All Things Digital

Silicon Valley luminary Marc Andreessen (pictured here) has been asked to join the board of Facebook, according to several sources with knowledge of the situation.

While the arrangement is not completed yet, sources said the longtime entrepreneur has verbally agreed to accept the post to become the fourth member of the board of the Palo Alto, Calif.-based social-networking site.

Other board members include Accel Partners Jim Breyer, Founders Fund’s Peter Thiel and Facebook CEO and Founder Mark Zuckerberg. Greylock Partners David Sze also has observer status on the board.

Since he co-founded browser pioneer Netscape in the 1990s and helped usher in the Internet age, Andreessen has been an active investor and has created several successful start-ups.

His most current effort has been Ning, also based in Palo Alto, which is a white-label social-networking company that recently raised another $60 million in funding.

If Andreessen joins Facebook’s board, the move is yet another sign that the much-hyped start-up, which has undergone some growing pains over the last year, as well as garnering a $15 billion valuation, is growing up by bringing some major high-profile tech figures into its ranks.

Last night, for example, BoomTown broke the news that Google PR head Elliot Schrage had accepted a similiar job at Facebook.

That comes after Facebook hired another top Google (GOOG) exec, Sheryl Sandberg, as its COO, in March.

A while back, BoomTown suggested that Web 1.0 golden boy Andreessen–pictured here on the iconic Time magazine cover in 1996–would be a good mentor for current golden boy Zuckerberg, in a piece I did about potential execs for Facebook.

As I wrote in February:

But why not go for the man who was Zuckerberg before Zuckerberg was cool. Yes, the shiniest of Golden Geeks himself, Marc Andreessen.

I could go on and on about the similarities I find between the two, if you compared today’s Zuckerberg with the Netscape founder in the mid-1990s.

From their arrogant innocence to their visionary qualities to their enfant-terrible charm, it is almost as if they were separated at birth.

But now Andreessen is all grown up and much, much matured from when I covered him. He has become all calm and sage and he even does a very decent blog.

Plus, he has also started and run a number of start-ups after Netscape, giving him deeper managerial experience over the last dozen years.

And, best of all, Andreessen knows the pressure of being the best-thing-since-sliced-bread in the tech sector, and its inevitable downside too.

Overall, a real mentor and partner for Zuckerberg, making a perfect pair of Golden Geeks.”

Since we are refraining from writing about the current deals being mulled over by Facebook (see this post and also this disclosure)–one for its international ad business with rivals Google and Microsoft vying for the privilege of losing money in a guaranteed revenue deal and another to complete a mega-round of funding that will value the hot social-networking site at $15 billion–BoomTown is bored!

And surly, given that we always have a lot to say about Facebook. (OK, OK, one tidbit: Its execs and investors have been disagreeing over how big a new investment to take–the operations folks want more cash and the VCs less dilution.)

That does not mean I do not hope to break news of what Facebook finally manages to decide to do, both with regard to partners and its funding, but that I will bow out of parsing this particular set of deals in excessive detail.

But our ennui got us thinking to back in mid-August, when we did a post making our own Facebook of the top execs there using your basic corporate shots.

So now, before they become all rich and start flying private, we compiled from less corporate pictures we found right on Facebook and the Web–we were going for a more fun Facebook of the players here.

We used all the execs from the last one, but we also added one woman, PR maven Brandee Barker, as well as the three principal VCs.

Co-founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg in a picture presumably taken at Harvard. He looks so young and naive. Kind of like now.

Zuckerberg best buddy and tech genius Adam D’Angelo (VP and CTO) on a thrilling night at Foo Camp! What could be more fun than an overhead projector and a room full of geeky guys!

Who knew co-founder and VP of Engineering Dustin Moskovitz was such a fox? His future is so bright, he needs those rad shades!

What deft bit of performance art is wacky Owen Van Natta, VP of Operations and Chief Revenue Officer, performing here? A meditation on life as an underling of various and sundry Web moguls–all Silly String and sorrows?

We have no idea what Chamath Palihapitiya, VP of Product Marketing and Operations, is doing, but it looks cool, and he’s dressed natty as always.

Hey, who also knew that VP of Strategy and Operations Matt Cohler was in a 1990s techno-rock duo? (Oh, he’s the one without the shades.)

VP and CFO Gideon “Death Cat” Yu used to have to drink from public fountains, but soon he’ll have his own, spewing only the finest champagne!

It is hard to know where to begin with this picture of PR head Brandee Barker (is she headed for the Castro Street Fair?). But I say: Own it, sister!

There are exactly zero interesting pictures of doubtlessly interesting Founders Fund VC Peter Thiel online (and we looked hard). That’s him on the right, looking the most normal of this PayPal crew.

Again, it is hard to know exactly what Accel Partners VC Jim Breyer is up to here, but we think the hat might be a new and exciting look for him.

Greylock Partners VC David Sze is thinking really hard about how he can say Facebook is worth $15 billion and still keep a straight face and refrain from cackling in front of all the other VCs at Il Fornaio.

Back around Day 55–ah, the lazy days of midpoint in Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang’s 100-day No-Sacred-Cows VisionQuest for the revitalization of the company he co-founded–I asked a bunch of people around Silicon Valley what they would do to help the beleaguered leader.

We got some good answers to be sure (the video is reposted below), but we left out these two new ones we also did at the time from venture capitalist David Sze of Greylock Partners and Max Levchin of Slide–both of whom were quite a bit sharper in tone! Tough love!

By the way, it’s Day 83 (not that we’re counting or anything), so get ready for my special 10-day countdown starting in one week!

It’ll be like the 12 days of Christmas, but without partridges, pear trees or any golden-ring harmonizing (although we are considering 300 Yahoo Vice Presidents a-leaping!)

Here’s Sze and Levchin:

I went to a dinner last night hosted by John Battelle and Tim O’Reilly of the Web 2.0 Summit, and it was one of the more schmoozy events I have been to in a while.

The event–this year at Foreign Cinema in the Mission District of San Francisco–is held to elicit feedback from the Internet’s movers and shakers about the new directions the conference, set to take place in San Francisco in mid-October, should head in.

Except Battelle and O’Reilly already came up with a theme: “The Web’s Edge.”

I am not entirely sure what that means. Is it that it is at an edge? Or that we need to look at the edge? Or just that things just feel all pointy lately? Big thoughts all!

In any case, the party was a lot of fun and filled with digital personalities, like Mitch Kapor and Ann Winblad, as well as a few folks I interviewed like ex-AOLer Jon Miller, ex-Fox exec Ross Levinsohn, VC David Sze, Tina Sharkey of BabyCenter and Webby Awards founder Tiffany Shlain.

Here’s the video: