, who has been preaching the notion of a coming "nuclear winter" for some time, and Jason Calacanis, who recently wrote about a looming "startup depression."

Were I more impressed with their current startups, I'd nod alongside. But Andreessen's Ning is an unimpressive social-network builder; Mahalo, a gussied-up replica of Yahoo's 1994-era Web directory. Frustratingly for some observers, they have raised enough money that neither company will run out of funds for at least a year. (No one sincerely believes Calacanis when he says he has enough money to run the company for four years, do they?) If their flimsy business models remain unchallenged, their survival is all the more likely. So when Andreessen and Calacanis talk doom and gloom, what I'm really hearing is: "Please don't raise money for a better idea than mine — I can't take the competition."

What history tells us, actually, is that the best companies are started in times like this. The last wave of truly innovative Web 2.0 companies — Flickr, Del.icio.us, Last.fm, Facebook — started at a time when no one particularly believed in their potential.

Many people would benefit from a climate of fear: Venture capitalists, who might get larger pieces of startups; employers, who might hire talent more cheaply; and corporate dealmakers, like Jeremy Philips of News Corp., who might acquire companies less expensively.

But the biggest reason to ignore Philips' fearmongering, in particular? He's not taking his own advice. Rumor has it that, instead of food and guns, he is acquiring a piece of Manhattan real estate. And from what we hear, it is rather too glossy a place to serve as a warehouse for rations and ammo.

(Photo by Gawker Media)

Young Steve Jobs, Apple cofounder:

Jobs, older and thinner:

Young Bill Gates, Microsoft CEO:

Old Bill Gates, philanthropist:

Young Eric Schmidt, before he was Google's CEO:

Old Eric Schmidt:

Young Larry Ellison, Oracle CEO:

Old Larry Ellison:

Young Netscape cofounder Marc Andreessen:

Not quite as young Ning cofounder Marc Andreessen:

Only one man has escaped the effects of time. That is, of course, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer:

I have been a great admirer of Andreesen since the mid '90s. He is no doubt one of the fathers of the modern internet. But really, he should can it about people using "his" ideas. He of all people should know that the internet abounds with ideas. Everyone has an idea.

Ideas are overrated and rarely original. The know-how to implement ideas, and to know which ones are good, that's where the real genius comes in.

I've edited down Om Malik's report on the talk.

• “Any desktop application that has not been implemented in the browser is now going to be implemented in the browser.”
• Chrome's speed, especially its advanced JavaScript engine, will push Firefox and Internet Explorer developers to make massive upgrades to their own products. “Microsoft can build good products when they want to."
• “If JavaScript gets any faster, then developers will question if they should develop in Flash or Silverlight."
• “Super interactive browser that sits atop a super-fast connection…now interesting things will happen over the next 5-10 years."

(Photo by Joi Ito)

On Microsoft:

Microsoft can build software, when they choose to.

On investing in startups:

I usually put in $25,000 to $100,000 per company. My philosophy is to put in a small enough amount of money that I won't get mad at the founder if I lose it.

Translation: Marc Andreessen is so rich that he can lose $100,000 and feel nothing.

On the failure of Friendster:

Friendster was very restrictive on what users did. You were supposed to connect because you know each other in real life, not, as [founder Jonathan] Abrams said, 'because you both like Reese's Peanut Butter Cups.' But sometimes you want to put your chocolate in her peanut butter.

Yes, he really said that.

On his deathwatch for the New York Times:

I don't want to become the crazy anti-New York Times guy. You have to do what Intel did in 1985. The Japanese chipmakers were killing Intel in the memory-chip market. It got out of memory chips and focused on the much-smaller microprocessor market. I would turn off the printing presses.

On his mentor and Netscape cofounder, Jim Clark:

I could tell you a lot of stories about his life [in Florida], but I won't. He's dating a 26-year-old Australian swimsuit model. I just ran into an entrepreneur who said, "I just ran into Jim Clark at a resort town in Italy. Jim was in a hot tub carved into the side of a mountain." I said, "Yes! That was Jim Clark."

