Update: Tickets are now sold out. Be sure to keep your eye out for ticket giveaways and for when we release our next batch of tickets.

The nominations have been tabulated and the votes are in. Over 300,000 nominations were calculated across 20 categories. Along with our partners GigaOm and VentureBeat, we are very proud to announce the finalists for 2011′s best in technology. Voting begins now.

For 2011, we’ve added some new categories. Best Location App, Best Cloud Services and Biggest Social Impact join the Crunchies ranks this year. You’ll also find Best Social App, the NYC-dominated category of Best Shopping App, Best New Startup and the year’s best VC’s and Angel Investors. Newcomers like TaskRabbit’s Leah Busque and Keith Rabois for his angel investments (Airbnb, LinkedIn, Yammer, Path, YouTube) made the list of finalists, as well as industry favorites such as Marc Andreessen, Jack Dorsey, Mark Pincus and Ron Conway.

There are some pretty good match-ups this year. Google+ is up against Facebook Timeline for Best Social App, along with the New New Twitter, Instagram, and Path 2.0). The Kindle Fire is competing with the iPad 2 for Best New Device. And Pinterest, Turntable.fm, Nest, Fab, and Codecademy are all vying for Best New Startup (even though two of those were complete pivots). LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman is up for Angel of the Year. His seed investment in Zynga is worth 160 times what he paid for it. But AngelList founders Naval Ravikant and Babak Nivi are also finalists in the category for helping to democratize angel investing, along with Conway, Rabois, Y Combinator’s Paul Graham, and Kevin Rose (who has a killer portfolio that includes Twitter, Foursquare, Zynga, and Square). Who will win?

Everyone is eligible and encouraged to vote. The rules state that you may vote once per day, per award category, until voting closes on Sunday, January 29, 2012 at 11:59pm PST. There are 20 award categories open for voting, recognizing the top accomplishments across a variety of fields and roles. If you are one of the finalists, create a badge and get your community excited about this honor and get them to vote for you. Winners will be announced on January 31, live at the Crunchies.

In addition to today’s announcement of the Finalists, we are happy to release our next batch of tickets through Eventbrite. The release begins now, so act fast and get them while you can.

Here are your Finalists:

Best Technology Achievement (2010 winner: Google Self Driving Cars)
Lytro (Related posts)
NFC (Related posts)
OnLive (Related posts)
Siri (Related posts)
Tesla Flat Pack Battery (Related posts)

Best Social Application (2010 winner: DailyBooth)
Facebook Timeline (Related posts)
Instagram (Related posts)
Google+ (Related posts)
The New New Twitter (Related posts)
Path 2.0 (Related posts)

Best Shopping Application (2010 winner: Groupon)
Birchbox (Related posts)
Fab (Related posts)
Gilt Groupe (Related posts)
Lot18 (Related posts)
Warby Parker (Related posts)

Best Mobile Application (2010 winner: Google Mobile Maps for Android)
Evernote (Related posts)
Flipboard (Related posts)
Pandora (Related posts)
Spotify (Related posts)
Square (Related posts)
TaskRabbit (Related posts)

Best Location Application (New category for 2011)
Airbnb (Related posts)
Foursquare (Related posts)
Grindr (Related posts)
RunKeeper (Related posts)
Uber (Related posts)

Best Tablet Application (2010 winner: Flipboard)
djay (Related posts)
Eventbrite At the Door (Related posts)
Fotopedia (Related posts)
GarageBand (Related posts)
Netflix (Related posts)
StumbleUpon (Related posts)

Best Design (2010 winner: gogobot)
Gojee (Related posts)
Orchestra (Related posts)
Path 2.0 (Related posts)
Pinterest (Related posts)
Quora (Related posts)

Best Bootstrapped Startup (2010 winner: addmired)
Github (Related posts)
Imgur (Related posts)
Instapaper (Related posts)
Onesheet (Related posts)
Tap Tap Tap (Camera+) (Related posts)

Best Cloud Service (New category for 2011)
Asana (Related posts)
Box (Related posts)
CloudFlare (Related posts)
Dropbox (Related posts)
Okta (Related posts)
Twilio (Related posts)

Best International Startup (2010 winner: Viki)
Badoo (Related posts)
Klarna (Related posts)
Peixe Urbano (Related posts)
Rovio (Related posts)
SoundCloud (Related posts)
Wonga (Related posts)

Best Clean Tech Startup (2010 winner: SolarCity)
Alta Energy (Related posts)
Array Power (Related posts)
EcoATM (Related posts)
EcoMotors (Related posts)
Hara (Related posts)

Best New Device (2010 winner: iPad)
Galaxy Nexus (Related posts)
iPad 2 (Related posts)
iPhone 4S (Related posts)
Kindle Fire (Related posts)
Nest (Related posts)

Best Time Sink (2010 winner: Cityville)
Modern Warfare 3 (Related posts)
Quora (Related posts)
Skyrim (Related posts)
Turntable.fm (Related posts)
Words With Friends (Related posts)

Biggest Social Impact (New category for 2011)
Charity: Water (Related posts)
Khan Academy (Related posts)
Kickstarter (Related posts)
Practice Fusion (Related posts)
Twitter (Related posts)

Angel of the Year (2010 winner: Paul Graham)
Ron Conway (Related posts)
Paul Graham (Related posts)
Reid Hoffman (Related posts)
Keith Rabois (Related posts)
Naval Ravikant and Babak Nivi (AngelList) (Related posts for Naval) (Related posts for Babak)
Kevin Rose (Related posts)

VC of the Year (2010 winner: Yuri Milner)
Marc Andreessen & Ben Horowitz (Related posts for Marc) (Related posts for Ben)
Matt Cohler (Related posts)
Vinod Khosla (Related posts)
Aileen Lee (Related posts)
Yuri Milner (Related posts)
David Sze (Related posts)

Founder of the Year (2010 winner: Mark Pincus)
Leah Busque (Task Rabbit) (Related posts)
Brian Chesky (Airbnb) (Related posts)
Jack Dorsey (Square, Twitter) (Related posts)
Susan Feldman & Ali Pincus (One Kings Lane) (Related posts for Susan) (Related posts for Ali)
Drew Houston (Dropbox) (Related posts)

CEO of the Year (2010 winner: Andrew Mason)
Dick Costolo (Twitter) (Related posts)
Daniel Ek (Spotify) (Related posts)
Phil Libin (Evernote) (Related posts)
Mark Pincus (Zynga) (Related posts)
Jeff Weiner (LinkedIn) (Related posts)

Best New Startup of 2011 (2010 winner: Quora)
Codecademy (Related posts)
Fab (Related posts)
Nest (Related posts)
Pinterest (Related posts)
Turntable.fm (Related posts)

Best Overall Startup of 2011 (2010 winner: Twitter)
Dropbox (Related posts)
Instagram (Related posts)
Gilt Groupe (Related posts)
Spotify (Related posts)
Square (Related posts)
Tumblr (Related posts)

5th Annual Crunchies Awards
Tuesday, January 31, 2012

Louise M. Davies Symphony Hall
201 Van Ness Ave.
San Francisco, CA

7:30pm – midnight – Awards Ceremony and After Party
A night of celebration with festive attire.

Our sponsors help make the Crunchies happen, if you are interested in learning more about sponsorship opportunities during the ceremony or after-party, please contact Jeanne Logozzo at jeanne@techcrunch.com.

For press credentials, please fill out this request form and confirmations will be sent separately via email.

Internet radio service Pandora has posted its November listening stats in the top ten radio markets in the U.S. The company says that it has seen Average Quarter Hour (AQH) gains in each of the top ten U.S. radio markets since September.

Pandora says the gains ranged from 13 to 25 percent listening increases in each market with the biggest AQH gain of 25 percent occurring in the New York metro area. An AQH rating of 1.0 means an average of one percent of a target population was listening to Pandora for at least five minutes within a quarter hour window between 6.00 a.m. and midnight.

In November, among adults 18-34 in the top ten markets, Pandora’s weekly cumulative audience (the measure of the total unique Pandora listeners in each market) reached more than 19.9 percent in each metro survey area. For adults 18-49, the weekly cumulative audience for November for the first time had more than one million unique listeners in both the New York and Los Angeles metro survey areas.

Pandora reported stronger than expected earnings in Q3, with users listening to 2.1 billion total hours of radio for the third quarter of 2011. And the company announced that it has 40 million active users and 66 percent of the country’s internet radio market.

Looking forward Pandora is eying local radio ad dollars, and increased usage in local radio markets is only going to help the company attract advertisers and revenue.

This afternoon at The Web 2.0 Summit, Pandora Co-founder Tim Westergren sat down with Fortune Editor Adam Lashinsky to talk about what’s going on at everybody’s favorite personalized radio platform. For those who may have missed it, Pandora recently enjoyed a relatively high-profile IPO, putting its “P” ticker symbol right smack in the middle of “IPO” — and the NYSE. And its stock has remained pretty high, both literally and figuratively, pricing at over $16 a share on its opening day, and is today trading around $15.20 per share. So far, so good.

Furthermore, today the company counts 37 million active users and, as Westergren has said on multiple occasions, is finally hitting scale. Part of the reason that the co-founder believes that the company has been able to reach scale, and continue to grow across mobile and the web, is due to the fact that the entire industry is shifting from broadcast/terrestrial radio to personalized radio.

Of course, Westergren is wont to say that this shift is endemic to an entire industry, as Pandora has really been at the forefront of pushing personalized radio across different forms of media. And, based on its mobile adoption in particular, where Pandora reaps 70 percent of its users, it doesn’t look like Westergren is wearing rose-colored glasses.

Another interesting statistic the co-founder mentioned today was that Pandora currently has over 900,000 songs in its repertoire, and the majority of those songs were played last month — one of the biggest differences between traditional and new radio, where the diversity of the musical catalog is far smaller.

Therein lies Pandora’s value proposition: Allowing listeners to personalize their radio experience, as well as exposing listeners to a wider breadth of artists, songs — and, in turn, giving artists a far longer reach than ever before. To this point, Westergren said, “new” radio is helping the long-tail, by playing more songs.

And, it’s important to note that Pandora pays to performers. While this may hamstring the platform a bit financially, it’s great for musicians. Terrestrial (or broadcast) radio only pays publishing fees, which go to composers and record labels, but not to performers. Musicians rejoice.

But, what about Spotify, you ask? Revenue from subscribers only made up about 15 percent of Pandora’s revenue in 2011; the majority of its revenue is based on advertising. While Westergren said that the company needs to do a better job of monetizing through advertising in the long run, so far most of its users are cool with listening to the free, ad-supported version rather than subscribing to take advantage of ad-free listening.

Spotify, on the other hand, is predominantly subscription-based, but Westergren said that he thinks there’s room for both companies to survive and do what they do best. Ideally, he says, a Pandora power user “would find some songs they like on Pandora, and then go buy them on iTunes or listen to them on demand via Rdio or Spotify and use them in tandem,” he said. “It’s not 100 percent distinct, there’s obviously some overlap, but I think at a high level the place where we operate in the minds of users.”

Spotify, with its Facebook integration, has been exploding in the U.S., but for those looking for a one-button, low maintenance way to discover music based on their own distinct tastes, Pandora remains one of the best options out there. We’ll see what the future holds, but I’m willing to bet that both services will be around for at least a few years.

Popular personalized radio service Pandora, which went public in June, has just announced that it’s rolling out its overhauled, HTML5-based music player to everyone. The service has been testing the player since July, and it’s a huge improvement over the old Flash-based experience. Everything looks much more modern, it’s faster, and it’s easier to use.

The other big piece of the news: Pandora is removing the cap on how much music ‘free’ users can listen to every month. Historically Pandora has let users stream 40 hours of music a month, at which point they were prompted to upgrade to a premium ‘Pandora One’ account (which run $36 a year). Starting today, that cap is gone, so users can listen to as much as they’d like. There’s still a significant incentive to upgrade though, as Pandora One users never have to deal with ads.

It’s also worth pointing out that the player is launching the day before Facebook’s f8 conference. Pandora was among the first services to sport Facebook’s ‘Instant Personalization’, and it wouldn’t be at all surprising if it’s deeply integrated into whatever Facebook is launching tomorrow. Pandora is also making its own social features more prominent, with the integration of a new social feed as part of today’s update. From the Pandora blog:

Discovery of Music with Friends – Enhanced listener profiles and a new music feed offer a centralized place to find, like and comment on what friends and like-minded listeners are discovering and enjoying on Pandora. The music feed will roll out slowly over the course of the coming days. In addition to the prominent new “share” button, stations now have their own URLs, making it super easy for listeners to share favorite stations via Twitter, Facebook, or email.

Pandora announced a significant redesign this morning, and paired with this announcement comes a number of user milestones for the music streaming and personalized radio service. The company now has 100 million registered users and 36 million monthly active users across its platform.

The company is announcing these stats at its first Analyst Day, a month after the company debuted on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol “P”. As we initially reported, Pandora got a strong start in the public markets but shares quickly fell to below the company’s initial pricing of $16 per share. But Pandora’s stock was able to rebound recently, and closed at $19.26 yesterday afternoon.

Pandora says that it ended 2010 with 2.3 percent market share of all radio listening in the United States, and has increased its market share to 3.6 percent of all radio listening in the United States.

It’s not surprising that Pandora is growing rapidly, especially following the IPO. Debuting in the public markets is a marketing campaign in itself, and because Pandora was one of the heavily hyped IPOs toe debut this year, the company got a ton of press.

