Since leaving Google several years ago, where he last worked on wireless spectrum issues, it’s hard to say exactly what role the digital jumping bean who is Chris Sacca plays.

He’s not an entrepreneur, although he seems to know all of them in Web 2.0 world and advises 18 start-ups. He’s no longer a big-company exec, although he was one and knows a lot of them too. He’s not a venture capitalist, although he is involved in a private equity firm and invests in a lot of the start-ups he advises, like the red-hot Twitter, and knows those guys too.

In any case, here’s my chat with the Silicon Valley gadfly, whom BoomTown has dubbed the Start-Up Whisperer.

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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.”

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

Except they did. Yahoo 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 let’s take a stroll down memory lane, shall we?

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Last week, StumbleUpon announced it was buying itself out of its much-vaunted previous corporate buyout, by being born again as an “investor-baked start-up.”

The Canadian-born social-bookmarking company, which was launched earlier, came to the Bay area in 2006 and got some fancy venture investors and soon became a traffic-generating hit.

Then StumbleUpon was bought by eBay two years ago for $75 million in one of Web 2.0’s high points.

End of a fairy tale? Um, nope.

Here’s CEO and co-founder Garrett Camp, talking to BoomTown in a video interview about it all.

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As everyone knows by this morning, Spot Runner–the heavily-funded and once-hyped online-offline advertising agency–is being sued by one of its more prominent investors.

Ad behemoth WPP essentially paints an ugly picture of Spot Runner as the Bernie Madoff of Web 2.0.

It is alleging in a lawsuit that Spot Runner, in a “pump and dump” scheme, sold over $54 million in “secondary” shares to line its own pockets without telling WPP much, all while losing money, running out of funding and not building a sustainable business.

Here’s the background and also an interview BoomTown did with CEO and co-founder Nick Grouf in better days.

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The content-discovery service, StumbleUpon, has gotten itself back to start-up status, after being bought by eBay two years ago.

It announced today that it was returning to being an “investor-backed startup” by a roster of well-known Silicon Valley investors, including Ram Shriram of Sherpalo Ventures, Accel Partners and August Capital.

Its founders, Garrett Camp and Geoff Smith, are also back, with Camp now in place as CEO.

“We are grateful to eBay for its guidance. However, we realized there were few long-term synergies between the two businesses. It is best for us to part ways and focus on our respective strengths,” said Camp, stating the very obvious.

That’s quite a boomerang since it was acquired by the auction giant in 2007 for $75 million.

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This weekend on Twitter, someone paid BoomTown a compliment of a sort: “I read you because you are a solid fact-based reporter with a Miss Cleo intuition ”

Yipes, because of being fact-based and since I had brought her up in an originating tweet, I had to point out that the well-known-via-infomercials Psychic Friends Network shaman turned out to be a bit of a fraud, although she’s always entertaining, with her jaunty Jamaican accent (she was not, of course, from there).

Nonetheless, it got me thinking about how I would predict what would result from all the deal-making that is suddenly in the air, after six months of ennui from the current economic downturn.

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Last week, the economy took a much needed breather from its toilet-circling behavior of late, with the stock market showing gains for several days running.

Who knows what today will bring, given all the volatility, but most of the big consumer-focused digital companies saw solid upticks over the last five days.

You could also feel the revelry at the South by Southwest gathering that started this weekend in Austin, Texas, with lots of Web 2.0 partying and discussions of a Twitterific-Facebooktastic future.

Maybe happy days are here again? Um, nope.

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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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About 10 days ago, BoomTown posted a piece titled, “With a King’s Ransom in Cash, Why Is There Still No Buying Spree in the Tech Space Yet?”

Noting the big cash hordes being held by a plethora of giant tech and Internet companies and their strong cash flows too, even in the midst of the economic meltdown–I wondered when the mergers and acquisitions would ever begin.

With no hooking up as yet–which feels about as annoying as the persistently unconsummated flirtation of Chuck and Blair on “Gossip Girl”–that just won’t do!

So, here are a few suggestions to get this party started.

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Here’s a chart from a not-entirely-unexpected story in The Wall Street Journal today chronicling how the “deepening recession is speeding up the shakeout in Silicon Valley, forcing droves of start-ups to shut down or sell themselves at fire-sale prices.”

You knew that was coming, didn’t you?

And here is a not-so-lovely pair of charts to show you why.

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In a blog post that comes as the polar opposite of a complete surprise, Twitter co-founder Biz Stone clarified a comment he made to a U.K. magazine that sounded like Twitter might actually charge for something.

Leaving aside the delicious irony of the name “Biz”–given Twitter lack o’ business model–fear not, Web 2.0 Bubblistas!

Because Twitter remains true to its nonrevenue principles, according to Stone in a post yesterday titled “Nothing To Report Just Yet,” stressing that the start-up-de-jour microblogging service would not squeeze companies for existing services.

Here’s my translation.

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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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Oh, a nice tiny surprise from Yahoo, as it reported its fourth-quarter results, which came in at 17 cents a share in adjusted earnings, compared to the 12 to 13 cents Wall Street was expecting.

“Despite the challenging economic environment, Yahoo! delivered adjusted operating cash flow above the midpoint of guidance for the fourth quarter,” said new Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz in the company’s official release.

But let’s experience Bartz Live and Unplugged at the fourth-quarter earnings call, including a Q&A in which–the company noted at the top of the call–former Yahoo CEO and co-founder Jerry Yang might make an unexpected cameo appearance.

(He didn’t.)

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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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It looks like Carol Bartz will be taking on the thankless role as new Yahoo CEO.

Sources close to the situation told BoomTown–which had first named the former Autodesk CEO the top pick for the top job at the troubled Internet company last week–that Bartz has been approved for the job by the Yahoo board and has accepted it.

The Wall Street Journal is also reporting the move.

But can the experienced tech exec turn Yahoo around?

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