As Twitter has risen to prominence, many loud voices have declared it the future of media, the future of journalism, even the future of the free world. I am a fan of Twitter. It is a powerful service that is unbelievably flexible and versatile. But, as I contemplate Twitter, it strikes me that Blogging remains the king of new media.

Given the nature of Twitter, Tweets are necessarily abbreviated and ephemeral. I don't necessarily mean that as a criticism. There are certain real advantages to the brevity of Twitter. Anyone can Tweet. You can do it on the fly. You can do it quickly. And there are virtually no barriers to getting started. What's more, the fleeting nature of Twitter may be a feature as much as a flaw. Twitter put the "real time" in the "Real Time Web." Want to know about a fire or earthquake or service outage that's happening right now? Twitter is your best source of that info by orders of magnitude.

But there are also real limitations to 140 characters about the here and now. A tweet may be well suited to quips and status reports. But when it comes to debate or deeper commentary, a tweet is at best a teaser. Meaningful discussion remains the domain of blogging, not tweeting or status updates. In fact, this blog entry is about 3,100 characters -- the equivalent of 22 tweets. No one would read 22 successive tweets. Nor would anyone try to post them. It is well understood that Twitter is a pointer to the debate, not a home for the debate itself.

Blogs also gain huge advantage from search engines. Search for "VC" on Google and you'll get a bunch of VC Blogs, not VC tweets. Blogs are, in many ways, the institutional knowledge of the Web. If you want to learn about liquidation preference or due diligence or pitching a VC, blogs like this one have a huge amount of content that has been amassed over the last half dozen years; and search engines will unearth that content quickly and easily. While you may be able to find a pointer or two to VC-related content by searching Twitter, even those tweets will likely also point to content residing on VC blogs.

Perhaps the smartest thing that Twitter did was to enable easy linking from tweets (although that API thing was awfully smart too). In doing so, Twitter has become a channel for the most interesting content on the web, wherever it resides. Twitter does not compete with blogging for attention -- it has a symbiotic relationship with blogs. Blogs have become Twitter's payload. Twitter drives traffic to blogs. But blogs imbue those scant 140 characters with substance beyond their limited scope. The passed link has become the currency of Twitter and, more often than not, that link is to a blog.

I don't for a second mean to suggest that the rise of Twitter has been anything short of spectacular. Nor do I mean to imply that blogging trumps tweeting -- they are distinct media forms with distinct value. But it is clear to me that as Twitter grows, so too does the importance of blogging. Twitter may be media's golden child. But in the land of Twitter, blogging is king.

Despite my best efforts, there was no way that I was going to actually manage to blog while I was still at the TED conference this year. I don't know how anyone can do it. I suppose that is why there was such an explosion of tweeting at TED -- you can do it on the fly. But if you want to sit down and write anything vaguely coherent, it takes time. And the TED conference isn't about free time. In fact, I managed to get about 10 hours of sleep over the last three nights of TED. But now that I am back and rested, I figured I'd tap out some thoughts.

As with every year, now that TED is over, the debate has begun -- is TED an elitist event that is nothing more than a party for the rich and self-involved? I am reluctant to jump into the fray on this one. Not because I don't have an opinion. Nor because I fear angering those who will see my defense of TED as ... well ... elitist. Mostly because I think this debate is pretty well trodden territory. In fact, Robert Scoble just wrote a great post on the issue called "The Elephants in the Room at TED." But before getting to the content of this year's excellent TED, let me share a few thoughts on the democratization of TED.

When I first started attending TED a decade ago, I was blown away by the people in the room. I was by far the smallest house on the block, metaphorically speaking (still am). In fact, I distinctly remember my friend Andrew Anker leaning over to me before the start of one TED session back in the early 2000's and saying:

Don't look now, but if this row blows up, the New York Times will report "7 people died today, five of whom were Herbie Hancock, Yo-Yo Ma, Frank Gehry, Rupert Murdoch and [someone amazing who I can't remember]."

