Eric Olson of VentureWeek just put up his year in review podcast with David Hornik, Brad Feld and me that was recorded last week.

This was a fun one. Download it here.

Robert has joined the workgroup as our 22nd member.

The workgroup is turning into a really exciting place to hang out (and many of us are starting to use the internal email list as a support group to help deal with all of our blogging-related stress). Of course, we were happy to see that the workgroup is ranked 4th among all blogging networks, and adding Robert certainly won’t hurt us there, either.

From his blog:

I’m a Web 2.0 Working Group member
Oh, great, I move to WordPress. Get some tags. And now they invite me into the Web 2.0 Workgroup. That is an honor, although it might get me taped to a tree here at work.

Welcome to our gang, Robert!

I took a few minutes to talk with Amber MacArthur and Leo Laporte while attending the Syndicate conference earlier this week. Download it here.

Last night a company called gritwire threw an open bar launch party at Syndicate. Another startup had an open bar party in the city tonight. From what I hear the parties were full of very happy people who couldn’t have cared less about the product but were enthralled with the free booze.

The rumors are flying that Meebo, all of 13 weeks old, has raised money at a $10 million pre-money valuation. I wrote about this at TechCrunch and the first comment is “Bubble 2.0?”.

I think I may be starting to agree. All these blowout parties and easy venture capital certainly don’t strike me as a good sign.

On a related note, the party tonight that I mentioned in the city was a total zoo. I’m not going to say what company it is, but I’ve written about them numerous times. I was invited, and drove 25 miles to get there. The door person said I wasn’t on the list. I called someone inside the party to see if I could get in. A very large bouncer got right in my face and “asked” me to leave the area since I wasn’t on the list. I looked around and saw at least a dozen people trying to get in, to the free alcohol. I shrugged and left (and got phone calls all the way home asking me to come back, they were sorry, etc.).

I don’t care about not getting into the party. But I do think it’s crazy to have these open bar type things hoping that it is money well spent. It isn’t. Especially if you don’t let the bloggers in.

Yesterday I was offered $100 by a company to write about them in a positive way on TechCrunch. I guess this was bound to happen at some point. I will never write about the company that offered this, will never mention their name, and will never link to them.

And no, it’s not because they only offered $100. It’s because I think it was unethical for them to offer this, even though they phrased it as a fee to “get to the top of my list”. I don’t want to be associated with a company like that.

Niall Kennedy just pinged me with some nice news – TechCrunch just slipped into the Technorati 100 at no. 96. Cool!

The rumors have been flying for the last few days, and the news just hit the blogosphere: Yahoo has acquired Del.icio.us. I was IMing with Joshua Schachter, the founder of del.icio.us to ask him about the rumors and he confirmed that they had just announced it.

I think this is a tremendous move by Yahoo and shows their dedication to competition.

I remember a conversation I had with a certain VC and a certain business partner back in June about del.icio.us. I said they’d have a large liquidity event and that the network they were creating was incredible. I was roundly criticized and we placed a small gentleman’s bet on my prediction.

No word on the price, so I don’t know if I won the bet or not. But I think I at least won the arguement.

Richard and Rojo have their weekly summaries up. I am going to be away for parts of the Christmas holiday and won’t be blogging here or at TechCrunch for a week or two. All I need to stay on top of the news is a quick look at Richard’s and Rojo’s summaries, and maybe a peak at Memeorandum.

It’s only 9:45, and Dave has three classics up on Scripting already. He must have has his wheaties for breakfast.

Bloglines is down again tonight.

And that’s not all. Bloglines seems to be in a general state of decline. Other RSS readers (Rojo, Yahoo, Attensa, BlogBridge, tons more) are innovating and gaining users at Bloglines’ expense. No new features worth mentioning. I hate to see a service I love fade like this.

This didn’t happen to Flickr after the Yahoo acquisition. It isn’t inevitable that a startup loses its focus when acquired by a larger company.

Lee Gomes at the Wall Street Journal wrote about Memeorandum and Blogniscient today in an interesting article about blogging. Check it out.

I am pretty sure I’ll be attending this event in London on February 8, 2006. Anyone else planning on heading out? Let’s schedule a geek dinner…

Startup valuations have risen sharply in the last few months. While there are some acquisition rumors that could help support these valuations, confirmed liquidity events do not seem to justify the increase.

Clarence Wooten, an entrepreneur and venture capitalist, has a theory as to why this is happening. While companies today need far less capital to launch than they did a few years ago, venture capitalists are for the most part still stuck with huge funds and need to invest $3-5 million to justify the time commitments and opportunity costs associated with an investment. While angel investors are taking a more prominent role in funding some startups, Clarence thinks that VC’s are simply raising valuations so that they can invest the required $3-5m, while still taking just 20-25% of the equity in an A round.

I think he may be right.

Of course, competition for deals from Google and other public companies with super-valuable stock are also pushing prices up.

I just got back from a great BrainJams event today in Menlo Park. Took lots of good pictures.

If anyone is looking for one more person to add to their ski house in Tahoe this season, ping me. Must have wifi.

Brandon Schauer from Adaptive Path posted a must read essay and pdf that captures the historical essence of web 2.0.

Brandon tracks back to Amazon.com and uses foundation attributes (long tail, network effect, etc.) and experience attributes (decentralization, remixability, etc.) to show a historical timeline of the web 2.0 ecosystem.

Adaptive Path talked with a bunch of bloggers and entrepreneurs to get their thoughts on this document over the last few weeks (including me). It’s an excellent resource.

I review a lot of companies at TechCrunch.

I continue to use very few over time, and pay for fewer still. Before today, I the only sites I’ve paid for are Flickr (I needed more than the three free “sets” they give with a basic account) and Pandora (I listen to Pandora while writing). I just added Feedburner to that select group.

Feedburner has been an absolutely excellent service provider to me over the last six months. In my opinion they actually give too much away for free. But there are a few extra analytics that they offer for pro customers, and so I decided to pay the $5 per month and try it out.

At this point I couldn’t live without Feedburner and MeasureMap site and feed analytics. I’d happily pay for both company’s basic service.

Companies often offer me free upgrades for their services. I usually decline, because I really want to see if I subscribe over time. It’s a good litmus test to see how much I value what they are offering.

I’m interested in hearing about what web 2.0 services others are paying for.