Under cover of darkness last night, Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced on the social-networking site’s blog that it would “return to our previous terms of use while we resolve the issues that people have raised.”

Oh, this is just too good to resist. Therefore, BoomTown shall not tarry in our ongoing job of busting the chops of the young Facebook leader, whose minions have actually–and I am not joking here–given him the nickname: The Wizard.

Well, the Wizard obviously had to pull back the curtain last night and show some serious mea culpa to the people, before they got out the pitchforks.

Here’s a translation of Zuckerberg’s message.

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Since BoomTown constantly called the $15 billion valuation of Facebook “insane” when Microsoft forked over $240 million in 2007, and gave Slide’s Max Levchin a very hard time when his widget company got a $550 million valuation a year ago, it’s only fair that I say something equally appropriate about Twitter.

The hot microblogging service just got its very own $250 million valuation, but without a dime of revenue in sight. (I know, Bijan, it’s coming, it’s coming!)

After all, Facebook and Slide got their funding in boom times and here we are hurtling toward a possible Depression: The Sequel.

But I am torn.

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Bucking a trend of contraction in the venture industry, Accel Partners today announced that it had raised two funds totaling $1 billion.

The well-known VC firm said that it had closed the $480 million Accel Growth Fund and the $525 million Accel London III.

The first will be managed from its Palo Alto, Calif., HQ, focusing on “growth equity” across several sectors, while the London fund will be managed there and aim to invest in early-stage and growth companies across Europe and Israel.

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Here’s the official press release from the popular news and blogging site, The Huffington Post, which announced $25 million in funding from Oak Investment Partners this morning.

Sources told BoomTown the investment gives the site, which had 4.5 million unique visitors in September, a quadrupling from a year ago, a valuation of “south of $100 million.”

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The Huffington Post, co-founded by Arianna Huffington, will announce this morning that it has raised $25 million, in a single investment from Oak Investment Partners.

The large round, which was led by Palo Alto, Calif.-based venture capitalist Fred Harman, will give the popular online news and blogging site a valuation of “just south of $100 million,” a source said.

The new funding, the Huffington Post’s third, will be used for expansion of its offerings and the hiring of editorial and business talent.

“I think the post-election perception of the Huffington Post has changed in the eyes of advertisers to being a key mainstream news site,” said Harman in an interview with BoomTown last night.

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Last night, Walt Mossberg and I hosted yet another annual “What’s Hot and What’s Not in Personal Technology” event for the Churchill Club.

It was a gadgetfest with BoomTown, Walt Mossberg, Gadgetoff’s Greg Harper and Twitter Co-Founder and CEO Evan Williams presenting the digital show-and-tell.

Here is a rather longish video of the event, which is well worth watching. (Yes, I am–along with my No. 1 son, Louie, and an animatronic Elvis–wearing a Yahoo hat.)

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Former Facebook exec Owen Van Natta will take the CEO job at a music discovery site called Playlist, a move that had been speculated last week, after he did not end up taking another position as head of MySpace Music.

Van Natta’s arrival at Playlist was not the only news for the Palo Alto, Calif.-based start-up–former AOL exec Bob Pittman’s Pilot Investment Group is also investing an undisclosed amount of money in Playlist, and Pittman will join its board.

The site, which has been called Project Playlist, had previously raised several million dollars. The new round of funding super-sized that, sources said, hovering at about $18 million.

“Discovery around music is exploding on the Internet,” said Van Natta to BoomTown, in an interview this afternoon, giving it as his main reason for joining Playlist.

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Here’s a video of star VC John Doerr reciting his 10 tips for start-ups to follow in the economic downturn, dispensed at a VentureBeat roundtable event on the downturn yesterday.

And the Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers VC didn’t need a massive, noisy PowerPoint like Sequoia Capital to make his quick and clear points, which he delivered in four minutes flat.

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Germany’s Hubert Burda Media threw a big luncheon in Palo Alto yesterday, which was stuffed full with Silicon Valley types. It was hosted by the company’s Steffi Czerny and Maria Burda, the wife of CEO and owner Hubert Burda, as well as well-known Israeli investor Yossi Vardi.

Burda runs an annual digital conference in Munich, called DLD (Digital, Life, Design), even though the media giant is best known for its old-line magazines about fashion, cooking and crafts.

So here’s the video!

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Over the last two days, BoomTown has been enjoying the perfect Pacific Northwest summer weather, visiting several Seattle-based companies and also Microsoft HQ in nearby Redmond.

Seattle is still essentially Silicon Valley North, except a lot more laid back and with less of an egregiously opportunistic, what’s-the-next-hot- start-up tone one feels any day of the week in Palo Alto.

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Let’s be honest–the tech media this week will be about Apple’s newest 3G iPhone, which is set to be released into the wild on Friday.

So let’s get an early start, shall we?

And what better way than re-posting BoomTown’s videos from the maiden launch of the JesusPhone, which took place just a tiny bit over a year ago.

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It looks like Facebook will definitely be moving from its funky multi-building setup in downtown Palo Alto, Ca. to a centralized campus in Silicon Valley, said several sources.

The high-profile social networking company–which has been undergoing a major managerial shift of late as it matures from its startup status to that of a more established Web player–has been growing quickly to almost 600 employees today from a couple hundred last year.

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Silicon Valley luminary Marc Andreessen 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.

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Want to know about how privately held Facebook is doing from a financial point of view?

Well, just ask Mark Zuckerberg!
This afternoon, at an all-hands meeting held in a Palo Alto, Calif., theater near the social-networking site’s headquarters, the 23-year-old founder was quite voluble on that topic, outlining numbers that a more experienced CEO might think [...]

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Over the next week, I will be posting the most popular videos on BoomTown from 2007.
Here’s a video I did on a visit to Facebook’s HQ in Palo Alto, Calif., that I made in July, 2007. In it, I take a gander at the offices (complete with artistic graffiti) and chat with a passel of [...]

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