Well-known venture capitalist and blogger Fred Wilson will be at Google Wednesday to give a talk about “disruptive industries.”

The Googlers should be mighty interested given that the object of their current annoyance and desire, Twitter, is one of the hottest start-up investments of late for Wilson’s Union Square Ventures.

Before Google (GOOG) execs–you know who you are, David Lawee and Marissa Mayer–try to hand over a big bag of money to Wilson to stop the microblogging madness, Wilson asked readers in a post to help him improve the talk.

Here is his speech deck and the description of the talk (a common occurrence at Google’s Silicon Valley campus, by the way):

Fred will be talking about “disruptive industries.” Media/entertainment has taken the brunt of the disruptive force of the Internet and Internet technology but that’s just the start. What industries are next? Energy, education, consumer finance, and health care all seem ripe. What are those industries going to look like in 20 years, 40 years, 60 years?

In Web years, BoomTown is now officially 143 years old.

Why? Well, I was the one who got to write the big Page One piece in The Wall Street Journal after GeoCities was sold to Yahoo in January of 1999 for $5 billion in stock.

GeoCities was, in its way, the Facebook of its time.

But instead of “friends,” its users were “homesteaders,” since the Web then was a place to be pioneered and settled.

As Cher so eloquently sings: Those were the days my friend, we thought they’d never end.

Except they did. Yahoo (YHOO) announced yesterday that it was closing the GeoCities unit down, part of new CEO Carol Bartz’s war against useless assets at the troubled company.

But a full decade ago, the Yahoo-GeoCities transaction was a big, big deal, struck at the peak of the Web 1.0 bubble.

The move shook up the then-Internet landscape, in which Yahoo was the undisputed king.

The sector then had begun to rapidly consolidate, as stronger players snapped up weaker ones in a race for market share.

The Yahoo-GeoCities deal closely followed another deal in which At Home, a high-speed Internet access service, bought search and directory service Excite for stock valued at $6.7 billion. In another key deal at the time, then-independent America Online agreed to buy Netscape Communications for stock then worth $4.2 billion.

Of those then-dominant Web companies, only Yahoo and AOL–now a troubled unit of Time Warner (TWX)–survive relatively intact.

And, what exactly did Yahoo get for its giant payment back then? A money-losing, low-revenue company with a whole lot of users.

At the time of the purchase, the publicly-traded Marina Del Rey, Calif., company had reported that fourth-quarter sales increased to $7.5 million from $1.7 million a year earlier. But the company’s loss had also swelled, to $8.4 million from $3 million, in the year-earlier period.

Sound familiar to some current Web 2.0 stories? I thought so.

Another weird irony: One of GeoCities major investors was a venture firm called Flatiron Partners, whose principal, Jerry Colonna, was on the board.

And who was Colonna’s parter? Well, Fred Wilson, who has a different firm now called Union Square Ventures and is–wait for it–one the the major investors in the 2009 hotsy-totsy start-up, Twitter.

(You can read Wilson’s terrific take from the VC perspective of the GeoCities experience here.)

In other words, the more things change… Well, actually, they don’t change.

So, if you want to take an instructive trip down memory lane, here is my piece below, which appeared in The Wall Street Journal on Jan. 29, 1999:

Those Who Tied Fortune to GeoCities Yell Yahoo! All the Way to the Bank

By KARA SWISHER | Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL

Last spring, Thomas R. Evans was nervous about leaving his longtime job at the top of a powerful Manhattan media company for an Internet start-up near the beaches of Southern California. So he talked to his boss, real-estate and publishing tycoon Mort Zuckerman.

“I was wondering if this whole Internet thing was real and sustainable,” says Mr. Evans, then publisher of the Atlantic Monthly and U.S. News & World Report. “I wanted his blessing in a way.”

Virtual Payoff

Mr. Evans got Mr. Zuckerman’s nod–and a lot more. You know the drill by now (though it may not be getting any easier to hear). He became chief executive officer of GeoCities , an electronic casbah of about 3.5 million Web sites, and helped lead its initial public offering last summer. Then Thursday, Yahoo! Inc. agreed to buy the young company for about $5 billion in stock. It means the value of Mr. Evans’s stock options soared by 65% Thursday to a dizzying $200 million.

Yahoo! Agrees to Buy GeoCities in $5 Billion Stock Transaction

That’s some kind of money for nine months’ work. After you’re done banging your head on a wall, consider that members of the new financial elite in Silicon Valley are being created in less time than it takes for a kid to finish his first-grade year. That puts oil, real estate and finance magnates to shame. Mr. Zuckerman, for example, spent a lifetime building his $1 billion financial empire.

Asked how he was doing Thursday, Mr. Zuckerman says: “Not as good as Tom Evans.”

Mr. Evans, who commutes between GeoCities’ Marina Del Rey, Calif., headquarters and his home in New Canaan, Conn., is quick to point out the ephemeral nature of his wealth. He must wait six years for his options to be fully vested. And his net worth could evaporate if Yahoo’s highflying stock sinks.

“It does not seem real, because it is not real, because this is based on the long term and is dependent on where this whole industry is going,” says Mr. Evans, 44 years old. “Anyone coming into this industry assumes a certain amount of risk because no one really knows how it is all going to turn out.”

Litany of Lucre

It has turned out well so far for the new moguls at GeoCities. According to public filings the company made last summer, the biggest individual winner is co-founder and Chairman David Bohnett, 42, who owns about three million shares outright, now worth $367 million, based on Yahoo’s closing price Thursday. Mr. Bohnett insists he is overlooking that bit of extra money. “I do not see this as a financial event,” he says. “And we did not start this company with money in mind.”

Chief Technical Officer John Rezner, 35, who worked nine years for aerospace company McDonnell Douglas Corp. before co-founding GeoCities, holds 827,000 shares worth $103 million.

The management team that came in with Mr. Evans last year–taking over from Mr. Bohnett to help with the IPO–is also well-situated. Chief Financial Officer Stephen Hansen, 42, who formerly held the same position at Universal Studios Hollywood, has options for about 600,000 shares of stock, which would be worth $74.7 million at current prices. Michael Barrett, 36, advertising vice president and former online executive with Walt Disney Co., has options for 280,000 shares, worth about $34.9 million.

There are, of course, all kinds of gnashing of teeth over whether the Internet entrepreneurs deserve such riches. But obtaining great wealth through luck or artful maneuvering is nothing new in American business history. Take the stock manipulators of the 1890s and the leveraged-buyout artists of the 1980s. It may be some consolation that GeoCities’ founders can claim that they developed something that is used by many people. In its December Web-traffic report, research firm Media Metrix says the “GeoCities.com” Web site ranked third, behind America Online Inc. and Yahoo, with nearly 19 million different visitors.

Mr. Bohnett says the company was born from a “passion for giving people a chance to speak up.” Founded in 1994, GeoCities was one of the first Web-based communities, where users post individualized sites to express themselves.

Dubbed “homesteaders,” these customers create the bulk of the content on GeoCities. Their Web pages are organized into “neighborhoods” of personal interests and hobbies, such as personal finance or motorcycles, and monitored by a network of volunteers.

“My goal was to stake out a broader territory and create a community of interests, just in the same way Yahoo was helping people find their way around the Web,” says Mr. Bohnett, who led the company in a variety of top jobs, including chief financial officer, CEO and president. “Then we were going to monetize that base of users as the business model emerged.”

That model for profitability hasn’t yet arrived, in part because the company spends heavily to increase its market share. Thursday, it announced a net loss for last year of $18.2 million on revenue of $18.4 million.

Mr. Evans, a dark-haired man with a preppy demeanor and razor wit, has plenty of experience building businesses. He worked his way up in Mr. Zuckerman’s organization from sales and advertising jobs, and eventually served as president and publisher of several magazines.

After being approached several times about new-media positions, Mr. Evans says he decided to jump to GeoCities when the importance of the Internet became clear to him. “I think that by the time I really took a look at it, the whole sector had matured and gotten really interesting for those of us in the traditional media companies,” he says.

While Mr. Evans is loath to discuss the valuations of Internet companies, his former boss Mr. Zuckerman doesn’t dodge the opportunity to be philosophical about Web mania.

“It’s like they said in high school: ‘Boys will be boys and girls will be girls,’” Mr. Zuckerman says. “I don’t want to change anything, I just want to get in on it.”

Yesterday, BoomTown decided to start a new “Twitter Business Plan Count-Up” because the fine folks over at the hot-as-Alabama-in-July start-up were taking too long to do so.

Oh, they’ve been promising for a while to deliver the financial goods, but Twitter still has a devil-may-care attitude toward its lack of revenues.

(Who do they think they are? General Motors?)

My first idea was simple, taking advantage of the excessive hype around Twitter in the media by charging pundits, television anchors, bloggers and anyone else, a small microfee every time they mention Twitter in the vain hope of seeming hip, happening and relevant.

Last night, I was lucky enough to grab drinks with two of Twitter’s major venture investors and board members: Fred Wilson of Union Square Ventures and Spark Capital’s Bijan Sabet.

While we had a lively discussion about a lot of stuff, they had just come from a Twitter board meeting, but would tell me bupkis about their money-making ideas.

Thus, I foisted my next one on them: A wearable Twitter-branded device and fleece blanket outfit that vibrates every time you get tweeted.

Bear with me.

First, it links two completely overhyped trends: Twitter and a Snuggie. Enough said.

Second, Snuggies get boring after a few wears–I have one, so I speak from experience. But one that lets you know you are being bombarded by meaningless online chatter in real-time translates to endless fun.

Third, it’s a little naughty. A few days ago, watching “The View,” the group was chattering about Twitter and could not get through a three-minute segment without making wink-wink-nudge-nudge comments about “getting tweeted” or declaring, “Careful or I might twitter you.”

Combined with a Snuggie and vibrating, it’s a multimedia experience everyone can make giggly jokes about.

Lastly, imagine the extensions that are possible of a whole line of Twitter devices. A George Foreman grill that tweets everyone about how much fat you are cooking off your burger. A twit-on-twit-off light switch called the Tweeter.

And, of course, the Chia-Twit.

Only 24 hours to go in the DonorsChoose.org’s Blogger Challenge 2008 and I am now forced to bring in the big guns.

That would be the angrily arched eyebrows of Digital Daily’s John “Patches” Paczkowski, along some of the AllThingsD.com staff, begging mightily for your donations.

So far, I have used my kids, known to authorities as the Swisher boys, to deliver a threatening pitch about why you should give early and often to fund technology projects for high school students.

I have also danced with Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang in “High School Musical 3″ and forced him into a painful dinner (thanks, Jerry!).

DonorsChoose.org is a charity that funds classroom projects in high-need public schools, using the Web to match teacher project requests with donors.

So far, I have raised $8,414 from 26 donors, impacting 704 students. But am still No. 3 behind the my longtime frenemy venture capitalist Fred Wilson and TechCrunch.

Congrats to both, but this obviously cannot stand! There is one more day to give, so get giving!

You can click here to reach the giving page or use the widget on the lower right side of the ATD homepage or the left side of the main BoomTown page.

Here is our new begging-and-pleading video and also the other three I have employed to try to pry some dollars from the battered economy.

Patches Uses His Mesmerizing Eyebrows

The Swisher Boys Make Idle Threats

BoomTown and Yang Are Wildcats!

Awkward Dinner With Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang

Did I say that there was no limit to my pandering in order to raise the most money of all in the DonorsChoose.org’s Blogger Challenge 2008!