In terms of financials, revenue numbers are increasing but the company has yet to make a profit. Now that it has more cash to play with, it should be interesting to see how Pandora will begin to monetize off of its products.

Perhaps you noticed that TechCrunch went through a bit of a redesign yesterday. Well, we’re not the only ones undergoing a major facelift this summer. Another site you all know and love will soon look completely different. More importantly, it will soon function much better. It’s a change that will affect millions. Get ready for New Pandora.

Yes, after years of familiarity, Pandora will begin a massive metamorphosis on the web this week. At first, subscribers of the Pandora One service will begin to get access to the new site (on a rolling basis). And over the next several weeks, everyone will. The transformation is pretty stunning — and I mean that entirely in a good way. New Pandora is beautiful. I cannot think of a single thing I like better about the old site.

“I’ve been looking at it for seven years. I was ready to give it a fresh coat of paint,” is how Pandora head of product and CTO, Tom Conrad, sets up the change as we sit down to go over the new site. “We started on it about a year ago. But even earlier than that, we’d been talking about it. There were core navigation problems that needed fixing. At first, we had been talking about more incremental changes, with the site still operating in Flash. But then last summer, it became clear that browsers with full HTML5 capabilities had gained enough support. We realized we could do the full Pandora experience without Flash,” he says.

That’s right, another site once completely reliant on Flash is breaking the addiction.

“Back in 2004, web browsers didn’t natively know how to play music. There was QuickTime, Real Player, and Flash. Flash was so ubiquitous back then — it was an obvious choice,” Conrad says. “Fast forward to last year, everything was changing. I had begun to get worried about site performance on the client side. The backend is fast, but as we kept adding features, everything would slow down for users. If you try to load Pandora right now on the web with a moderate amount of stations, it takes something like 10 seconds. By any reasonable standard, it’s an eternity,” he continues.

Conrad then brings up New Pandora and shows me how quickly it loads compared to the old site. By my count, it takes 2-3 seconds and then music begins playing. It’s an insanely faster onboarding experience.

And the site itself is stunning, yet familiar. “We wanted the experience to be completely fresh. But we didn’t want to force our listeners to completely re-learn the Pandora experience,” he says, noting that while things look much cleaner, the same basic layout remains largely intact. “We keep many of the same progressions from the old site,” he continues. “There are a bunch of great features on the new site, but we continue to be really committed to the idea that Pandora wants to be a simple solution.”

Conrad says that it was also about a year ago, as mobile growth was exploding, that he began to realize that Pandora’s app for the iPhone and iPad were actually closer to the essence of Pandora than the web version was. So it should be no surprise that New Pandora takes its design cues from the iPad app Pandora first built last year (this is similar to the way in which “New Twitter” was influenced by Twitter for iPad).

You’ll notice that along the top of New Pandora, there’s now a music control bar that stays in place as you navigate through the site. This is key. “Content on Pandora is deeper than most people realize. We needed a better way to present it,” Conrad says, showing me that you can now visit any page on Pandora while your music continues to play. And unlike the old site, where elements would open in new windows or clunky Flash overlays, everything is fluidly displayed using HTML. This alone will drastically alter the way many use the service — it will likely be much more of a source of music information to aid discovery.

Then Conrad’s eyes really light up. “Oh! The back button finally works!,” he exclaims. Due to the limitations of Flash, Pandora has long been crippled by natural back button usage in browsers. But not anymore. Want to go back from where you just came? Just click the back button. Again, the music in the top control bar will keep right on playing.

Conrad is also clearly excited by the fact that you can share an actual URL now thanks to the HTML usage. Previously, you had to rely on the share widgets to dynamically create an URL that would work for the Flash-wrapped site.

Lyrics also now expand on the homepage of songs for the first time. And comments finally feel native to the site. “We’ve got millions of people leaving comments on the site, but they never got surfaced. We might see a real explosion,” Conrad says.

“Another core change is the way the station creation process works,” Conrad says, showing me that when you click in the new “Create a New Station” box, a drop-down appears to help you. As you type, you’ll get suggestions for stations to create. These include bands, artists, genres, even comedians. And it’s not just keyword-based. Pandora will dynamically serve you recommendations based on the music genome core, your own voting and listening history, and social elements of the site.

Speaking of social, that’s another key to this revamp. ”I wanted to use the clean sheet of paper as an opportunity to rethink how you interact with music socially,” Conrad says. “We have tried lots of different angles on social over the years. Email, profiles pages, commenting, embeddable widgets for MySpace. Twitter, Facebook — then deeper Facebook integration. It just felt to me that we hadn’t gotten the formula quite right in all those attempts,” he continues.

