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.”

Oh, Max!

I just got through telling someone who asked me that I thought you, Slide founder Max Levchin, was one of the smarter Web 2.0 characters.

Then, of course, you get to be on the cover of Portfolio magazine for its “Brilliant” issue this month. Apparently, Max, you are Silicon Valley’s new “It” Boy.

But for all your apparently massive amount of brain cells, which should be on display at your keynote today at the Web 2.0 Expo in San Francisco, how can you be so dumb as to stumble into that same old rabbit hole as so many other Internet hotshots?

Yes, Max: The goofy photo.

In your case, you look good in the coat-and-tie get-up. But please tell me why, oh, why are you balancing a giant lightbulb on the top of your head, as seen here?

It just ain’t dignified!

(Levchin revealed to me via email last night that he actually balanced the monster bulb on his head–but I remain unimpressed.)

Still, you can be comforted to know, though, that you join a legion of other legendarily goony tech figures in the continued march of egregiously wacky pictures.

Such as:

Microsoft’s Bill Gates and his prom date, a PC:

That lovely couple, Larry Page and Sergey Brin of Google, and those irksome colorful exercise balls (not that there is anything wrong with that):

Digg’s Kevin Rose channels Wayne’s World:

Former Netscaper Marc Andreessen as Le Dauphin of France:

And, my personal choice for goofy-de-tutti-goofball photos–Amazon’s Jeff Bezos with his noggin in a box:

If Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg is serious about finding a true No. 2 to replace outgoing exec Owen Van Natta and more, then BoomTown has certainly at least two cents to add.

So here is our list of ideas, which include a number of women execs, since a list that Facebook has made apparently includes a few women too.

(And we applaud that, especially since, as you can see from this page at the social-networking site, there are none in its current top management.)

But you do have to begin with the menfolk, since the top choice of mine is one.

That would be someone that Facebook has already looked at, former eBay exec Jeff Jordan (pictured here). Jordan and Zuckerberg talked a lot last year, before Jordan headed off to lead OpenTable, the restaurant reservations service.

It would be hard to entice Jordan, a one-time contender for the top spot at eBay (EBAY), to leave OpenTable, given it is IPO-bound in the next year.

But he has the chops operationally, having led eBay’s North American unit and also its PayPal division. In other words, this man can scale.

But so can former Yahoo (YHOO) COO Dan Rosensweig (pictured here), who left the troubled Internet portal in late 2006, just before it started its long and painful descent into Microsoft’s bear-hug bid.

Rosensweig is now a principal and its-man-in-Silicon-Valley for the tony New York investment firm, the Quadrangle Group, so it is unlikely he would move over to Facebook.

More to the point, it also unclear how well his gregarious nature would mesh with Zuckerberg’s less social manner (although we would pay big bucks to see those two interacting on a daily basis). But Rosensweig, for all his joshing, has the leadership skills and deep contacts in the tech community.

And since Zuckerberg feels so comfy with Microsoft (MSFT), why not its savvy Chief Media Officer Joanne Bradford (pictured here). There, she “leads global product and platform development, content and programming, business development, product management, marketing and branded entertainment for MSN.”

Plus, she might not relish the idea of helping overhaul Yahoo, if that deal is struck, and has the ad sales and content experience too. Also, she is tough, but nice about it.

So is a sharp Facebook social-networking competitor, Bebo’s President Joanna Shields (pictured here). Based in London, she has worked at both Google (GOOG) and RealNetworks (RNWK) and has an international exposure Facebook needs.

Plus, she knows how to work with founders (in Bebo’s case, Michael and Xochi Birch) and has a charming, though squarely in-charge, demeanor.

Google, of course, has been a good headhunting ground for Facebook and the search giant has been fending off poaching off its execs by Facebook regularly.

But why not go for the big game, as there is a long list of prospects in the higher managment echelons of Google.

That includes: Tim Armstrong, president, Advertising and Commerce, North America; Marissa Mayer, vice president, Search Products & User Experience; Susan Wojcicki, vice president, Product Management; Sukhinder Singh Cassidy, president, Asia Pacific and Latin America Operations; David Fischer, vice president, Online Sales & Operations; Omid Kordestani, senior vice president, Global Sales & Business Development; Salar Kamangar, vice president, Product Management.

But we’re partial to a pair of hard-charging execs who lead critical nuts-and-bolts operations at Google: Sheryl Sandberg, vice president, Global Online Sales & Operations; and Shona Brown, senior vice president, Business Operations.

Sandberg (pictured here) is responsible for online sales of Google’s ad and publishing products, bringing experience Facebook sorely needs. She is also politically savvy, having been the chief of staff at the Treasury Department in the Clinton administration.

Former McKinsey consultant and author Shona Brown (pictured here) has been running Google’s business operations since 2003 and knows how to push around, oops, work with two headstrong founders at once. Thus, Zuckerberg would be a breeze for the sharply honed Brown.

But let’s not leave out Yahoo. We have but one choice here (and someone who has reportedly been on Facebook’s list too): Hilary Schneider, its EVP, Global Partner Solutions. In other words, the revenue person.

The former Knight-Ridder exec (pictured here) is well liked at Yahoo and is also steeped in the world of media, which is important to Facebook. While probably a keeper for Microsoft, it might not be her first choice to stay after a forced merger.

There are a lot of other choices–in fact, I am completely leaving out the many media execs who might be good, as well as some longtime Silicon Valley entrepreneurs who would get along a lot better with Zuckerberg.

Off the top of my head: former AOL head Jon Miller; former Yahoo execs Ellen Siminoff and Jeff Mallett; CBS dynamo Quincy Smith; former When and Ofoto entrepreneur James Joaquin; Fox Interactive Media’s Peter Levinsohn; and many more.

But why not go for the man who was Zuckerberg before Zuckerberg was cool. Yes, the shiniest of Golden Geeks himself, Marc Andreessen (pictured here on the iconic Time magazine cover in 1996).

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.

Please see this disclosure related to me and Google.

Well, I guess this is dating myself, but I remember when this Time magazine cover (see below) of the first Internet-Golden-Boy-of-the-Moment Marc Andreessen came out and essentially heralded the start of the first Web boom.

Specifically, it was Feb. 19, 1996, and the picture of the young entrepreneur–the driving force behind the first commercial browser, the Netscape Navigator–barefoot and sitting on a throne with the title, “The Golden Geeks,” was a wow moment for anyone covering the young but fast-growing sector.

It would be the first of many such covers that continue to this day about the latest and the (not necessarily) greatest next big thing in the digital sector.

But it still remains the most special one of its kind.

Sad then to see the end of the era when Time Warner-owned AOL said it would be pulling the plug on Navigator, as of Feb. 1. In Web terms, it is ancient–having launched in 1994.

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