What a last couple of days….sorry to report on this so late, but, as always, you will get one helluva a report!

For all of you SiliconBeat readers, you may have found this message…

And for you others, you may have read at SiliconBeat, Valleywag, Stowe Boyd’s Message, among many others…VentureBeat recently launched, and then crashed amidst the linking frenzy that ensued…but has emerged as a bonafide resource for Venture-related deals and companies worth tracking in and around Silicon Valley.

The SiliconBeat post read, “Folks, we’ve made some changes here at SiliconBeat. Matt is going independent and will carry on the blogging at his new site, VentureBeat. You can see his first post here. Mike, who had stepped back anyway from blogging actively in recent months, will stay at the Mercury News, where he is managing the Web site. He will not continue blogging here, but Matt will try to get him to post occasionally over at VentureBeat. SiliconBeat will go dormant, and beginning Friday, will have a landing page directing people to their choice of (1) the new blog or (2) the Mercury News.”

Nick Douglas over at Valleywag posted, “The San Jose Mercury News is shuttering its tech blog, SiliconBeat, which (along with Good Morning Silicon Valley) displayed the insight and cleverness that the Merc News itself is missing.”

According to Matt Marshall, “We launched early yesterday morning, but an overwhelming spike in traffic, a subsequent server crash and no fallback combined to shut down the Web site for a whole day.We’ve learned some lessons.”

Well, as I mentioned to Matt, “How sweet it is to have your own RocketBoom…”

VentureBeat’s mission is to provide news and information about private companies and the venture capital that fuels them. People are at the heart of this project. VentureBeat will be a resource for entrepreneurs and other interested professionals facing some the biggest decisions of their careers.

Per Matt, “My Mercury News colleague Michael Bazeley and I launched SiliconBeat.com almost two years ago, in an effort to respond to the new reality of online media. Baze and I found ourselves spending several hours daily on a blog that was supposed to be outside of our day jobs at the Merc. Baze, showing more sanity, pulled back from SiliconBeat and has taken a job managing the Mercury News’ Web site. For me, SiliconBeat continued as a labor of love, a way to filter the goings-on of this fascinating place we call Silicon Valley. Yet I was doing too much. So I approached the Mercury News, and told them I wanted to go out on my own.”

Photo credit: VentureBeat

Good move Matt. Especially nowadays.

Marshall continued, “To my delight, the Mercury News has become my first customer. It will syndicate the content I produce here. It has the right to run it in the paper, and to put it on their Web site. For me, it is a great deal. The Merc is the valley’s paper of record. It is my first read in the morning, and what I do here at VentureBeat is linked with the Merc’s mission. Like most of the people at the Merc, I care about the community in a broader sense. That is why I’m covering things from a geographical standpoint, as opposed to an industry niche.

Some of its first stories include:
– Aruba, Sequoia-backed wireless LAN company, about to go public
– Apple and Google alliance — makes sense given culture, goals
– Valley VCs are on fire: Lots of deals, including bloated Force10, PlayPhone & Groxis…
– Zend raises $20 million to ride the Web 2.0 “PHP” boom

At SiliconBeat, we all grew to appreciate Matt’s sense of insight, humor and wit. So I’m looking forward to continue reading VentureBeat regularly. Have a great long weekend everybody!

Tags: matt marshall, siliconbeat, venturebeat, stowe boyd, valleywag, nick douglas, aruba, sequoia, apple, google, vc, venture capital, silicon valley, force10, playphone, groxis, zend, web2.0 web 2.0, san jose mercury news , sjmercury , rocketboom