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.

[Updated with new details about deal, including who worked on it and info on a cash component.]

About three weeks ago, Facebook and Twitter ended several weeks of serious talks, in which Facebook was offering to acquire Twitter for $500 million of its stock, which also included a cash component.

While rumors of Facebook’s interest were brought up in an interview with Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg at the Web 2.0 Summit a few weeks ago, some shot down the idea as silly.

Quite incorrectly, as it turns out, since top execs at both Facebook and Twitter were right then at the tail end of discussions, which were initiated by the privately held Facebook in mid-October, about bringing the two together.

Those talks, sources on both sides said, are now over.

So why did the deal break down?

Well, as is usually the case, over price–was $500 million worth of Facebook stock actually worth $500 million?–and the typical concerns about integration and costs.

But, more important, it seems, was a feeling among Twitter investors and execs that the start-up should still take a shot at building its revenues–there are none right now–as well as it had done at building its growth.

“It’s more about timing,” said one person familiar with Twitter’s motivations. “There is a strong feeling that there is still an opportunity–even with the economic downturn–to blow this thing out.”

Still, combining the world’s fastest-growing social-networking site with what is quickly becoming the best-known microblogging service is actually a natural fit.

That’s especially true given that Facebook–for all its powerful online social connections–has seen Twitter race past it in innovating in the “status update” arena.

While some sources at Facebook said Zuckerberg was becoming frustrated by the buzz Twitter was getting–a market that should have been dominated by Facebook–others at the company said he was interested in buying Twitter because of his respect for its progress.

Indeed, at the Web 2.0 interview, Zuckerberg called Twitter an “elegant model” and said that he was “really impressed by what they’ve done.”

Indeed, with about six million registrations, as reported in October, up 600 percent over the last year, the San Francisco-based Twitter–launched in 2006–has had impressive growth.

(It has also been plagued by technical issues, which are–to be fair–decreasing.)

In any case, for those not familiar with it, the premise of Twitter is dead simple: A registered user logs in via the Internet or a mobile phone and answers the “What are you doing?” question the service asks in only 140 characters or fewer.

It’s quite a clever idea, although–so far–not a money-making one.

To try to goose that, Twitter’s board replaced the engineer who created Twitter, Jack Dorsey, with another founder, Evan Williams, who had served as its chairman and chief product officer.

The more experienced Williams (pictured here) had already built one company–Pyra Labs, which created the Blogger blogging service–that he sold to Google in 2003. He also started the audio and video search site Odeo, where Twitter was actually born.

Still, its investors have not come down on Twitter to hold back its growth efforts, and have handed over $20 million to the start-up so far. In its last round, Twitter was valued at $98 million.

Its funders include: Union Square Ventures, Charles River Ventures, Digital Garage, Spark Capital and Bezos Expeditions, backed by Amazon Founder and CEO Jeff Bezos.

In addition, well-known Silicon Valley figures, such as Marc Andreessen and Ron Conway, have also invested. Interestingly, Andreessen is also on Facebook’s board.

Other private investors include FeedBurner Co-Founder (and now Googler) Dick Costolo, former Epinions Co-Founder Naval Ravikant and former Googler Chris Sacca.

Twitter needs all the investors it can get, since it has no revenue, although it has been exploring things like charging business customers and adding advertising into the consumer service.

Lack of revenues was an issue for Facebook, said sources, especially related to fees Twitter pays for delivery of its messages to cellphones.

While the issue has been manageable in the U.S., Twitter cut off its SMS support in some international markets this summer because of too-high costs.

But, if Twitter was offered to Facebook’s 120 million users, Facebook execs estimated that it might have to deal with huge SMS fees–up to $75 million annually.

“Facebook has its own revenue-generating challenges,” said one person close to the company. “As much as Twitter would give them a lift in the status area, it was still a worry.”

Not enough, said several sources, to stop Facebook from making another approach at some point in the future. “We’d hate to see Twitter go to another company,” said one source.

Indeed, while all are even more price-conscious than Facebook, large companies that could also be interested include: Google (GOOG), Yahoo (YHOO), Microsoft (MSFT) or a large telecom company, such as Verizon (VZ).

If it had completed the deal to buy Twitter, it would have been Facebook’s most significant acquisition by far.

Zuckerberg and Williams did meet and get along well, but the deal was primarily negotiated by Spark Capital partner Bijan Sabet (Spark is a Twitter investor) and Facebook deal guy Dan Rose.

But in this time, at least, the Twitter side was still not interested in selling at the price Facebook had offered.

The $500 million offered was in an all-stock form, said sources on both sides, at the $15 billion valuation that came from the Microsoft’s investment in the company last October.

The Twitter side felt that figure was inflated and the shares should be valued at the lower figures that have also been reported for Facebook’s true valuation, more in the $5 billion range.

That would have given the deal a $150 million price tag, which was seen as too low, especially since it was in Facebook stock and not cash initially.

In fact, Twitter wanted cash, which some sources say was offered by Facebook in the $50 to $100 million range, in addition to stock, but taking too much stock was still a major issue.

There are other ways the pair could have approximated a safer choice for Twitter, via warrants, of course, or other methods.

But, said several sources close to Twitter, the primary reason for not selling was because its board simply did not want to yet or perhaps ever.

Said one source: “The question is, is it really a good idea to sell on the first chance you get?”

Well, for Twitter, we’ll just have to wait and see about that, of course.

[Photo of Evan Williams by Joi Ito. Licensed under Creative Commons 2.0 By-Attribution license.]

Since I posted an interview with Social Gaming Network’s Shervin Pishevar today on the announcement of his $15 million funding, it seems only sporting to post this lively video interview I also did with his main competitor, Mark Pincus of Zynga, recently too.

Zynga, named after Pincus’s dog, is one of the two main social-gaming networks that are competing for audience by offering highly interactive games of all kinds. Its aim is to be more engaging and create a series of addictive games that users will return to again and again.

Pincus, who also founded the Tribe social-networking site, is a longtime entrepreneur. I met him way back when as a reporter at the Washington Post when he and Sunil Paul launched one of the few start-ups–Freeloader–in the D.C. area.

And I can report that Pincus is as jumpy and energetic today as he was 15 years ago.

He has certainly been busy lining up a spate of fancy investors, garnering $10 million in funding in January, including from: Union Square Ventures, Foundry Group, Avalon Ventures, Pilot Group, along with personal investments from Silicon Valley players Reid Hoffman and Peter Thiel.

Zynga, which is larger than rival SGN, claims 2.3 million total daily active users across Facebook, with its Texas Hold’em game being the largest it offers. Other games include Sea Wars, Blackjack, Attack! and Scramble.

As I said in my SGN post, while BoomTown often makes fun of viral apps, most of which are faddish and juvenile, the better-made gaming apps actually are likely to be a real business over time, as long they remain engaging and fun to play as the classic real-life games are.

Zynga plans on making money through ads, including creating its own ad network for other gamers, as well as via the sale of virtual goods and premium offerings.

Here’s a chat with Pincus at Zynga’s offices (Pincus owns the building, by the way, which also houses a bunch of other Web 2.0 start-ups) in San Francisco: