For starters, it’s getting everyone–or at least everyone I pay attention to on Twitter*–to talk about LivingSocial. (Groupon who?) And given that Amazon has already handed over a big chunk of money to the daily deals start-up, this sort of seems like the two sides are just swapping dollars, anyway.

Still, this gives us an excellent opportunity to rerun the classic “Saturday Night Live” Bubble 1.0 ad, which didn’t even run during the first bubble. It dates way, way back to 1988. And technically, it’s not about a money-losing operation, but one that doesn’t make any money (at least on a per-transaction basis).

Still, the “the answer is simple: volume” catchphrase became one of the signature lines of the Kozmo.com, Pets.com, etc. era a decade later. And it seems like we may have to revive it again.

Bonus clip! Here’s the first one of the ads. Catchphrase-free, but still awesome.

*An admittedly small subset of the world. But still.

The last time the industry saw this kind of growth was in 2000, when its revenue spiked 36.7 percent, driven upward by the same forces that made selling 50-pound bags of kitty litter from Pets.com or putting money into the Webvan.com IPO seem like a wise idea.

This year, though, the fundamentals driving growth are far more solid–strong PC, cellphone and LCD television demand and an overall rebound in spending on consumer electronics.

Said iSuppli’s Dale Ford: “Building on the continuing expansion in sales that followed the downturn in late 2008 and early 2009, the semiconductor industry is set to achieve remarkable revenue growth and record size in 2010.”

Still, it’s worth noting that revenue growth in 2010 will be “remarkable” largely because of a favorable comp to 2009, which was a truly crappy year for the semiconductor industry.

And it’s worth noting too that iSuppli’s currently rosy outlook could change with economic conditions. “The economy represents the biggest wild card in iSuppli’s 2010 forecast,” Ford cautioned. “While many indicators have shown sustained improvement, there are, however, a number of financial and economic trouble spots that could endanger the continued growth in the market before the end of 2010.”

Oh, Scooby-Don’t…

You could not be more wrong in your post last week–titled, “Why Kara Swisher and Walt Mossberg are wrong about naming Web 3.0 ‘Web 3.0′”–about Walt and I being wrong about naming Web 3.0 “Web 3.0″ in an essay we posted at the start of our D: All Things Digital conference, which took place last week.

I know writing “Kara Swisher,” “Walt Mossberg” and “Wrong” is well-nigh irresistible, but your solution of calling the digital era we are in the “2010 Web” is equally confusing and incorrect.

So, since you know I love to do translations, let me try to take apart your entire piece paragraph by paragraph:

What Scooby-Don’t wrote: Can we just head this trend off at the pass? It seems that Kara Swisher and Walt Mossberg, at their “All Things D” conference announced the beginning of the Web 3.0 era.

And I’m not the only one to think so.

BoomTown response: Walt and I simply wrote an essay in which we said we thought mobile and smart phones were super important as the next platform and represented what we thought Web 3.0 innovations, such as social networking (which we also think is important, by the way) would pivot around.

We didn’t “announce” anything, although that does sound awfully grand.

But so what if we did, because it happens quite a lot?

Dan Gillmor, for goodness sake, declared it Web 3.0 in 2005. His take was different:

“The emerging web is one in which the machines talk as much to each other as humans talk to machines or other humans. As the net is the rough equivalent of a computer operating system, we’re learning how to program the web itself.”

And in 2007, Tim O’Reilly weighed in on it, responding to Web 3.0 theses by Jason Calacanis and Nova Spivack, and also noting Stowe Boyd’s thoughts on the subject.

You get my point, Bobby? Lots of folks have opinions about what is Web 3.0, much as they will when we start arguing over what Web 4.0 is.

At Web 5.0, of course, a self-aware Google (GOOG) will have begun its inevitable war with the human race, sending back a cyborg to terminate you before you wrote that post, thereby making this rebuttal moot.

But, I digress!

Scooby-Don’t wrote: Short aside: It’s interesting that neither Kara nor Walt show up very often on friendfeed, which is the best example of the 2010 Web right now. Kara Swisher has made a total of five comments there. Walt is even worse, doesn’t bring any items in there, and only has six comments. How can you know what the 2010 Web is, if you don’t use it and don’t participate in it?

BoomTown response: The fact of the matter is that neither Walt nor I like to use FriendFeed as much as you do. I daresay that no one likes to use FriendFeed as much as you do.

Thus, hinging a larger point to this, just because we don’t play in a particular sandbox you like to play in, feels a little too much in the digital weeds to me.

Just because you have chosen to be the unofficial spokesmodel for the very laudable service–about which I have done a very lovely reported post on complete with video–I am not clear why you need to accuse Walt Mossberg and I of not being social because we don’t use it as much.

We both just happen to prefer Twitter and blogging as our social outlets.

I have done 3,255 updates on Twitter since I started last year, for example, which is certainly not as much as your 21,224. But–and I think we can all agree–as blabby as I am, I am simply not as blabby as you.

So, let’s try to make this as clear as possible.

We. Don’t. Use. FriendFeed. Regularly.

As I said, we use Twitter, we use Facebook, we use SMS, we use blogging and we use a whole lot more. In fact, between us, we try out pretty much everything.

While I appreciate that FriendFeed seems to be your home planet of the moment, it is not the only place to realize your term, 2010 Web, and it feels very Web 1.0 to say so.

Scooby-Don’t wrote: The Web does NOT have version numbers. Naming what was going on in the last eight years “Web 2.0″ did us all a large disservice (Tim O’Reilly did that, mostly to get people to see that there was something different about the Web that was being built in 2000-2003 than what had come before).

But by naming it a number, I believe it caused a lot of people and businesses to avoid what was going on and “poo poo” it as the rantings of the new MySpace generation (which was just getting hot back then).

BoomTown response: Let me see if I can get this straight. You can call it 2010 Web, but we cannot use version numbers, such as Web 3.0?

Hey, we’ll call it Britney Spears if we want!

Actually, I like naming the next era of the Web after the always volatile entertainer. She’s mobile, ever-changing, ubiquitous and always entertaining! Also, there are several eras of Britney: Sweet, Timberlake Lady, Federline Lady, Young Mom, Nuts, Nuttier, Nuttiest, Hospitalized, Medicated.

My main point remains: Who died and made you Boss of Pointless Internet Catchphrases?

Scooby-Don’t wrote: See, the Web changes EVERY DAY and a version number just doesn’t do it justice. Think about today, we saw Microsoft (MSFT) announce a major new update to its search engine, named “Bing,” that turns on next week and is already getting TONS of kudos. Seriously, in the rental car shuttle today a guy I met said the demo he saw at Kara and Walt’s conference was “awesome.”

Also today was Google’s Wave, which caught everyone by surprise and which sucked the oxygen out of Microsoft’s search announcements. Check out all the reports that I liked from around the world this morning.

BoomTown response: The Web changes EVERY DAY? You’re kidding! We had no idea! Thanks for that critical morsel of info!

Earth to Robert: Walt has spent a large part of his life writing about the panoply of new devices that have come out in an unceasing flow and I have written at least 10,000 news stories and two books about the Web since the early 1990s.

Pretty much all we write about is how the Web changes every day. Actually, every second.

Scooby-Don’t wrote: But, back to the theme of this post. There IS something going on here. I covered it a few weeks ago.

7. Hybrid infrastructure. At the Twitter Conference this week lots of people were talking about how they were using both traditional servers along with cloud-based approaches from Amazon (AMZN) and Rackspace (RAX) to store, study, and process the sizeable datasets that are coming through Twitter, Facebook, and friendfeed.

BoomTown Response: We had folks on stage at our D7 conference discussing all this last week. In fact, we covered a whole lot more than that, which you can read about if you click on through.