The TED conference was a spectacular salon of interesting, thoughtful, brilliant people. I considered myself lucky to participate. And while the conference didn't go out of its way to be elitist, there was no question that TED was in fact a gathering of the elite (from Technology, Entertainment and Design). What's more, the only way that you could enjoy TED was to be a member of that elite (or, maybe, borrow the coveted DVDs made of the conference that were only distributed to the attendees).

But that all changed a few years ago. In 2002, Chris Anderson took over TED. He loved TED and wanted to nurture the fantastic stuff that had come before him. But he also wanted to add pieces of himself to the event. He cared about the discussion. And he cared about the community. But he also cared about the world. And about the ideas. So he brought in some amazing people to work with him on the event. And he did what great CEOs do (after all, he had been a wildly successful entrepreneur before becoming the curator of TED) -- he asked anyone and everyone how they would make TED a better experience. What's more, he listened.

As a result of those conversations, rather than tighten the elite nature of the TED conference, Chris sought to democratize it. The first, and most significant, thing he did was to opened up his archive of amazing talks to the world. At the urging of June Cohen, TED's digital media czar, Chris made TED.com the home of "Ideas Worth Spreading." And boy have those ideas spread. As of today, over 200M TED talks have been viewed around the world. What's more, the TED team has created a user-generated translation engine for the TED Talks which allows the talks to be translated into a vast array of languages. Today TED Talks can be viewed with subtitles in over 80 languages. And those numbers are growing in all dimensions.

The good-news/bad-news of the success of the TED talks was that, as the talks spread throughout the world, interest in the TED conference grew massively. Suddenly there was more intense pressure than ever on the TED team to accommodate a larger number of people at the conference itself. In response to that huge demand, Chris and team did several things. First, they moved the conference from its beloved home in Monterey to a venue that could accommodate a much larger number of attendees. Second, they created something called TED Active -- a separate venue in which hundreds more attendees could enjoy the conference in simulcast. Third, they created the TED Associate Membership which allowed people to watch the conference streamed live into their homes and offices. Anyone who wanted could be part of the TED "elite" and watch the talks in real time. While attending TED in Long Beach remains a tough ticket to get, thousands upon thousands of individuals now experience the TED conference in real time throughout the world.

The TED team was not content for their conference to involve only well-known thinkers and doers. They recognized that up and comers had a huge amount to contribute to the discussion. The result: the TED Fellows program. Some 40 young scientist, environmentalists, artists, musicians, magicians, designers... joined this year's TED conference on "scholarship." They presented their work in sessions before the conference and several joined the main stage during TED proper to describe topics ranging from the emerging tattoo culture to the future of scientific discovery. As the best of the TED Fellow talks make their way to the Web, the broader public will benefit greatly from what these emerging influencers have to say.

But perhaps their boldest and most democratizing move the TED team made was to lend the TED brand to independent gatherings. The TEDx program was launched about a year ago. Under the TEDx moniker, hundreds of TED-like programs have been hosted around the world -- from TEDxBuenosAires to TEDxBrisbane to TEDxBudapest. These independent gatherings bring the power of TED to a local level. While it was a huge risk for TED to allow these independent events to carry the TED brand, the impact has been nothing shy of spectacular. The TED conference experience is literally everywhere now. In fact, if there isn't a TEDx event being put on in your community, grab the bull by the horns and start one yourself. TED is yours for the making.

I know that it is easy to point to the $6,000 price tag of TED and cry elitism. And it is hard to deny that attending the TED conference in Long Beach is a lucky privilege that can only be lived by a small number of people. But Chris Anderson and the TED team have done everything in their power to democratize the TED experience. They coined the phrase "Ideas Worth Spreading" and are living by it. They have worked tirelessly to make the TED and these "Ideas Worth Spreading" accessible to the largest number of people possible. TED is not about elitism. TED is about the democratization of ideas -- a powerful goal which Chris and his team continue to pursue maniacally. For that I am grateful.