On the iPhone's price:

Give it a year, it will be down to $99. Give it another year, it will be free.

On his motives for giving away his money:

My wife teaches philanthropy at Stanford Business School. I would be in big trouble if I weren't hugely committed to it.

On his relationship with Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer:

He's my Facebook friend. He's my Facebook 'friend.' [makes air-quotes gesture] I'll stop there.

1. Robert Scoble
2. Michael Arrington
3. Jack Dorsey
4. Biz Stone
5. Matt Cutts
6. Pete Cashmore
7. Dave Winer
8. Guy Kawasaki
9. Loïc Le Meur
10. Kevin Rose
11. Merlin Mann
12. Stowe Boyd
13. Jeff Atwood
14. Jeremiah Owyang
15. Veronica Belmont
16. Kara Swisher
17. Scott Beale
18. Marc Andreessen
19. Ryan Block
20. David Sifry
21. Emily Chang
22. Om Malik
23. Timothy Ferriss
24. Nick Douglas
25. John Battelle
26. David Cohn
27. Louis Gray
28. Tom Foremski
29. Tim O'Reilly
30. Ariel Waldman
31. Matt Mullenweg
32. Dean Takahashi
33. Philip Kaplan
34. JD Lasica
35. Sarah Lacy
36. Brian Solis
37. Charlene Li
38. Rafe Needleman
39. Dan Farber
40. Howard Rheingold
41. David McClure
42. Margaret Mason
43. Jason Goldman
44. Leah Culver
45. Chris Shipley
46. Jackson West
47. Liz Gannes
48. Owen Thomas
49. Adeo Ressi
50. Max Levchin

(Photo from Michael Arrington)

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?

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?

Big mergers and acquisitions, particularly among public companies, particularly among public companies that have large shares of their respective markets, can take a year or more between the day the deal is signed and announced, to the day the deal is actually executed and closed. During that year plus, all kinds of things can happen that could cause the deal to fall apart.

Isn't Andreessen obviously thinking of AOL-Time Warner, a deal which faced intense opposition from competitors and regulatory scrutiny, and which Andreessen has called a "rolling catastrophe"? Come on, Marc, look on your keyboard. There's an "a" key on the left. An "o" on the right. And just below it, an "l." It can't be that hard to type.

A deal could be negotiated and announced and then fail to close. Mergers can take a year or more. During that year plus, the US government could disallow the merger.The EU is currently harsher. Microsoft shareholders could revolt. The broader economy could cave. Microsoft could get cold feet. If the deal is signed and collapses, Yahoo would be disorganized, fragmented, and demoralized. To offset these concerns Microsoft could point all of its users at Yahoo Search, and so on for all of the various overlapping product lines. Yahoo would of course share revenue with Microsoft in return. The Bush administration is known to be quite friendly to large companies, large mergers, and Microsoft. Any Democratic administration would be more hostile.

Andreessen's conclusion is worth quoting in full:

We are learning that hostile takeovers have arrived in our industry. This is the second major hostile takeover so far — the other was Oracle's takeover of Peoplesoft — but there will be more.

This is significant because historically hostile takeovers practically never happened in technology. Potential hostile acquirors assumed that hostile takeovers wouldn't work because the target company's employees would bail and the target company's business would collapse.

It turns out that as technology companies become larger and more mature, acquirors are becoming increasingly convinced that neither of these assumptions hold. Perhaps employees of large tech companies aren't that bonded to current management, and perhaps many of them would actually prefer to work for a larger, more dominant combined company. And maybe as a consequence, the target's business would do just fine in the wake of a hostile takeover — in fact, maybe it would do better, due to advantages of combined size and scale.

My bet is that hostile takeovers, particularly of larger and more mature companies, are going to become increasingly common in our industry.

