All Things Digital

In a move BoomTown is still trying to noodle over, longtime Facebook exec Matt Cohler (pictured here) will be leaving the social networking site to become a general partner at Benchmark Capital.

Cohler, who is currently Facebook’s VP of Product Management, was one of its earliest hires and, as I wrote once, seemed like “the Yoda figure at Facebook to me.”

He will not leave the prominent social-networking company until the fall, even though Cohler is already featured on the venture capital firm’s Web site.

And, after he goes, Cohler will remain as a “special adviser”–is that like a special guest star on a television show a la Heather Locklear?–to Facebook Founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg and senior management.

It is a great get for Benchmark to grab Cohler, of course, who will be its youngest partner ever.

And while the venture firm was the hot shop in the Web 1.0 era, it has not been as prominent a partner in the Web 2.0 space, although Benchmark does have investments in sites like Yelp and Zillow.

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So I moderated a panel yesterday at AlwaysOn’s Venture Summit West, held at the Ritz Carlton at Half Moon Bay, Calif., with the title “Is There Still an Upside to the Internet?”

Of course, I redubbed it: “Has the Internet Jumped the Shark?” For the love of All Things Fonzie, you bet it has.

The discussion centered around what I think most agree is an inflated market for start-ups, worrisome especially given a looming recession.

Here is my video and one from the panel, in this case a snippet of Benchmark Capital’s Bill Gurley talking about Second Life, in which he is an investor:

Interestingly, none of the panelists–Gurley, Glam CEO Samir Arora, Lise Buyer of Class V Group and Aggregate Knowledge CEO Paul Martino–seemed bothered by that for a variety of reasons (lots of bigger companies interested in acquiring little ones, for example).

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