After a bunch of early speculation, it was announced last week that Google has acquired Aardvark. It didn't surprise me one bit that Google wanted to own Aardvark. Aardvark is completely awesome. And I am going to miss lending a hand in building this amazing company.

About a year and a half ago I first met with Max Ventilla, founder and CEO of Aardvark, to talk about his company. That meeting was on a Friday. And after the meeting I rushed to get Max and his co-founders (Rob Spiro, Nathan Stoll and Damon Horowitz) in to meet my partners the following Monday. My partners had the same reaction to Aardvark that I did -- love at first sight. And so we quickly gave the team a term sheet to fund their Series A. But we weren't alone. In the period of two weeks, Max and team managed to wrangle a handful of term sheets from fantastic firms.

Why was there so much excitement about what Aardvark was doing? As I've written before, Aardvark manages to solve a major problem with search today -- search quality is going down while the utility of social relationships in answering subjective questions is going up. By tapping your friends, Aardvark is able to get you better answers to the questions you are actually asking with less bias. That's awfully valuable, as Google well knew. And rather than let Aardvark chip away at their search dominance, Google decided to bring them into the fold.

But the brilliance of the Aardvark service wasn't the only reason Google bought the company. Aardvark had managed to amass one of the most impressive collections of talent around. As I've seen again and again, great teams attract great talent. The rich get richer. And Aardvark was a perfect example of that. The extraordinary talent in the company made it possible to bring on increasingly impressive entrepreneurs, technologists, Ph.D's, business people. By the time Google bought Aardvark, there were dozens of talented folks involved in the company. Now those dozens of talented people will add to the collective horsepower of Google.

Aardvark is a fantastic example of why the Venture business is so much fun. I have the great good fortune to work with some of the smartest folks on the planet building amazing technology that will literally change the world. As jobs go, it doesn't get much better than that. Watching Aardvark get acquired by Google at such a young age is a bit like sending your kids off to college -- you are excited for them and proud of all that they have accomplished, but you know that you'll miss the chance to play a bigger role in the amazing stuff that's yet to come.

Congratulations to the entire entire Aardvark team. I'll miss you. Good luck at Google U.

What we think of as Venture Capital today is a pretty young profession. "Modern" VC firms first came into existence in the 1960s, started by the likes of Bill Draper, Pitch Johnson and Reid Dennis. These visionaries shaped the technology industry, and lay the groundwork for everything that we VCs do today.

My friend Paul Holland and the folks at Foundation Capital have produced a new documentary that tells the story of the early days of the venture business. The film is called "More than Money: The Untold Tale of Risk, Reward and the Original Venture Capitalists." Those original VCs chronicled in the documentary are Tom Perkins, Don Valentine, Arthur Rock, Bill Draper, Dick Kramlich, Reid Dennis, Pitch Johnson, Bill Edwards and Bill Bowes. They were the guys behind Apple, Intel, Cisco, Genetech, Atari, Tandem, and many others.

The film is a great history lesson -- not just on the venture business, but also on the tech industry and Silicon Valley. If anyone is interested in getting an early peek at the film, WAVC (the Western Association of Venture Capitalists) is holding an advanced screening of the documentary at 6pm on March 25th at the Computer History Museum. A number of the amazing men profiled in the movie will also be at the screening and reception. So if you'd like to learn more about the birth of the venture business, click here and buy tickets to this great event.

I've just arrived in Long Beach for the annual TED conference. When I first started going to TED, it was a relatively small, relatively unknown gathering in Monterey, California. But don't confuse relatively small and relatively unknown for relatively uninteresting. Since its inception, the TED conference has been an amazing gathering of people across a variety of disciplines (TED stands for Technology, Entertainment and Design). And with the advent of TED's fantastic video destination site and a growing number of enthusiastic boosters, the conference has become much larger and much more influential.

It has been a while since I blogged about TED, but I'm going to try to post some thoughts over the course of this week. There are always nuggets of wisdom I collect throughout the TED conference. And they often come from the most unlikely sources. Perhaps this year that wisdom will be dolled out by Sarah Silverman or Temple Grandin, David Byrne or Nathan Myrvold, James Cameron or Benoit Mandelbrot. Rest assured, whoever the source, there will be wisdom dolled out. And, with any luck, I can be the conduit for some of that TED wisdom.

