It’s finally official: Marc Andreessen has crossed over to what he once called “the dark side” and is now a venture capitalist.

Several weeks ago, BoomTown broke the news that the Silicon Valley legend and serial entrepreneur and his longtime investing partner, Ben Horowitz, had completed the raising of $300 million for a new venture fund.

And, indeed, the new firm–which is made up of just the two–is now launched and called Andreessen Horowitz.

Of course, I had done a video interview with Andreessen with my Flip.

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In this digital era’s version of “Spy Vs. Spy,” Microsoft and Google find themselves in yet another sharp-elbowed battle to be the one to strike some sort of commercial search deal or product partnership with Twitter, many sources with knowledge of the situation said, as they also jockey for position to evaluate the potential of the much-hyped microblogging start-up.

After last week’s explosive rumor that Google was in “late-stage” talks to acquire Twitter, which BoomTown reported was wildly premature, I set out to try to sort out exactly what was going on.

As I found out, there was a lot–mostly much talking related to possible product and distribution partnerships, centered around Google or Microsoft, as both struggle to gauge the importance of Twitter.

It’s a familiar roundelay for the two most powerful companies on the Web.

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While the “news” that Google was in “late-stage” talks to acquire Twitter, which TechCrunch reported last night, certainly sounds exciting, it isn’t accurate in any way, according to a number of sources BoomTown spoke to close to the situation.

In fact, Twitter and Google have simply been engaged in “some product-related discussions,” according to one source, around real-time search and the search giant better crawling the microblogging service.

More importantly, said another source about the idea of an imminent acquisition or serious acquisition or even early talks: “Seriously, no negotiations, no deal, nada.”

So for all those Twitterers madly typing 140 characters and caught up in the grand idea of Twoogle, we return you to your regularly scheduled tweeting.

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A few weeks ago, BoomTown had lunch at Microsoft’s Silicon Valley campus in Mountain View with Dan’l Lewin, the software giant’s corporate VP for strategic and emerging business development.

In other words, Microsoft’s friendly face in the Valley, in charge of its operations there, which has about 2,000 employees.

Most of them work for other Microsoft divisions, leaving Lewin primarily responsible for the company’s relationships with start-ups, venture capitalists and industry partners.

In other words, hoping that Google now seems scarier than Microsoft used to be.

Here’s a video interview with him about all that and more.

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Last night, well-known Internet entrepreneur Marc Andreessen appeared on the “Charlie Rose” interview show, talking about the digital sector and unveiling the news that he is creating a new venture fund.

I had heard rumblings about Andreessen’s funding efforts earlier this week, with sources I talked to jokingly nicknaming it “Project A.”

Actually, Andreessen said the new firm is called Andreessen Horowitz (zzzz), because he is doing it with longtime investing partner Ben Horowitz.

“For the first time in my life, I am crossing over into the dark side,” said Andreessen.

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Who can resist an all-pork post yesterday in the New York Times about a recipe that has taken the Internet by, well, greasy storm?

The piece, by Damon Darlin, chronicles what started out as an Internet marketing scheme for a site called BBQAddicts.com, but that has turned into one of the more popular dishes online of late.

The dish? “Bacon Explosion.”

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Digg, the San Francisco-based news discovery service and one of Silicon Valley’s more prominent start-ups of late, said in its company blog today that it would cut its 75-person workforce.

A company spokeswoman told BoomTown the cut would be about 10 percent, but would not give out a specific number of employees to be let go.

In addition, Digg noted it would be aiming to cut costs and be profitable in 2009. It will also be hiring a direct sales team.

In other words, revenue does matter too, Web 2.0!

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Oh, I’m sorry, is this the part where BoomTown is supposed to make a list of some sort of what I like and don’t like, what’s hot and what’s not, what’s going to happen and such to all the various players in the digital space?

I don’t think so.

Why? Well because it’s a lot like Nostradamus–you can read into it anything you want.

For instance, in just one week of speculation in the blogosphere: Apple CEO Steve Jobs is dying. Wait, no he is not, but is sick, so he lied. Even though he has always said he is sick. Hey, maybe he is lying and is really cured!

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This morning, FriendFeed, which is a kind of content delivery version of Twitter, went international, launching in six new languages–German, French, Spanish, Japanese, Russian and simplified Chinese. Now live, the move is a natural extension for the Mountain View, Calif.-based start-up–founded earlier this year by a small gang of ex-Googlers, who joined together to create a service for super-aggregating updates of all kinds for social-networking and news items in an ongoing feed. Here’s a video interview I did last week with Taylor and Buchheit about a range of topics, including–my favorite–monetization, or lack thereof, of a lot of terrific services like FriendFeed and Twitter.

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Of course, the stock market had to come roaring back and it had to be extra sunny on the very day I was scheduled to have lunch with well-known Silicon Valley investor Ron Conway to talk about the worrisome state of the digital sector.

After all, it was Conway, as well as Sequoia Capital, who sent out a stink bomb of an email last week to his start-ups to deliver a simple message: The Web 2.0 party is over.

Say it ain’t so, Ron!

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While rumors of its impending re-sale have apparently been greatly exaggerated, what’s true about StumbleUpon is that its new Web-centric look and feel and a new partnering program represent a major shift for the online discovery service.

The San Francisco-based company, which was founded in 2001 and sold to eBay last year for $75 million, is announcing tonight that users will no longer have to register or download its toolbar to “stumble” the Web.

The move is being made because most Internet users are increasingly loath to install Web plug-ins, a requirement that naturally has slowed the growth of StumbleUpon’s service.

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So what will Microsoft’s next quarry be?

Facebook? AOL? A series of small Web 2.0 stars like Digg (probably too late, as Google is already first in line there again), Spot Runner and others?

That is, if there will be one after the Yahoo takeover debacle or if the software giant somehow screws up the courage and, despite the constant rejection, goes back again to try to scoop up Yahoo.

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Imagine this:

Google starts buying up a series of promising and innovative Web 2.0 companies that Microsoft is either partnered with or clearly is or should be interested in.

It starts with Digg, moves onto, say, Spot Runner and others (Meebo, FriendFeed, iLike and even Slide?), focused especially in the online ad, messaging, online apps and mobile spaces.

And, just to stir up the pot, why not take a gander at some bigger Internet fish?

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Today, we debut our new redesign of the home screen of AllThingsD.com.

It is, in fact, our second redesign since we launched the site in late April of 2007, although it is a much more drastic redesign, with a lot more elements added.

Why did we do it? No, we are not hyperactive (OK, we are, but we are taking medication for that).

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Project Granola?

Apparently, that’s the jokey nickname that’s been given by some in the company to Microsoft’s new online strategy, in the wake of its failed efforts to acquire Yahoo that ended in a big heap of mess this past weekend.

Now, sources tell BoomTown, it is all about “organic”–hence the image of a healthy handful of granola (except for the fact that, in my experience, nobody really likes granola after eating it as much as they think will before).

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