With New Pandora, the social experience is much more central to the site. Right next to “Now Playing” is your “Music Feed” which shows you the activity for all of your friends on Pandora. Every like, every listen, every comment. It’s a bit like Apple’s Ping, but a Ping people will actually use because it captures what everyone already does on Pandora — again, mainly listen to music and give “thumbs up” ratings.

There is also a “My Profile” area to keep track of what you’ve been doing on Pandora. These profiles have actually existed for some time, but few used them as they were very static and uninteresting. Now they look great and are useful. Clicking on any users’ profile allows you to easily see their activity and to follow them. Their activity will then appear in your “Music Feed” stream.

When you click on the “Share” button for each track on Pandora, you’ll still have the standard options to send to Facebook and Twitter, but the default is now to simply share on Pandora itself. For example, you can share what station you’re listening to and send that right to your music feed for all of your Pandora followers to see. “Pandora now has its own follower/following system,” Conrads notes. “We talked to our listeners and found that the vast majority are very conscious about spamming their friends on their other social networks. They’re more reluctant to share than I would have imagined,” he continues. “My hope is that as people develop followers on Pandora itself, they’ll become more comfortable with sharing in general.”

“I like to think of sharing inside of Instagram as training wheels for the other networks,” Conrad continues. What he means is that people at first are only comfortable sharing images with their contacts within specific apps, but eventually the gain confidence and branch out to share with other social networks.

“What I’m excited about is that this environment is a starting point for us to further evolve the social aspects of music. You can imagine all types of content flowing through our feeds,” Conrad says. “We could port in when artists that you like have new albums, for example,” he says.

Conrad is quick to point out that Pandora still has private profiles as well. If you choose to make your profile private, you’ll basically be invisible to the service at that point, he says.

So what do all of these social endeavors mean for Pandora’s relationship with Facebook? After all, they were one of the initial Open Graph partners — and Facebook is about to launch their own entry into the music space, supposedly with a number of partners. “We’ve had a really, really close working relationship with Facebook for many years. We continue to talk regularly about things. Mark [Zuckerberg] himself has called me with ideas for how to make Pandora more social over the years,” Conrad says. “Clearly, Facebook is the center of the world for social today. We’ll continue to be a part of that.”

That’s all Conrad would give me with regard to Facebook. So I guess we’ll just to wait and see if they’ll be one of the Facebook Music launch partners.

Going back to HTML5, clearly Pandora is making a bet here that this is the future of the web. But that’s an easy bet to make at this point. Still, they’re thinking bigger too. “HTML5 is the only technology that has a shot at being a ubquitous solution across a wide range of computing experiences — tablets, TV, automobiles, etc. We still have along way to go, but it’s possible,” Conrad says.

“I’m not ready to predict our answer for things like tablets will be HTML5 down the road. But it’s nice to have the infrastructure in place,” Conrad notes, while saying there’s still a lot to love about native apps as well. “We’re devoted to delivering the best possible experience.”

And while over half of Pandora’s listeners now come from mobile devices, Conrad notes that the web will always have a place in their heart — it’s where Pandora began. And now it’s where Pandora is evolving.

Again, to be clear, this initial roll out of New Pandora will begin with Pandora One subscribers first. The idea there isn’t to bring in more Pandora One subscribers, Conrad promises. Instead, they simple would like a smaller group to test the new site with (as well as reward those paying members). Pandora is also hard at work to perfect the advertising that will be the a part of the free version of Pandora, which most users use. You can expect this to be largely the same as it is now on the current Pandora site — large ads splashed in the background.

Conrad credits his “incredible engineering team” for pulling off this transition from Flash dependance to HTML5. And while it’s clear that the Flash addiction has been kicked, Conrad notes that they continue to have fall-back Flash elements for browsers not fully HTML5-compliant.

Conrad says the work on New Pandora really touched everyone at the company. There have been well north of 100 people working on this project by this point, he says. Compare that with the 8 to 10 people who built the original site. And remember, they were building this in secret while also going through an IPO!

“It’s the best work we’ve done,” Conrad says simply of New Pandora. Upon using it myself for the past several days, I have to agree. It’s brilliant.

You can find out more about New Pandora here.

LINKEDIN (NYSE:LNKD)

Professional social network LinkedIn probably had the biggest IPO in terms of hype this year because it was one of the first big social media companies to go public. After pricing its IPO at $45 per share on the New York Stock Exchange, LinkedIn began trading at $83.00 per share on May 19, giving the company a $7.8 billion market cap. In the first day of trading, shares popped up to as high as $122.70, soaring past a $10 billion valuation.