I did, indeed!

Thus, this week, the Swisher boys make their annual appearance to deliver a pitch about why you should give early and often to fund technology projects for high school students.

Well, more a threat than the soft sell actually, since they just saw the new Disney film, “Beverly Hills Chihuahua” and are clearly hopped up on tiny dog power.

The DonorsChoose.org’s Blogger Challenge started two weeks ago. And donations have more than doubled since last week.

At $7,970 from 23 donors reaching 674 students, BoomTown is now in the No. 1 spot.

(Take that, Fred Wilson!)

DonorsChoose.org is a charity that funds classroom projects in high-need public schools, using the Web to match teacher project requests with donors.

You can click here to reach the giving page or use the widget on the lower right side of the ATD homepage or the left side of the main BoomTown page.

You better, as you will see from the Swisher boys’ video here:

It’s been just a week, and BoomTown is rocking out in the DonorsChoose.org’s Blogger Challenge 2008!

It started a week ago, with us featuring a video from my hell-froze-over dinner with Yahoo (YHOO) CEO Jerry Yang, who ably endured a meal with me in support of the kids who benefit from the unique charity.

DonorsChoose.org is a charity that funds classroom projects in high-need public schools, using the Web to match teacher project requests with donors.

Last year, BoomTown did pretty well, raising $12,199 from 52 donors and impacting 1,940 students.

This year, just a week in, we are already at $3,617, from nine donors and impacting 348 students. That puts BoomTown in the No. 2 spot behind our archrival VC Fred Wilson (he is at $5,877).

That’s great, but I have a long list of technology requests in high-need public schools, so we need to get cracking.

You can click here to reach the giving page or use the widget on the lower right side of the ATD homepage or the left side of the main BoomTown page.

To get you inspired, the fine folks at JibJab sent me this deeply embarrassing video of me and Yang (well, our heads, actually) dropped into a promotional video for “High School Musical 3: Senior Year,” which opens Oct. 24.

It’s painful to watch (most especially, Yang in a dress as Gabrielle), but it’s for the kids!

Also, there is no telling what low level of pandering–next week, for example, I plan on press-ganging my kids to help out–I am capable of to raise the money.

Here’s the video as proof:

If it’s Oct. 1, it must be time for the DonorsChoose.org’s Blogger Challenge 2008!

DonorsChoose.org is a charity that funds classroom projects in high-need public schools, using the Web to match teacher project requests with donors.

Last year, BoomTown did pretty well, raising $12,199 from 52 donors and impacting 1,940 students.

But Tomato Nation’s Sarah Bunting ran away with the overall competition by raising more than $100,000 from almost 1,100 donors, mostly by promising to dress up like a giant tomato.

In the tech arena, venture capitalist Fred Wilson beat me–despite my best efforts, including the use of BoomTown’s progeny as props in shameless videos over the course of the competition–by raising $18,538 from 92 donors.

Both Bunting and Wilson were awarded lunch with Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang, the prize his company offered to the bloggers who garnered the biggest number of donors.

Since Yang was not talking to me last year, part of Yahoo’s crackerjack cave-dwelling press policy at the time, I tried but failed to capture the coveted lunch, so I could get a little time with the reluctant-to-speak exec.

But we do not give up at AllThingsD: The Yang pursuit lasted all year long. He finally relented in late May, after I cornered him onstage at the sixth D: All Things Digital conference and forced him to promise in front of an audience of more than 600 to have a lovely grilled cheese with me.

Yang’s price? That I donate $500 to DonorsChoose.org.

Thus, a deal was struck and, better yet, we ended up having a lovely dinner at John Bentley’s in Woodside two weeks ago.

Now I am back without an insane obsession, although I have my best begging tools at the ready–now both my kids can talk–and a long list of technology requests in high-need public schools.

You can click here to reach the giving page or use the widget on the lower right side of the ATD homepage or the left side of the main BoomTown page.