I think this is my 10th TED. Why do I come back to TED year in and year out? Not only do I find it inspiring to learn about the trials and triumphs of some of the great thinkers of our day, but I find their diversity of background and opinion invaluable. Many of the most interesting innovations throughout time have been the result of cross-disciplinary collaboration. The same is true of the innovations of today -- they draw upon a diverse backdrop of technology and leadership. TED inspires me to think more broadly about the world in which we live (how art and science and philosophy come together) and helps to place the companies with which I interact every day into the larger technological and economic universe.

Like so many of you who watch the TED Talks in amazement, I attend the TED conference in amazement and am constantly inspired. I consider myself very lucky to have the opportunity to interact with such a transcendent group of people. I will do my best to share some of those moments of inspiration along the way.

Over the last few weeks I've started to suffer from Four Square fatigue. After all, Four Square is a lot of work. To get the benefits of Four Square, you need to proactively check in wherever you go. And, while each checkin requires a relatively small amount of work, in the aggregate, it takes real effort to make the most of the Four Square experience. Would it be better if Four Square just checked you in automatically any time you lingered at a location for more than 15 or 20 minutes? Or does that cross the privacy line for most of us?

The challenges of Four Square have gotten me thinking more broadly about privacy on the web. On the one hand, the less proactive input a service requires, the less friction there is in maintaining its usefulness. Automatic Four Square naturally will produce more data, on average, than does a Four Square that requires proactive behavior. And, for many, the Four Square experience would be greatly enhanced. On the other hand, when data is being passively collected by a service, there are natural privacy concerns that come with that data collection. How many of us want our every daily stop published to the Web? So perhaps automatic Four Square would turn away more users than it would attract.

This privacy vs. utility debate is not a new conversation. You may recall the uproar in the early days of the Web around personalization. There were those (perhaps there still are) who were deeply concerned about the collection and retention of data for the purpose of personalizing the online experience. Yet few of us today find it concerning to receive Amazon's product recommendations or Ticketmaster's concert reminders. In fact, if you are like me, you are more than willing to provide scads of personal data to enhance your online experience.

Personalization has evolved over time. In the early days of the Web, you had to explicitly state a set of preferences. The Internet only thought you liked the things you said you liked. Now services like Amazon and Netflix quietly collect preference data from the things you buy and watch. And, of course, ad networks collect tons of data by watching where you go on the Web, what you click on, where you linger on a page. Using this data, advertisers are increasingly sophisticated about the advertisements they choose to present to you as you wander the Web.

While there are still those who find ad targeting intrusive, if you are like me, you are happy to have ads for things you actually care about (if only spammers were as sophisticated -- or do they know something I don't about my coming erectile disfunction). As with personalization, consumer acceptance of ad targeting has been an evolution. Targeting has grown more precise, more granular and, as a result, more valuable to consumers. [1] As consumers have seen the value of that targeting, they have grown increasingly accepting of the things they had previously feared.

We have all seen that consumers are willing -- often times happy -- to trade privacy for utility. I know that I am. And, while Mark Zuckerburg's statement that privacy is a generational concern was controversial, I think he is absolutely right about that. The coming generations of consumers may not abandon the idea of privacy in its entirety, but they will certainly have very different views of the appropriate balance between privacy and utility. That balance has already clearly shifted in the direction of utility and I believe the trend will continue.

To some this will be viewed as a warning -- a cry of the coming privacy apocalypse. I don't see it that way. As technologies and standards evolve, doors open to new products and services. We are on the verge of an explosion of new ideas.
Automatic Four Square and its progeny are coming. And I, for one, am excited about that.

[1] Obviously there are extremes of everything. It is perhaps too "granular" to start seeing ads for Prozac after buying a book on depression, or ads for funerary services after sending an email about the passing of a family member. But, to my mind, businesses are ill served by crossing those lines. The marketplace will vote loud and clear -- one need look no further than Facebook's beacon program -- and keep non-market behavior in check. The advantage of markets, of course, is that they correct for evolving standards. Perhaps there will come a time when consumers consider it perfectly appropriate to receive advertisements for funerary services upon the passing of a loved one. When that time comes, there will be real utility in the coffin banner ads and consumers will be happy to see them. Why should current standards of appropriateness impede such "progress."

I'm always amazed to hear VCs describe themselves as "value added investors." Not because I am skeptical about their ability to add value. More because I think all investors need to be "value added." If the only thing you do as an investor is hand out money, you are in big trouble. There's a lot of money out there. And it isn't that hard to hand it out. If all you are as a venture investor is a money dispensary, you are as fungible as the money that you are handing out.

I know that in some entrepreneurial circles there is a reasonable amount of skepticism about the idea that investors can add value. While that may be a fair criticism in some circumstances (there are investors out there who have been known to add a little bit too much value, if you know what I mean), after attending the tail end of First Round Capital's CEO Summit last night, I was reminded that Great investors can add significant value to their portfolio companies (Congratulations to the FRC team).

In light of that, I thought it would be worth sharing some thoughts on the sorts of things that venture investors can do to help their portfolio companies be successful. Few investors are able to provide value on all these fronts. But great VCs will help where they can be helpful and staying out of the way the rest of the time.

So, in no particular order, here are some ways in which VCs can be helpful? I'm hopeful that this is not a comprehensive list -- but it is a good starting point.

Recruiting

I think this is one of the most important ways in which VCs can be helpful to their portfolio companies. Companies are only as good as the collection of entrepreneurs that populate them. So it really matters who you're able to recruit. VCs should be able to help in that process. We can explain why it is that of the hundreds of companies we see every year, we funded this particular company. We should also be able to help put our portfolio companies in the context of the larger marketplace, which is helpful when trying to convince a fantastic engineer or sales person to join your company over some other opportunity.

Frankly, companies under-utilize their investors when it comes to recruiting. We are occasionally called in to have dinner with a hot prospect for VP of something-or-other. But we are rarely asked to put in a quick call to a young engineer or hotshot SEO magician. We should be. In an industry where nothing matters more than the people, helping bring in the very best people should be a top priority for all VCs. And we can often really be of help here.

Raising Equity

If an early stage VC can't be helpful to you in raising future rounds of capital, don't take his money. The vast majority of companies will need to raise more than one round of capital over their lifetime. So having a VC who can assist in the fundraising process will be of real value. I recently spent time with a very smart young guy who's done a ton of research over the last year looking into what makes a successful venture firm. He concluded that you could measure the likely success of VC firms by the folks with whom they co-invested. It is really not that surprising that good venture firms tend to invest along side other good venture firms. It is also not surprising that the best venture investors tend to have a broad set of relationships that make the fundraising process easier for their portfolio companies. In fact, the very best VCs tend to have later stage firms that are willing to follow them into practically any deal they've done. As you can imagine, that's pretty valuable to a startup (few things are as distracting and unpleasant for an entrepreneur as fundraising).

Raising Debt

After completing an equity financing, entrepreneurs often decide to raise debt to further support their company (be it equipment financing or venture debt). While debt providers certainly will assess a company on its own merits, the company's backers will play a big role in that assessment. A lender's capacity to get repaid will rest largely on that company's ability to raise future rounds of funding (debt is rarely paid off before a company needs to raise additional capital). Given that, the company will be assessed in the context of its backers and their ability to 1) assist in future fundraising and 2) continue to support the company. It is very rare that a debt financing gets done without the lender spending a chunk of time on the phone with the company's backers. So a VCs enthusiasm for his portfolio companies can translate into additional dollars in the bank. And like later stage financings, there are lenders who are willing to follow certain VCs into nearly any deal about which that VC is excited.