But these high stock prices didn’t sustain and LinkedIn’s value per share dropped significantly over the next month, dropping as low as $63.71 per share. However, the company’s stock rebounded last week, with shares rising as high as $95.50 on Friday, eventually closing at $94.54. That’s a 110 percent increase from its initial pricing.

PANDORA (NYSE:P)

Similar to LinkedIn, music streaming service Pandora also drew considerable attention to its IPO, which debuted on the New York Stock Exchange under the desirable, single character symbol ‘P.’ The company priced its IPO at $16 per share (valuing the company at $2.6 billion), but opened at $20 per share on June 15 (up 25 percent), valuing the company at $3.2 billion.

In the two weeks following the IPO, Pandora’s stock took a bit of a dive, reaching as low as $12.16 per share. But like LinkedIn, Pandora’s shares saw an uptick over the past week, closing at $20.04 on Friday, which is up 25 percent from the company’s initial pricing in June.

YANDEX (NASDAQ:YNDX)

Russian search engine Yandex, which began trading on the NASDAQ on May 24, priced its IPO at $25 per share, but opened at $35, giving Yandex a market cap of roughly $11.2 billion. That’s a bigger market cap than both LinkedIn and Pandora.

Yandex has experienced highs and lows in the past month with the value of its stock, but the fluctuations have not been nearly as extreme as some of its contemporaries in the tech IPO market. Yandex’s stock dipped to a low of $29.73 in mid-June but rebounded quickly and closed on Friday at $35.69, which is a 40 percent increase from its initial pricing.

FUSION-IO (NYSE:FIO)

Fusion-io, the developer of flash- memory technology for companies, debuted on the New York Stock Exchange on June 9. The company priced its IPO at $19 per share, valuing Fusion-io at $1.5 billion, but opened at $25 per share, giving the company a nearly $2 billion market cap.

Fusion-io’s stock has performed fairly well over the past month, reaching a high of $36.32 last week. The company’s shares closed at $31.19 on Friday, up 64 percent from its initial pricing.

HOMEAWAY (NASDAQ:AWAY)

Vacation home rental service HomeAway debuted its IPO last week, pricing at $27 per share. HomeAway, which listed on the NASDAQ, saw its shares pop over 30 percent in initial trading last Wednesday, giving the rental service as valuation of $3 billion.

HomeAway’s shares have maintained its value, relatively speaking, in its first week of trading, reaching a low of $34.92 and a high of $42.30. On Friday, HomeAway’s shares closed at $38.42, a 42 percent increase from the stock’s pricing.

RENREN (NYSE:RENN)

Chinese social network Renren actually went public before LinkedIn, pricing its IPO in early May at $14 per share, with a total offering size of $743.4 million. The company was pitching itself as a “Facebook” like site for the Chinese market, which resulted in an increase in the share price range from the initial $9-$11 to $12-$14. That increase resulted in a boost in the deal size to $743.4 million from the original price of $584 million.

RenRen opened at $18 per share, but the stock has since plummeted to as low as $6.23 per share. On Friday, RenRen closed at $9.25 per share, which is a 34 percent drop in value from the initial pricing.

BANKRATE (NYSE:RATE)

Bankrate provides free rate information to consumers on more than 300 financial products, including mortgages, credit cards, new and used automobile loans, and more. The company priced its IPO at $15 per share, valuing the company at $1.5 billion. The company’s shares, which began trading in mid-June, have remained fairly steady at this price, reaching a high of $17.89. Bankrate closed at $17.13 per share on Friday, up 13 percent.

Who’s Next Up To IPO

Zillow: Real estate listings giant Zillow filed its S-1 in April, so we could be seeing the company hit the public markets in the next two months. Zillow wants to raise $51.75 million in the offering, and while revenue has grown for the company year over year, Zillow has taked a loss for the past three years. Zillow will trade on the NASDAQ under the symbol “Z.”

Kayak: Travel search engine Kayak filed its S-1 last November, aiming to raise $50 million. No word on when the search engine is planning to IPO, but Kayak did reveal revenue growth in the past year, however net income is down. The company will trade on the NASDAQ under the symbol “KYAK.”

Groupon: Daily deals giant Groupon just filed its S-1 in June, aiming to raise $750 million in the public offering. Though the company has an impressive revenue run rate of $2.6 billion for 2011, but has drawn criticism for a lack of profits and the fact that the founders have taken a significant amount of money off the table. The company is looking at an IPO in the Fall.