Time is of the essence! In the tech blogger space, Wilson is already up to his nefarious VC tricks. Worse still, the very sneaky Robert Scoble has entered the contest too.

I simply cannot get bested by a clown like Scoble, now can I?

(I mean, really, take a long gander at the frequently nude dude pictured here!)

I think I have just found my 2008 inspiration! Game on, naked boy!

Seriously, start giving until it hurts and then give more or I am in danger of being Scobleized.

Until then, here is a special video message from Yang himself, proof that determination and obnoxiousness always prevail:

We tried but failed to capture the coveted lunch with Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang, which was part of the October Tech Blogger Challenge for DonorsChoose.org.

Major lunchroom snub!

Tomato Nation’s Sarah Bunting ran away with the overall competition by raising more than $100,000 from almost 1,100 donors and promising to dress up like a giant tomato (a genius move that should have occurred to us!).

In the tech arena, VC Fred Wilson bested us–despite our best efforts that included the use of BoomTown’s progeny as props in shameless videos over the course of the competition–by raising $18,538 from 92 donors.

Still, we were second in the money category with $12,199 from 52 donors, impacting 1,940 students.

According to Yahoo’s blog Yodel Anecdotal, both Bunting and Wilson will be awarded lunch with Yang (he only had to have it with Bunting, but our aggressive efforts in the tech area inspired Yahoo to offer lunch to Wilson too, pretty much because he is not us!). Why this very lively corporate blog has such a goofy name shall be a topic for another day.

To recap: DonorsChoose.org funds classroom projects in high-need public schools, using the Web to match teacher project requests with donors. (AllThingsD picked tech projects in both San Francisco and Washington, D.C.)

Besides raising funds for kids who need it, we also had hoped to win an award Yahoo is sponsoring for the blogger who garners the biggest number of donors–a free lunch with CEO Jerry Yang!

Lunch or not, we’re thrilled our hunger spurred more giving to needy kids.

So we’ll be leaving up our page there for you to keep giving. Click to go to our AllThingsD page on DonorsChoose.org here or use the thermometer on the left side of this page to give! There are still 11 projects that need funding, so give, you overpaid techies!

And, Jerry, we still aren’t done with you yet! BoomTown likes to have a bite, as you know, and we shall have our meal in the Yahoo cafeteria one way or another!

Chomp.

Give here to DonorsChoose.org.

We’re now at $12,056 with 44 donors and solidly in the No. 2 slot, with VC Fred Wilson still king of our little tech charity mountain.

Let’s knock him off!

So go now and click on through to our AllThingsD page on DonorsChoose.org here or use the thermometer on the left side of this page to give early and often!

Why click here?

Because it is well and good to help help BoomTown in the October Tech Blogger Challenge for DonorsChoose.org, which funds classroom projects in high-need public schools, using the Web to match teacher project requests with donors.

(AllThingsD picked tech projects in both San Francisco and Washington, D.C.)

Besides raising funds for kids who need it, we also hope to win an award Yahoo is sponsoring for the tech blogger who garners the biggest number of donors–a free lunch with CEO Jerry Yang, who remains as grumpy as ever toward his old pal at BoomTown.

Soften him up with love, sweet love and give now!

So, remember to click on through to our AllThingsD page on DonorsChoose.org here to give early and often!

It’s working! We’re now hovering near $10,000 with 35 donors and solidly in the No. 2 slot, although Wilson does march on like Sherman to the sea with $16,566 and 61 donors.

So go now and to click on through to our AllThingsD page on DonorsChoose.org here or use the thermometer on the left side of this page to give early and often!

We are nearing the halfway point of the October Tech Blogger Challenge for DonorsChoose.org, which funds classroom projects in high-need public schools, using the Web to match teacher project requests with donors. AllThingsD picked tech projects in both San Francisco and Washington, D.C.