Introductions, Introductions, Introductions

If there is one thing that VCs should be good at, it is helping companies build relationships. VCs are connectors. It is what we do for a living. I don't know how many emails a year I send that go something like this: "X meet Y. Y is awesome. Y meet X. X is awesome. Talk amongst yourselves." While it is a relatively simple thing, don't underestimate its power. Great VCs can help facilitate partnerships. Great VCs can help you engage the best analysts. Great VCs can help sell your product. And, as I said above, Great VCs can help you recruiting. Those introductions can prove invaluable.

Strategic Advice

VCs sit in a very interesting position when it comes to technology and markets. All day, every day, we meet with a host of entrepreneurs pursuing new ideas, chasing new market segments, building new products or services. Those entrepreneurs are the experts on the markets they are pursuing and they work hard to educate even the densest of VCs on those markets. As a result, any VC who spends time with a sufficiently large number of emerging companies -- as a matter of simple osmosis -- will have a pretty well-informed view of the technology landscape. In light of that, great VCs are able to give well-informed strategic advice to their portfolio companies.

Save Time

This one is a little thing, but probably worth noting. Good VCs can help companies avoid reinventing the wheel. There are a ton of things that every startup goes through. They all have to figure out payroll and insurance and office leasing and hosting providers and salary levels and . . . . Now, there's no question that entrepreneurs can get help on these kinds of things from all sorts of people. But good VCs should be a resource to entrepreneurs when they are sifting through all these mundane issues.

Create a Keiretsu

A lot has been made of the idea of venture keiretsus. And in most instances I think that the value of the keirestsu is overstated. I don't think that good VCs will force one portfolio company to assist another in any way that isn't beneficial to both companies. But I do think that there are opportunities for portfolio companies to assist each other -- partnering, recruiting, introductions, etc. As Josh Kopelman describes in his post about the FRC CEO Summit, a bunch of value is generated by portfolio executives when they are in the same room "exchanging ideas and sharing experiences." We've had a similar experiences at August Capital when we've had events for our CEOs, CFOs, Heads of Marketing. Good things happen when you connect smart people to each other with a sense of shared purpose.

PR

To paraphrase Glengarry Glen Ross, great investors should always be selling (ok, it's "always be closing" but you get the point). But, unlike some VCs out there, I don't think that venture investors should always be selling themselves -- they should always be selling the greatness of their portfolio companies. VCs spend lots of time with journalists and have the opportunity to spread the gospel of their portfolio companies and they should. We're on panels and in classrooms and on TV, and we should always be selling our portfolio companies. It is amazing how valuable a well placed reference to a portfolio company in the New York Times can be.

Making Exits Happen

And, of course, the culmination of all these other activities is that Great VCs can help make exits happen. Sometimes that means selling the company -- venture investors can make intros to potential acquirers, help position the company, create competition. Sometimes that means helping taking a company public -- venture investors can get the right investment bankers involved, brief the right analyst, encourage the right coverage. While VCs can't manufacture exits out of thin air, good VCs can definitely help to create a climate that will maximize the possible outcomes.

I can already hear the outcry about this blog post -- "value added investor my ass! That's an oxymoron." None of this is intended to suggest that venture investors are company builders. We aren't. That isn't our job. Entrepreneurs build companies, hire great executives, raise money, make strategic decisions and ultimately effect exits. But I think that good VCs can help a huge amount along the way, even if sometimes that means getting out of the way and letting great entrepreneurs do their jobs.

This afternoon I attended an event sponsored by Proctor & Gamble called the "Innovation Outreach Venturing Day." The event was an effort by executives at P&G to connect with the investment community in the Bay Area to discuss how P&G might work more closely with the emerging technology companies we all touch every day. The pre-amble to the event was a run down of the scale of Proctor & Gamble's business and the massive amount of technology they already leverage. The scale of P&G is pretty stunning -- P&G has 32 separate brands that do more than half a billion in revenue annually (and more than half of those do more than a billion). The company has 135,000 full time employees and did nearly $80 billion in revenue last year. In other words, Proctor & Gamble is freakin' huge.