The excitement may be just beginning.

What has changed in the near-decade since then? Yahoo, which grew up alongside Netscape — at one point, Netscape hosted Yahoo's servers — is that much farther from being a startup. Working there offers less risk, and less reward. Andreessen doesn't come out and say it, but he strongly suggests the place has become infested with careerists who would be just as happy working at Microsoft.

After the Netscape acquisition, Andreessen worked briefly and unhappily as AOL's CTO. For Yahoos, wheeling and dealing may be fine; but for him, it's the startup life or nothing. Andreessen may feign nonchalance at the prospect of more hostile takeovers in tech. But that doesn't mean he personally wants any part in them.

A recent Fast Company article on Andreessen's current venture, Ning, went no better. You can practically hear the writer propping his eyelids open as Andreessen goes on, and on, and on, about "viral expansion loops."

What happened to the Andreessen who once ridiculed Windows as "a set of poorly debugged device drivers"? Why, he's gone online. Andreessen's blog is relentlessly entertaining. His verbal fisticuffs with the New York Times are must-reads; the vitriol oozes out of every line. And he posts just infrequently enough to keep us hanging on every word.

The only surprise, really, is that Andreessen took so long to start blogging. This world was not made for him. In the Web, he created one to suit.

(Photo by mathoov)

Ning does have people in the Valley, as Fast Company claims, "buzzing," but not because of the "viral expansion loops" which Andreessen talks up in the piece. Penenberg's thesis: Andreessen has fused viral marketing with social networks, and therefore Ning's current fast expansion rate will continue ad infinitum, or at least ad acquisition.

This is a fashionable delusion fostered by people with something to sell. Supporting Andreessen's argument are Union Square Ventures' Fred Wilson and Sequoia Capital's Roelof Botha, both of whom make the argument for compound growth. Wilson is an investor in Twitter; Botha backed YouTube. Both profit from the notion that a site's current growth rate will continue unchecked.

The reality? Growth always slows. Facebook used to crow about how its user numbers grew 3 percent a week. By the time Microsoft sank $240 million into the company, that figure had already dropped; it may now be around 1 or 2 percent. Still impressive, and still fast-growing — but any projections based on 3 percent weekly growth are now dead wrong.

With absurdities about compound growth and viral expansion stripped out, Penenberg has little to offer in Ning's defense. According to figures in the piece, Ning is making roughly $1.7 million a year in the $20-a-month subscriptions some social-network creators pay. The rest of the money they make comes from Google's AdSense ads, the familiar fallback of hopeless startups. Bianchini admits as much in a blog post. And yet she and Andreessen commanded a $214 million valuation for their creation.

What Penenberg doesn't explore: The laughable reputation of Ning's software within the Valley. The piece quotes exactly one Ning user. Had Penenberg asked around, he'd have heard from scores of disgusted social-network creators who walked away from the service after trying it out. Pointing that out would get in the way of discussing the appearance of Ning's creators. Really, Adam, I thought that was our job.

(Photo by Fast Company/Art Streiber)

On BoomTown, Kara Swisher rattles off two dozen or so possibilities before settling on Netscape founder Marc Andreessen. It's an odd choice. Consider the companies Andreessen founded: Netscape is dead, Opsware was bought, and Ning builds social networks for porn sites. None of these are fates Zuckerberg would wish for Facebook. Practically speaking, I'd go for someone running a revenue machine proven to work at a public company, like Apple marketing czar Greg Joswiak or Google's Sheryl Sandberg. For sheer entertainment value, though, we nominate former Pay By Touch CEO John Rogers.

That spree could well end in tears. But that's not the Valley's problem; we make companies to sell them. Especially Andreessen who, despite his protestations of not building companies to flip them, is surely eager to unload Ning, his social-network startup. What better way to attract potential buyers than to butter them up with a post telling them how important they are? In the comments, I'll take odds on Andreessen selling to one of the companies he named within the year.

