It's an interesting deal for Hollywood, where traditionally people don't get out of bed unless there's cash money on the table. With more stars, producers and writers moving into venture-backed deals like FunnyorDie's, you might see more hot names demanding that studios and networks invest in their startups as part of other deals. It may be the only way Ashton Kutcher can keep Ooma alive.

It's hard not to notice Serge's brand new, white BMW convertible that he drives around. A 650i costs $82,000 base, and one can only imagine how jealous and frustrated the rest of the team is when they are working long hours and someone with no knowledge of technology (he can't even program in HTML) has a substantially higher equity stake yet offers nothing substantive, and still splurges on a new sports car.

Searchme may remind some of Apple's iTunes Cover Flow feature, but if it's more likely to succeed than Snap that's not why. Snap was search-ad innovator Bill Gross's brainchild. Good genes. But Searchme's Sequioa roots are better. Sequioa funded Google, which is known to return the favor from time to time.

The cable giant has been an active buyer of startups recently, and Plaxo already runs its online address book. Whoever buys Plaxo is likely to be after its engineers and its Pulse social network, not its legacy address-synching business. That's what we hear drew Facebook's interest. But Facebook has, as far as we can tell, dropped out of the bidding for Plaxo.

Facebook's cash is reserved for a massive datacenter expansion. And a stock deal would bring Sequoia Capital into Facebook as an investor. We hear Sequoia is keen on that prospect. Facebook's investors — a group which includes Plaxo founder Sean Parker, whom Sequoia forced out of the company — are not as sanguine about such a scenario.

So far, the people deemed worthy of such recognition include Intel Capital's Eghosa Omoigui, Sequoia Capital's Roelof Botha, TechCrunch's Michael Arrington and angel investor Ron Conway. Each is depicted in the group portrait on the left. But people, forget Silicon Valley leaders. It's the rest of us who deserve to see this project through to its completion.

The painting, tentatively titled "Fellowship of the VCs," will draw its artistic inspiration from a timeless, classic source: Lord of the Rings movie posters. How is that not the most wonderful thing you've ever heard? There's only one day left to make your pledge. Make it now, or be forgotten by history, people.

Here's HealthCentral.com and its other sites.
And now, versus WebMD.
Looks pretty bad for HealthCentral, but it's early yet. The site only changed its name to HealthCentral in 2006.

Technically, the sale makes sense. Plaxo's chief platform architect, Joseph Smarr, is an engineering rock star, with many fans among the Valley's brainiac collectors. And Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg is said to admire other members of Plaxo's engineering team. The process of synching multiple address books, Plaxo's specialty, is more complex than it sounds, and would save Facebook some trouble as it tries to become more of a hub for its users' online activities on and off the Facebook site.

Bringing the investors to terms, however, would prove troublesome. Michael Moritz, of Sequoia Capital, is said to be eager to get a stake in Facebook, however small, so it can claim to have had a hand in its success. It's a move he played skillfully in the first bubble when he merged a failing online bank, X.com, into Peter Thiel's PayPal.

Thiel, now a Facebook board member and venture capitalist in his own right, remembers that maneuver all too keenly, and believes Moritz got the better of him in the deal. Then, too, Moritz forced Sean Parker, now a partner in Thiel's Founders Fund, out of Plaxo; he next joined Facebook, and while he didn't stay long, he still owns a substantial stake in the company. Any deal that reunites Sequoia, Thiel, and Parker would produce a moment of boardroom drama the likes of which we haven't seen in a long while.

The talks aren't advanced, and haven't even reached the point of naming numbers. But Facebook's lofty $15 billion valuation gives it a currency for acquisitions. Will Plaxo take Facebook's paper? The decision, if it ever comes to that, will rest in part with Thiel. How delicious it would be to have Moritz at a disadvantage.

The same way flatlining startups always do: the promise of an imminent IPO. Or at least that's what Trident Capital's Woody Marshall told VentureBeat.

Problem is, despite attracting talent such as Bill Murray, Jenna Elfman, John C. Reilly, Jimmy Fallon, Jeremy Piven, John Mayer, and a writing staff of 30, "The Landlord" remains Funny Or Die's only real hit. This despite 16,000 subsequent efforts by the company and its users. In fact, the video's sequel and the site's second biggest hit, "Good Cop, Baby Cop," (see above) garnered just a tenth as many views.