And because of their scale, P&G already leverages massive amounts of technology. When talking about social media platforms, they mentioned that they already have more than a dozen in trial within the enterprise at the moment, and they continue to assess more. They have looked at every knowledge management system you can imagine, and continue to assess more. They have worked with every digital agency on the planet, and continue to assess more. What is interesting, however, is that one thing they aren't trying are cloud services. It was made clear that P&G runs everything behind their own firewall. And they have no intention of moving any part of their infrastructure into the cloud. P&G's view of the enterprise is pretty old school.

But when it comes to advertising, they clearly understand that they need to be more forward thinking. They aren't discounting television by any stretch. The continue to spend hundreds of millions of dollars in television advertising. But, as they say, P&G needs to "bring the experience to where she already is" (the folks at P&G always talk about "she" and "her" when discussing their customer) and they know that these days that is online. So they are working hard to have a big presence in digital media.

That said, Proctor & Gamble's online bets tend to be around huge aggregations of traffic, like Yahoo and Google. It was particularly interesting to see how bullish they are on Facebook. In a small group discussion about social media, one of P&G's technology leaders talked about Facebook's growth trajectory and how they are on a path to serve 5 billion people. Accordingly, P&G feels that it needs to have a significant presence on Facebook. If you are wondering if Facebook is making any money, you need look no further than P&G. It is clear that Proctor & Gamble is working with Facebook in a big way -- as an advertising platform and a brand destination. P&G's explicit goal for 2010 is to assure that each of its brands has a meaningful presence on Facebook and they are willing to pay dearly for that. And while P&G's thought leaders expressed some skepticism about the efficacy of Facebook's "engagement ads," they certainly view Facebook as a must-have for digital advertising and brand building. They didn't quantify what they are paying for that exposure, but it is quite clear that the numbers are very big.

Perhaps as interesting as P&G's love of Facebook, was its skepticism about Twitter. They described Twitter as "much more like television than one might think." To P&G, Twitter is a great broadcast medium -- it is best for one to many communications that are short bursts of timely information -- but as good as it is for timely information, the P&G folks do not view it as particularly relevant to what they are doing on the brand building and advertising side. For those things that Proctor & Gamble thinks are most interesting and important, they do not believe that Twitter will ever approach the value they can get out of a Google or Facebook. But they are open to looking at other alternatives that will have more of the engagement and brand building attributes that they hope to exploit in Facebook.

It was fascinating to get a bit of a view inside such a huge and influential company as Proctor & Gamble. And it is encouraging to see them reaching out to the greater tech community. In fact, P&G is opening an innovation office in the Bay Area and they've committed to have their senior execs make more frequent trips out to what they view as the "most important innovation ecosystem globally." It will be great to continue the conversation. There's no question that it will benefit P&G and Bay Area startups alike.

UPDATE: As you can see in the comments below, a representative from Proctor & Gamble wants to clarify that P&G does not now claim that they project Facebook's growth to 5 billion users. Rather, they are projecting the reach of their own products to 5 billion users. Since the growth projection that I heard at the P&G event wasn't attached to any time frame, I took it simply as a statement of how huge Facebook could become over time. And I agree. Facebook will be increasingly huge, and increasingly important, over time. So it didn't strike me as such a controversial statement. That said, Proctor & Gamble would like me to correct the misunderstanding, so please let it be known that if Facebook, in fact, reaches 5 billion users some day in the future, P&G did not project that that would happen :)

When I first started blogging, I wrote a lot. Everything I saw in my day-to-day VC world called out for a blog entry. Great competitive landscape slide -- blog about it. Exciting presentation at the TED conference -- blog about it. Liquidation preference distribution -- blog about it. I viewed my world through blog-colored glasses. Part time VC. Part time journalist.

For years, my every thought became a VentureBlog post. But I have to admit, over time, my focus turned elsewhere. I spoke at events, podcast, taught, started The Lobby conference, and worked hard to help my portfolio companies thrive. And, along the way, my blog suffered. Fewer things in my daily life called out for commentary. And VentureBlog began to languish.