Zynga: Zynga just filed for its $1 billion IPO this past Friday, revealing impressive financials. Revenues grew 392 percent in 2010, up from $121.5 million in 2009. In the first quarter of 2011 alone, the company’s revenues reached $235 million (or a $940 million revenue run-rate), which is up 134 percent from the first quarter of 2010. Both Zynga and Groupon may be rushing to IPO ahead of Facebook, which is expected to file in the coming year.

Not Yet Filed, But Champing At The Bit:

Facebook: We know an IPO is in the works for Facebook, it’s just a matter of when. The company has been meeting with bankers to discuss IPO size and time frame for an offering. And the company just added Netflix founder and CEO (and an IPO veteran) Reed Hastings to its board. It’s been thought that the social network will go public by April 2012, but it could happen before this date.

Glam Media: We’ve heard Glam Media, one of the largest publishing and advertising networks on the Web, is planning to file for an IPO as early as this Fall. The company has hit $100 million in annual revenue, reaches 90 million people a month in the U.S., and is in the process of hiring bankers to lead its offering.

Yelp: Online reviews and daily deals giant Yelp has its sights set on an IPO, but the timeline is unclear. Yelp is now at 50 million unique visitors per month, mostly in the U.S., and has raised $56 million in funding.

Disclosure: My husband is an employee of Groupon.

LinkedIn, which opened at $83 per share in May, has hovered between $60 and $75 per share for the past month, dipping as low as $60 per share. Over the past few days, LinkedIn stock has climbed upwards, closing at $89.94 yesterday. And today, stock reached as high as $94.99 this morning, giving LinkedIn a $9 billion valuation.

Pandora, which opened at $20 per share, has dropped as low was $12.10 per share, and has hovered between $12 and $15. Today, Pandora’s stock rose as high as $21.20, giving Pandora a $3.4 billion valuation.

We’ll see if Pandora and LinkedIn can sustain these stock values beyond today.

For basis of comparison, LinkedIn’s IPO popped by 100 percent on its first day of trading, and has also settled below its opening trade of $83. LinkedIn is currently trading at $72 per share.

Some have said that Pandora’s IPO was priced correctly, as opposed to LinkedIn, which was underpriced and thus witnessed a significant pop in trading. But dropping below the initial pricing amount is probably not a good sign.

For background on Pandora’s road to the IPO, read ‘Pandora Puts The “P” In IPO — Our Talk With Them On The Big Day.’

Three years ago, I got a phone call — Pandora was about to die.

Things were not going well for the Internet radio service at that point. The economy was collapsing, Sequoia would soon give its infamous “RIP, Good Times” presentation, and most importantly for Pandora, it was starting to look like the Copyright Royalty Board (CRB) may not lower their rates. This led founder Tim Westergren to suggest that they may have to shut the service down. And we wrote that sadly, it was looking like Pandora may have to be a “sacrificial lamb“.

That’s what makes today so fascinating — and perhaps the feel-good tech story for this generation of web startups. Pandora IPO’d this morning, listing itself on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol “P”. While the orignal IPO share price had been set at $7 to $9, the company revised that to $10 to $12, and then set it yesterday at $16. The stock opened today north of $20 a share, where it remains. The market cap is now over $3 billion. Again, this was a company that was going to die.

I got the chance to speak with Pandora head of product and CTO Tom Conrad about the big day — as well as the amazing backstory of the company.

“It’s a beautiful day in New York,” Conrad says with a laugh. When I tell him that’s on the record, he laughs again. “It rained yesterday, but not a cloud in the sky today.” He’s in a good mood, obviously. And he should be. He got to take the company that he has poured his life into for the past seven years public today. He says he’s speaking to me from either “deep in the basement or way up up in a tower” at the NYSE.

“It’s a really exciting time for Pandora. We’re growing really fast. And we’re excited about the opportunity for all the new listeners we have,” Conrad kicks things off by saying. I ask him to back up and start at the beginning.

Pandora was founded in 2000, but it wasn’t known as “Pandora” at the time. Instead, the company was focused on their Music Genome Project, which aimed to extract the DNA from music, as it were, and find commonalities to perfect recommendations. When Conrad joined in 2004, the company was known as Savage Beast — yes, a truly awful name that invokes Savage Garden. In fact, here’s an early blog post from Conrad about Savage Beast that he probably won’t be pleased with me sharing.