Besides raising funds for kids who need it, we also hope to win an award Yahoo is sponsoring for the tech blogger who garners the biggest number of donors–a free lunch with CEO Jerry Yang! And it must be ours!

Thus, it’s time for a Web celebrity endorsement! So, here’s Arianna Huffington of the Huffington Post, which recently got into a little bit of controversy when one of its top execs said they’d never pay their bloggers!

Well, I didn’t pay her either and absolutely did not hand her her lines at all–except, well, all of them.

Although New York Times poobah Arthur Sulzberger Jr., who was passing by when I was making the video at Google’s Zeitgeist event yesterday, did jokingly chastise me for telling her what to say, it was actually the whole point of egregious fund-raising tactics. (But thanks, Arthur, for keeping me honest!)

So, remember to click on through to our AllThingsD page on DonorsChoose.org here to give early and often!

And here’s the video:

How easily you are moved, as it turns out, and good thing!

Yesterday, the Swisher boys’ charm managed to more than double the donations to $7,344, making us No. 2 in a tech blogger fund-raising challenge for the month of October on the site. We also almost doubled our number of donors to 29.

To recap: Last week, I wrote about October Tech Blogger Challenge on the the charity site called DonorsChoose.org, which funds classroom projects in high-need public schools, using the Web to match teacher project requests with donors. AllThingsD picked tech projects in both San Francisco and Washington, D.C.

Our readers’ generosity in the race to raise as much money as possible has made the top tech blogger fund-raiser Fred Wilson very nervous, so much so that he impugned my kids!

Over at A VC blog, he was clearly sweating when he posted on the competitive juices flowing in the challenge, saying I was trying to turn my kids into Jerry Lewis to raise funds!

Jerry Lewis! Them’s fighting words! Anyway, try some fund-raisers more current like, say, Brangelina!

Plus Wilson also admits that he does not need to win the award Yahoo is giving out for the blogger who gets the most donors to give: a free lunch with CEO Jerry Yang.

“Kara is right, I don’t really need to win that prize,” he wrote. “I would gladly give lunch with Jerry away to someone who needs it more, but I need to figure out if I can do that, and how I could use it to stimulate more giving to public-school teachers, which is what this is all about. More on this later.”

Always the VC–declaring victory before the battle is over and looking for an early exit! Let’s give him one from the top donor and money slot, at least!

So, remember to click on through to our AllThingsD page on DonorsChoose.org here or click on the thermometer in the page’s left rail to give early and often!

Apparently not, if it has the effect yesterday’s round of begging had by more than doubling our donor numbers and adding more than $1,500 to the AllThingsD kitty in only one day, after this post in which I egregiously use the musical stylings of Barbra Streisand to plague Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang.

Whatever for? Well, it is fun, of course, but it is also for a good cause too.

Last week, I wrote about October Tech Blogger Challenge on the the charity site called DonorsChoose.org, which funds classroom projects in high-need public schools, using the Web to match teacher project requests with donors. AllThingsD picked tech projects in both San Francisco and Washington, D.C.

So far, our AllThingsD page on the DonorsChoose site (and you can also access it using the nifty fund-raising thermometer above, on the left rail of this site) has raised $3,520 from 16 donors.

We have passed TechCrunch in donor numbers and just nosed aside Endgadget in donation totals.

But the wily venture capitalist Fred Wilson is still on top with 36 donors and $11,247 (we don’t want Valleywag to start wagging, but we hear donating is a requirement of term-sheet signing, not that there’s anything wrong with that).

Wilson is foiling BoomTown’s genius master plan of winning the award Yahoo is sponsoring for the bloggers who inspire the most readers to give. The winner will get a free lunch with CEO Jerry Yang, from whom we currently cannot get the time of day.

Wilson, like any decent VC, probably has got the phone number to Yang’s golf cart!

Well, two can play at that game!

I’m bringing in the cute kids–namely mine–to plead for donations and donors!