Well, last week the repercussions of that inactivity came home to roost. Larry Cheng has been tracking VC bloggers over the last couple years. Each year he pulls together a list of the "top" VC bloggers. His past lists have been based upon RSS subscribers. And by that measure I have always fared very well. Last year VentureBlog ranked as high as 3rd on the list. After all, as long as you occasionally write something of interest, there's little reason to unsubscribe from an RSS feed. So my relative inactivity had minimal impact on the number of people who followed me.

This year, however, Larry used a new methodology. This year he ranked VC blogs by unique visitors to their blogs (as measured by Compete.com). As you can imagine, the number of unique visitors to one's blog is much more driven by the frequency of your blogging. The more you blog, the more likely visitors will find their way to your blog. And so, in this year's rankings, I fell precipitously.

This year VentureBlog ranked 28th among VC blogs. Ouch. From 3rd to 28th. That's a free fall. But it serves me right. The last time I blogged was November 17th, 2009. That's a long time ago. What is interesting is that despite my temporary retirement from the blogging world, I still receive thousands of daily visitors to VentureBlog courtesy of search engines and historical links. Apparently the long tail of Venture Capital topics are my wheelhouse. Search for "VCitis" or "venture loans" or "David Hornik" and you are bound to come upon a link to VentureBlog. Same is true of "VC Bloggers" or "The Lobby" or "Howard Hartenbaum."

The set of search terms that lead to VentureBlog on a daily basis are wildly varied and surprisingly large. And VentureBlog is not unique in this respect. There's little question that a huge amount of Fred Wilson's and Brad Feld's traffic comes from the long tail of search terms. They've been at this as long as I have. And they've managed to maintain the intensity of their blogging over the years. It is quite clear that the longer you blog, the greater your blogging frequency, and the more that others point to your blog, the more likely that a plethora of search term will lead to traffic to your blog. So despite my recent lack of blogging, VentureBlog has been able to continue to be useful to thousands of visitors a month.

Don't get me wrong. I take little comfort in the fact that VentureBlog remains the 28th "best" VC blog without posting. If there is one lesson that I have learned over the years of blogging, it is that there are no shortcuts. I should have remembered that. If you want people to care what you have to say, you better write well, think clearly, and make a habit of posting a lot. Larry's list was an excellent reminder of that -- a wakeup call. Time to show VentureBlog a little love. And hopefully by the time Larry creates his next ranking, I will have reentered the panoply of VC Blog Heros. Because, frankly, being #28 sucks. So, as they say, no rest for the wicked -- get on with the writing, already. I guess this blog post is a step in the right direction.

In his book Outliers, Malcolm Gladwell talks about the power of circumstance. He explains that Bill Gates and Bill Joy had unprecedented access to the earliest computers and, as a result, they built a couple of the most important computer companies in the history of computation. A quick look at the folks who graduated from law school with me at the dawn of the Internet age (it sounds so long ago when you put it that way) and you can see the power of circumstance at work again. In my law school class were four of the most well-respected Internet scholars: Professors Jonathan Zittrain, Yochai Benkler, Kevin Werbach and the Obama administration's deputy CTO, Andrew McLaughlin. It is an impressive group of very thoughtful men and I consider myself lucky to have been in school with them and to continue to trade ideas with them from time to time.

For those of you who are interested in hearing what one of these experts is thinking about internet law, there is a great event taking place on Wednesday night (November 18th) at the Computer History Museum. Jonathan Zittrain will be giving a talk on "Minds for Sale," followed by a reception. The event is being put on by the Berkman Center -- Harvard's center for the study of the Internet. I am a huge fan of the Berkman Center and occassionally am lucky enough to spend some time back east in their hallowed halls. There will be a fantastic group of folks at the event and it is open to the public. So if you are interested in meeting up with the friends of Berkman and hearing a great talk by Professor Zittrain, please come on by.