While I think all yours are also interesting ideas, I am still not clear why you need to get your knickers in a knot, since we happened to think mobile platforms and smart phones are more important trends at this juncture.

Also, could please explain how Google “caught that wave big time Wednesday when it handed Android phones to everyone at its IO conference.” Google is innovative because they give free swag to folks?

We gave free swag to folks this week at D7, so I guess that makes Walt and I 2010-Web-worthy!

Scooby-Don’t wrote: So, why doesn’t a version number work for these changes? Because they don’t come at us all at once. A lot of these things have been cooking for years. The Internet makes iteration possible. Tomorrow will be better on the Internet than today. In the old world of software you’d have to wait for the compilers, then you’d need to distribute tons of CDs or disks. That no longer needs to be done.

Same with the Web. Calling it the “2010 Web” puts an urgency into what’s happening. If your business isn’t considering the latest stuff it risks looking lame or, worse, leaving money on the table. Just like driving a 1994 car risks looking lame or, worse, breaking down a lot more often than a newer car.

BoomTown response: Actually, I would have to say that your year numbering system is deeply confusing and I am not sure we can treat Internet development like some auto or, even, say, fine wine.

Ah, that 1995 Web was saucy with a smooth Netscape IPO finish, while 2001 had a disappointing popped-bubble tone, due to the excessive tannins of Pets.com. Now, the 2009 is still very young, but it has a frothy Twittery taste, which goes surprisingly well with brie.

Scooby-Don’t wrote: Is the year metaphor perfect? No, I’m sure there are a few things wrong with it. For one, if you want to host a conference based on the “trend” you’ll have to change your conference name every year. That costs money, which is why conference companies like to have more stable trends that they can exploit for a few years, at least.

BoomTown response: D1, D2, D3, D4, D5, D6, D7. So far, changing the number has worked out well for us that we’re going to go for D8!

Scooby-Don’t wrote: Also, there are some clear “eras” in the Web, so I could see wanting to suggest that we’re in the third era of the Web, but I’ve been studying this for the past eight years and calling the second era “Web 2′ actually held us back because mainstream users didn’t think anything was happening in the past few years and Web 2.0 became a useless phrase anyway.

BoomTown response: You must know that mainstream users don’t pay one bit of attention to any and all of the dumb terms Silicon Valley comes up with.

And, with all the obviously massive change that has happened in the past few years in tech and the Internet (iPhone, Kindle, Facebook, Twitter to name a few), it seems odd to say that anything has been held back.

Frankly, it would be nice if tech innovation took a breather once in a while.

Scooby Don’t wrote: Anyway, can we use year numbers to describe the Web now? It’ll make it easier to evangelize the modern world to businesses. We’re entering the 2010 Web, that’s what I’m exploring. Calling the Web a version number is for people who don’t really understand, or participate in, what’s going on here. Kara and Walt, you gotta do better here.

BoomTown wrote: What’s in a name?

Well, it’s dang easy to attack, of course, instead of actually discussing the actual premise that we were outlining in our essay, titled “Welcome to Web 3.0.”

As we wrote:

“So what’s the seminal development that’s ushering in the era of Web 3.0? It’s the real arrival, after years of false predictions, of the thin client, running clean, simple software, against cloud-based data and services. The poster children for this new era have been the Apple (AAPL) iPhone and iPod Touch, which have sold 37 million units in less than two years and attracted 35,000 apps and one billion app downloads in just nine months.”

So, if you want to just focus on the name, then you gotta do better here.

Until then, you say 2010 Web, we say Web 3.0 and let’s call the whole thing off.

Most obvious example: CNN’s decision to cede much of its airtime to a stunt involving Larry King and Ashton Kutcher, who are having some kind of follower contest, which you can read about somewhere else.