"I kind of wish we'd released 'The Landlord' today and not last spring," Kvamme told Portfolio. "The site was nothing then, and now it's a robust thing."

For an example of Silicon Valley incest, look no further than the guest list. Meebo founder Elaine Wherry is engaged to Plaxo cofounder Todd Masonis. The other Plaxo cofounder, Cam Ring, is dating Sandy Jen, another Meebo cofounder. Meebo CEO Seth Sternberg was an intern at Plaxo during business school. RockYou cofounder Jia Shen's brother, Jian, works as an engineer at Meebo. Members of all three companies have played on the same Ultimate Frisbee team since before their companies were launched. Oh, and they're all funded by Sequoia Capital.

Which would explain the presence of Sequoia's newest golden-boy partner, Roelof Botha, at the event. He stood out in his suit jacket and had an aura around him as green as a dollar. He walked around the room and every startup founder tensed, worrying that they would somehow screw up in his presence.

When they weren't worrying if they measured up for Botha, people were talking about how Meebo's platform measured up to Facebook's. The answer? Not really. The other source of conversation was the upcoming Google platform announcement, which TechCrunch revealed would be pushed back from its original date of November 5, but we now hear is set to be on time, if not early.

I should say Google's platform wasn't really a topic of conversation as it was a conversation killer. When stuck with a boorish biz devver from a widget maker, the easiest way to make my escape was to bring it up. When asked about that platform, the responses ranged from "I can't talk about that" to wild, blinking, stares. According to one anonymous founder type, at least one company "got in trouble" for revealing details. When asked for details, he backed off the subject, fearful of the long arm of Google.

We hear RockYou made a quiet pitch to the developers of Facebook application Graffiti soon after the Facebook platform launched. The offer? $2 million for the viral success story, mere weeks after it was introduced. The most bizarre part of this tale is the reaction from the developers Mark Kantor, and Tim and Ted Suzman: They turned down the offer, presumably because they were looking for a higher payout for their numerous sleepless hours spent coding the time-wasting widget. Think these guys have a bright future ahead of them? Join the team. They're looking for an engineer.

If true, then the organizers — Internet entrepreneur Jason Calacanis and TechCrunch editor Michael Arrington — have figured out a very clever hack on the startup-conference business model. Instead of charging startups directly, charge venture capitalists to let their favored portfolio companies in. And throw in a handful of unfunded startups to make it all look above-board. Surely the sponsors — Sequoia Capital, which has backed Calacanis's Mahalo; Mayfield Fund; Charles River Ventures; and Clearstone Venture Partners — would heartily approve of this scheme. It's brilliant. Ingenious. My hat is off to you, Jason and Michael, if you have indeed pulled this off.

Rumors reaching Valleywag from adult-industry sources indicate that Lehman Brothers was weighing a large investment in AdBrite — as much as 10 percent of the company — but decided to pass. That's a heavy blow for both AdBrite and its lead VC investor, Sequoia Capital, which frequently partners with Lehman. The reason for Lehman's cold feet? Apparently, AdBrite's involvement in the porn business was larger than bankers there had been led to believe — a fact that may have been uncovered during AdBrite's recent audit.

"It's all you!" RockYou proclaims. Unless, that is, you're a Facebook app developer too inept to figure out how to get your app embraced by Facebook users.

Take, for example, Yahoo. Until RockYou came along, Yahoo's music-video app for Facebook faced resounding indifference.

RockYou has provided such amazing Facebook apps as Horoscopes and Zombies. If you've been "bitten" by a Facebook friend who wants to turn you into a zombie, now you know whom to blame — RockYou.

Want to sign up users? It will cost you. At the largest volume discount, RockYou charges $0.50 per user signed up. That's roughly comparable to cost-per-click advertising on Google, which would be reasonable if, say, you were actually selling something, as opposed to trying to get people to sign up for your free Facebook app. And how does RockYou expect you to make up the money you've just spent on that user? Why, that's your problem. Perhaps you can charge that much for explaining to another startup how to make money on Facebook.

Full deck here (PDF).

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.

Valleywag is unqualified to give investment advice. So I'll tell you just for fun — "significant momentum" was used in the past week to describe the companies SpineVision, Juniper Networks, Affiliated Computer Services, Seacoast Banking Corporation, and McAfee, as well as the entire Swedish economy.

2004 Startup-Of-The-Year Winner Shuts Down in 2005 [alarm:clock]