Andreessen & Facebook: A Conflict?

Kevin Maney dashes off: On the face of it, it appears that Marc Andreessen's presence on Facebook's board would be a conflict of interest. Marc founded Ning, which creates tools that let people build niche social networks. Rapper 50 Cent built a social network for his fans using Ning. And then Facebook is a broad social network.

I tried to ask Marc about this but he didn't want to comment. Someone who knows his thinking well, though, told me this: "Both are consumer Internet companies but doing different things. One is building the definitive, canonical social utility with everyone's real information and social interactions. The other lets users create new social experiences of any form with any design, any feature set, around any topic, and makes no attempt to establish real identity."

Hopefully now Marc will get back to writing his blog, which has been dead in the water since May 27.