But no need to single out the Time Warner (TWX) unit–every big news outlet now features stories about Twitter, presented by anchors/reporters who use Twitter. Which makes sense, because while Twitter may not be for everyone, it definitely appeals to professional self-promoters. [UPDATE: Add Oprah Winfrey to the ranks.]

If you tried to put a price tag on that kind of coverage… well, it’d be very expensive. Just advertising a Web service on TV doesn’t ensure success–ask IAC’s (IACI) Ask.com (or Pets.com, for that matter). But it can certainly get people to sample the service. So that’s some of what’s going on here.

Meanwhile, if you want to see the press embrace Twitter in real-time, there’s now a service that will let you do just that. Meet Muck Rack, which does nothing but aggregate Tweets from media members (um, like me).

The site comes to us from Sawhorse Media, a Brooklyn company that is trying to make a business out of Twitter-related sites and stunts–they’re the dudes who brought us the Shorty Awards earlier this year, as well as Musebin, a collection of Twitter-sized music reviews.

Sawhorse CEO Greg Galant tells me this one took a week to build, which is good, because the conceit is wafer-thin.

But it’s also a pretty good one–like the late, lamented “March Tweetness” promotion, there’s definitely something to sorting and curating the flood of Tweets. I also like the fact that Muck Rack offers a “links” view  that highlights the full headline of stories that media folks inevitably promote via their Tweets. Very helpful. You could definitely extract a few ad dollars out of this one, if you were so inclined.

Or you could just use it as an excuse to write about Twitter, again.

Here’s the video of Twitter co-founder Biz Stone with Stephen Colbert last night on the Comedy Central cable television show.

Stone–the spokesmodel for the hot microblogging service–does very well and is even charming, even though Colbert nails the problems of the San Francisco-based Twitter cold in the lively interview.

“How would you make money?” asked Colbert, after some preliminary joking with Stone about Twitter’s 140-character limit.

When Stone went on about how Twitter planned to be a “strong, profitable, independent company,” Colbert was ready with a zinger.

“You and Pets.com.”

Still, it was semi-cute when Stone told Colbert that “if i have a son, I should name him Flint.”

Yabadaba–don’t, Biz.

(Stone’s actual first name, by the way, is Isaac.)

Here’s the video:

Point taken. Certainly, we’re not going to see the recession inspiring companies to suddenly shutdown their e-commerce operations or disable Salesforce in aid of their longevity. But that doesn’t mean the Grim Reaper of the “Next Economy” isn’t going to sweep this latest crop of Webvans and Scients off into the abyss, and from there into the pages of a 2013 Fast Company article.

That said, take it from Colony: Don’t worry, be happy.

[Image Credit: Sequoia Capital via VentureBeat]

Point taken. Certainly, we’re not going to see the recession inspiring companies to suddenly shutdown their e-commerce operations or disable Salesforce in aid of their longevity. But that doesn’t mean the Grim Reaper of the “Next Economy” isn’t going to sweep this latest crop of Webvans and Scients off into the abyss, and from there into the pages of a 2013 Fast Company article.

That said, take it from Colony: Don’t worry, be happy.

[Image Credit: Sequoia Capital via VentureBeat]

Thus, BoomTown’s translation of Saturday’s letter from Microsoft (MSFT) CEO Steve Ballmer to the Yahoo (YHOO) Board of Directors, which has been resisting the software giant’s efforts to buy the troubled Internet portal for $31 a share in an unsolicited takeover.

The well-written letter was surprising in its clarity, but it still masked several secret messages.

Ballmer wrote: April 5, 2008
Board of Directors
Yahoo! Inc.
701 First Avenue
Sunnyvale, CA 94089

Dear Members of the Board:

Translation: Dear Members of the Board, whom I will be replacing very soon with my own slate, which includes the three judges from “American Idol” (Simon promises to behave and Paula promises not to), as well as the sock puppet from Pets.com, the PC Guy in those #@#*! Apple commercials and also Microsoft Bob.