Remember to click on through to our AllThingsD page on DonorsChoose.org here to give early and often!

To inspire you, here are the Swisher boys, only one of whom can really talk, who are not coached in any way to ask you to be generous:

Last week, I wrote about October Tech Blogger Challenge on the the charity site called DonorsChoose.org, which funds classroom projects in high-need public schools, using the Web to match teacher project requests with donors.

I picked tech projects in both San Francisco (where I live) and Washington, D.C. (where Walt Mossberg lives) and have set a goal of $25,000. So far, our AllThingsD page on the DonorsChoose site (and you can also access it using the nifty fund-raising thermometer on the left rail of the main BoomTown page here) has raised $1,928 from seven donors.

That puts us fourth, just behind Endgadget ($2,830 from 22), TechCrunch ($2,875 from eight) and the putting-us-to-shame Fred Wilson ($9,283 from 32).

We want to thank all who have given, but we’re asking for more from more now both to help the kids and also for our more nefarious purposes, which require sheer numbers.

That’s due to BoomTown’s dastardly master plan of winning the award Yahoo is giving. The company is sponsoring an award for the bloggers who inspire the most readers to give and the winner will get a free lunch with CEO Jerry Yang.

Here on the Tech Leaderboard in terms of donor numbers, we are fifth (Anil Dash drops in with 14). But Fred Wilson is still leading by a mile!

Like Yang needs to have lunch with another VC!

So here is our video plea to stop this unfortunate event (and where all that will be discussed is widget valuations and real estate):

According to Sports Illustrated, Cuban might join–I have truly died and gone to heaven–singer Wayne Newton and “Beverly Hills, 90210″ star Jennie Garth in the reality show phenomenon, which is actually a pretty tough challenge once you get beyond all that glittery spandex tight pants flaunting and focus on the difficulty of learning how to dance that well in front of huge audiences.

Of course, the Internet chattering class has been more riveted by Cuban’s recent “fight” with VC Fred Wilson and really the whole of the digerati, after he basically said the Internet was “dead and boring” in a post on his Blog Maverick site. (Cuban is pictured above almost perfectly.)

He actually only used those terms to get people all pissed off–a typical Cuban tactic–in this post, but was actually making a great point about the Net becoming a utility and how that is a good thing.

I would agree. Just because I did not ooh and ahh over the fact that my blow dryer was powered by the electrical grid this morning does not make it any less amazing.

It’s just there, as Cuban notes about the Net now, writing, “The days of the Internet creating explosively exciting ideas are dead for the foreseeable future.”

He does go a little far in saying that the Web is not evolving (maybe not as dramatically, but it does still change more drastically than most mediums and will change much more in the years ahead).

But, ever the fight-picker, he came back yesterday with another juicy one right to the kisser of Silicon Valley–which did, to be fair, hand over a fortune to him for his (let’s be kind, shall we?) nascent Broadcast.com many years ago.

Still, who can match Cuban’s frenetic defense of his incessant Web use (all punctuation and spelling as he wrote it):

Ive been inundated with spam on Myspace. Used flicker. Used Digg for sourcing news and laughed at the unending ridiculousness of its posters. Used and posted to Youtube, Google Video, DailyMotion, Veoh, Flickr, Slideshare, used every bittorrent client, got bored with twitter after 7 minutes, signed up for other findme, find you, this is where I am, this is where you are, type app I could find, and the lists go on and on. I read techmeme, techcrunch, extremetech, and tons of other tech sites and I make a point to try every and any new site that seems the least bit plausible or interesting. I spend far far too much time on the net just to make sure I keep up and know whats going on.”

Having covered Cuban back in the day and interviewed him onstage at the very first D: All Things Digital conference, this was a nice reminder of what a pleasure it was to cover such a right-back-at-you character.

In other words, Jennie Garth better be very careful or she is sure to get a sharp elbow to the midsection very, very soon. Wayne Newton is, of course, doomed.