Not many in the Silicon Valley money crowd support Hillary Clinton. The notable exception is John Doerr, who now counts former VP Al Gore as a colleague at Kleiner Perkins.

The list is lengthier for Barack Obama.

• David Anderson, managing director, Sutter Hill Ventures
  
• John Thompson, Symantec CEO
  
• Gordon Eubanks, former Symantec CEO
  
• Yahoo exec Brad Garlinghouse
  
• Former California gubernatorial candidate, current Steve Jurvetson pal and Tesla Motors board member Steve Westly
  
• John Roos, CEO of law firm Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati
  
• Google execs David Drummond and Marissa Mayer
  
• Google.org director Larry Brilliant
  
• YouTube founder Chad Hurley
  
• VC Doug Hickey of Hummer Winblad Venture Partners
  
• VC Stewart Alsop of Alsop Louie
  
• Electronic Arts CEO John Riccitielo
  
• Sequoia Capital venture capitalist Michael Moritz
  
• Craiglist founder Craig Newmark
  
• Netscape and Ning founder Marc Andreessen (who also supports Mitt Romney)

(Photo by azrainman)

The other secret? No one sleeps around here. Levchin offhandedly mentions his life without a company:

"I enjoy sitting on nice beaches and hanging out with my girlfriend and playing with my dog, but that's three hours a day," Mr. Levchin said. "What about the remaining 18 hours I'm awake?"

[Andreessen] also joined the board of Harmonic Communications, a software company that tracked and measured advertising. [Sequoia Capital VC Mark] Kvamme introduced him to Bianchini, a former Goldman Sachs analyst who had co-founded Harmonic. She and Andreessen dated briefly, then became good friends.

Digg, of course, was infamously profiled in BusinessWeek last August, which assigned the company a value of $200 million. Most of Silicon Valley found that number spurious, but the credulous executives who run big media companies actually believe what they read in magazines. With Rose launching Pownce, a new Twitter-like file- and bookmarks-sharing service, and Adelson increasingly focused on Revision3, now would be a good time to offload Digg, whose noisy community of users is just getting more and more fractious.

Then there's Marc Andreessen and Gina Bianchini, the chairman and CEO, respectively, of Ning. Ning, long an ill-defined Web 2.0 startup, has found its purpose in life — making Facebook apps and other social-networking tools easier to build. Along with the purpose came $44 million in funding, in a round orchestrated by Allen & Co. And hence the invite. It's a bit early for Andreessen to sell, so we'll bet he'll content himself with hawking his build-your-own-MySpace tools to everyone besides Rupert Murdoch.

Why build when you can buy, though? Facebook, the former college-kid social network which has been growing spectacularly since it opened its doors to everyone last fall, has all the buzz right now, prompting Murdoch himself to diss MySpace. Facebook, of course, has been showing every sign of wanting to go public. The IPO option gives CEO Mark Zuckerberg, rumored to be attending Sun Valley this year, more leverage in any negotiation.

Rounding out the tech corps: Bill Gates of Microsoft; Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang, CFO Sue Decker, and even the gone-but-not-gone Terry Semel; and Mike Volpi, the former Cisco executive who's now running online-video startup Joost. Oh, and the usual old-media suspects.

There's one puzzling omission on the guest list, if reports are true: Quincy Smith, president of CBS Interactive. Smith is himself a former Allen & Co. dealmaker, which makes his absence curious indeed. Anyone know why people are saying Quincy won't show?

(Photo by briancaldwell)

... some VCs are aggressive early adopters of new forms of communication and interaction — current examples being Facebook and Twitter. Observationally, when a VC is exploring a new communiation medium like Facebook or Twitter, she can be more interested in interacting with various people over that new medium than she might otherwise be. So, when such a new thing comes out — like, hint hint, Facebook or Twitter — jump all over it, see which VCs are using it, and interact with them that way — sensibly, of course.