Ballmer wrote: It has now been more than two months since we made our proposal to acquire Yahoo at a 62% premium to its closing price on Jan. 31, 2008, the day prior to our announcement. Our goal in making such a generous offer was to create the basis for a speedy and ultimately friendly transaction. Despite this, the pace of the last two months has been anything but speedy.

Translation: What? A middle of the night crank call from me, yelling and screaming and threatening “Terminator”-like destruction if you did not acquiesce was too much?

Didn’t you get the flowers I sent the next day?

Ballmer wrote: While there has been some limited interaction between management of our two companies, there has been no meaningful negotiation to conclude an agreement. We understand that you have been meeting to consider and assess your alternatives, including alternative transactions with others in the industry, but we’ve seen no indication that you have authorized Yahoo management to negotiate with Microsoft. This is despite the fact that our proposal is the only alternative put forward that offers your shareholders full and fair value for their shares, gives every shareholder a vote on the future of the company, and enhances choice for content creators, advertisers, and consumers.

Translation: I tried not to be annoyed when you had dinner with News Corp.’s (NWS) deal-loving Rupert Murdoch, or when you flirted with those we-gotta-make-some-move-any-move execs at AOL (TWX) (Bebo for $850 million in cash=Microsoft’s $240 million investment in Facebook).

But dithering around with Google (GOOG), whose secret corporate motto is “Poke Microsoft With a Stick Often,” even after it has been slapping you around Silicon Valley for years?

Ballmer wrote: During these two months of inactivity, the Internet has continued to march on, while the public equity markets and overall economic conditions have weakened considerably, both in general and for other Internet-focused companies in particular. At the same time, public indicators suggest that Yahoo’s search and page view shares have declined. Finally, you have adopted new plans at the company that have made any change of control more costly.

Translation: Google keeps slapping you silly in search, then you slap us with a costly severance plan. It’s like we’re Curly in a Web-version of “The Three Stooges.”

Why I oughta….

Ballmer wrote: By any fair measure, the large premium we offered in January is even more significant today. We believe that the majority of your shareholders share this assessment, even after reviewing your public disclosures relating to your future prospects.

Translation: Legg Mason and Cap Re and Citi and the rest of them are with us and not with you. Why? They like us, they really like us. Also, we are much scarier.

Ballmer wrote: Given these developments, we believe now is the time for our respective companies to authorize teams to sit down and negotiate a definitive agreement on a combination of our companies that will deliver superior value to our respective shareholders, creating a more efficient and competitive company that will provide greater value and service to our customers. If we have not concluded an agreement within the next three weeks, we will be compelled to take our case directly to your shareholders, including the initiation of a proxy contest to elect an alternative slate of directors for the Yahoo board. The substantial premium reflected in our initial proposal anticipated a friendly transaction with you. If we are forced to take an offer directly to your shareholders, that action will have an undesirable impact on the value of your company from our perspective, which will be reflected in the terms of our proposal.

Translation: We can do this the easy way or the hard way. The easy way includes tasty breakfast pastries and yummy hot cocoa (unlimited marshmallows, of course!) and lots and lots of hugging.

The hard way? Tepid lattes in the Silicon Valley soup kitchen lines for you, after your stock drops to the bottom of a bottomless well when we pull out!

Ballmer wrote: It is unfortunate that by choosing not to enter into substantive negotiations with us, you have failed to give due consideration to a transaction that has tremendous benefits for Yahoo’s shareholders and employees. We think it is critically important not to let this window of opportunity pass.

Translation: Like I said before, I won’t be ignored, Jerry! I have a very sharp proxy firm and I am not afraid to use it!

Also, I am not above boiling your annoying exclamation point.

Ballmer wrote: Sincerely,

Steven A. Ballmer
Chief Executive Office
Microsoft Corp.

Translation: If you’ll be my bodyguard,/I can be your long lost pal!/I can call you Jerry,/And Jerry, when you call me,/You can call me Steve!