That debate has been all over the Web since News Corp. won its battle to buy Dow Jones (owner of this site) last week, including posts by Jeff Jarvis and Fred Wilson in favor of the move.

But former MarketWatch head Larry Kramer disagreed, noting that his old site should be the free product, while the Journal’s content should remain premium.

Sorry, Larry, but I vote–and I know Murdoch (pictured here from a magazine spread with an Apple computer at the ready, apparently) definitely does not preside over a democracy–yes, ma’am, um, sir, for a free WSJ.com.

(And just to show this is not a kiss-up to the new boss, but a cogent analysis of the landscape for the Journal moving forward under Murdoch, here is a video interview posted below that I did in Los Angeles with Beet.TV’s Andy Plesser back in May about the possible News Corp. takeover and how I felt about the situation. Not so happy and also really wrong about Rupe’s chances of winning Dow Jones, as you will see.)

Also, I have posted many times on this subject, such as this recent piece.

There are, of course, valid arguments to be made to keep the Journal’s much-admired online subscription model, combined with freeing up more content offerings over time.

Interestingly, in an interview with paidContent.org last week, WSJ publisher Gordon Crovitz said: “So far, our analysis says the way to maximize revenues and earnings is to have a mixed model.”

While I hate to differ with Crovitz, who helped us immeasurably in getting this site up and running as a free one, I think an open and ad-supported model is the only way to go now, especially under a larger and more powerful (and, most important, global) company like News Corp. that can really vault the site to higher prominence and higher traffic.

And given that the Journal’s online site garners estimated revenues of about $65 million from its paid efforts, which is admirable, it is chump change for News Corp. to try turbocharging the site as a free one, an experiment that will surely pay back the short-term cost.

An interesting analysis released last week by Lehman Brothers’ Doug Anmuth looks at the trade-off–more page views are likely to be gained by going free, although with possibly lowered ad revenues in the short term and lower ad revenues per page in general.

That sounds about right, as it is likely in time and with the marketing muscle of News Corp. that WSJ.com could go from its current 2.6 million unique visitors globally a month to three times that or more.

More importantly, while it has almost hit an impressive 1 million paid subscribers, an audience that has been growing, the online paid site is only going to gain so many more subscribers before that paid-wall people hit finally takes a hit itself.

Most importantly, while a good product, the paid version simply creates a situation in which the Journal is not as relevant as it could and should be. I know Journal execs have heard this before and would argue the paper is influential with a much more elite audience willing to pay the annual fee for access.

But, to my mind, too much of that is a lot of expense-account money talking. That same audience would remain and expand in an unpaid scenario and also add many more who get less excellent, but still adequate, coverage from a plethora of finance sites now.

(By the way, the rumors that the New York Times will end its TimesSelect, which gates the best stuff behind a paid wall, are back again, courtesy of the Murdoch-owned New York Post. Who knows what the Times will do, but it should dump the dumb system, which only irks readers and, I assume, its imprisoned star writers.)

And for the hyper-elite crowd, there are still all kinds of premium content that can be charged for to accompany the free site. In addition, business networking tools and other features could be ladled on (why in the world is Facebook, and not The Wall Street Journal, the de facto social-networking site right now for Silicon Valley, for example) to create a very loyal and high-level audience.

I could go on, but why not let Murdoch, who floated one of the more intriguing ideas in a very interesting interview he did with Time in late June before he won his quest to nab Dow Jones:

“What if, at the Journal, we spent $100 million a year hiring all the best business journalists in the world? Say 200 of them. And spent some money on establishing the brand but went global–a great, great newspaper with big, iconic names, outstanding writers, reporters, experts. And then you make it free, online only. No printing plants, no paper, no trucks,” he said. “How long would it take for the advertising to come? It would be successful, it would work and you’d make … a little bit of money. Then again, the Journal and the Times make very little money now.”

Ouch. But what-if indeed, especially if Murdoch is footing the bill to find out?