When Conrad came on board, the company had just taken its first real venture capital investment (from Walden Ventures) and Joe Kennedy had just been hired as CEO. The idea was to transform the Music Genome Project from a cool piece of technology that was licensed out to the likes of Best Buy, and (our parent) AOL, among others, to a consumer-facing product. That effort began in December 2004, with design work leading up to that. By the late summer of 2005, the product was ready to go.

And here’s where things get really interesting.

“TechCrunch is a part of this,” Conrad says. “We launched, and the first Barcamp was the following Saturday. I got out of bed that morning and almost didn’t go. But at the last minute, I threw my laptop in the car and drove to Palo Alto,” he says. “By luck, Mike was in the room.”

He means, of course, Mike Arrington.

“He got up when it was over, went to a Starbucks, I think, and wrote a post about Pandora. That was the starter pistol for our early growth,” Conrad says. And thanks to the magic of the Internet, you too can see that post from August 20, 2005 right here (note the part where Arrington tries to give out invites from his personal email address, then gives up due to massive interest).

Conrad notes that TechCrunch itself was “about 45 days old” at that point. And he fondly remembers Arrington being annoyed with him that the Pandora launch wasn’t given to him as an exclusive. “At that point, he was just some blogger to me,” Conrad says with a laugh.

But that didn’t stop Conrad from showing up at Arrington’s house over the next several months for the BBQs Arrington used to host in his backyard. Conrad recalls that Pandora music streaming from his laptop would often be the musical entertainment for the evening “while we stood around his little campfire”.

From that point on, Pandora “grew at a pace that exceeded my expectations,” Conrad says noting that millions of users were coming on in just the opening years.

But then the CRB decided the royalties for this new form of radio, Internet radio, needed to be set. Conrad notes that after Pandora was live for about a year and a half, those rates were revealed — and they weren’t good. “It was economically unsound,” he says. “And it wasn’t just us that was affected; Yahoo, AOL, Microsoft, and a lot of smaller guys too.” At that point, Pandora entered into a two-year-long process of negotiating with the record labels over royalties that led to the situation described at the beginning of this post. “This was a complicated period for us,” Conrad says.

But there was also a ray of hope that emerged during this time. The App Store.

Conrad notes that when the iPhone OS 3 (remember, it wasn’t “iOS” at the time) launched in the summer of 2008 and brought the third-party-friendly App Store for the first time, everything changed. “Broadly, the smartphone category accelerated everything for us,” he says, noting that the App Store was the catalyst.

“What we’re really trying to do is re-invent radio. It was consumed everywhere, but least of all at work, and the web browser changed that,” Conrad says. “But the mobile devices took it out of the browser and out into the world,” he continues. Now over half of Pandora’s usage comes on smartphone devices, he says. And that’s incredible since Pandora had been on feature phones for about a year prior to the App Store, but it wasn’t going anywhere. With the iPhone, “the consumer expectation of what they could do with their phone changed drastically,” he says.

Conrad also points out that Nielsen had a recent study which put Pandora in the top five apps in terms of usage on major devices — iPhone, iPad, Android, Blackberry. He believes they’re the only company in the top five on each of those devices.

So the App Store helped Pandora’s mood in an otherwise bleak time. “The timelines do overlap in an interesting way,” Conrad says. But at the same time, he says that he was never too concerned for Pandora having to completely shut down. “The [royalty] rates were so irrational that we were very confident through the period that we would come to a compromise with the rights’ holders,” he says. At the same time, he credits the “incredible outpouring of support from our listeners” as the thing that really motivated Congress to start looking into the situation.

“It was frustrating that it went on for so long, but we thought rationality would prevail,” Conrad says. And even after “RIP, Good Times”, hit in late 2008, he wasn’t too worried because “we focused on the monetization of the product from the beginning.” “Other companies were behind the eight ball, but we were starting to see the rewards from that attention to revenue,” he says.

And then in the middle of 2009, the clouds broke. Pandora (and other Internet radio services) reached an agreement that would lower royalties to the point where the business could work. “Pandora is finally on safe ground with a long-term agreement for survivable royalty rates,” Conrad told us at the time.

“A real period of growth started then.” And today, Pandora has over 94 million registered users.

I asked Conrad about the reports leading up to the IPO that while revenues were strong, the company was having trouble in the profits arena due to costs (and royalty costs, in particular) rising as they become more popular. Conrad, who again is the head of product and technology, declined to comment on those specifics. But he did say that, “the growth of our service is really exciting, and we do have the ability to monetize.” “We’re confident,” he concludes, noting that they’re also not too worried about the stock price right now. “At the end of the day, the investors now control where the stock prices goes.”

In terms of Pandora today, Conrad says there are two key areas that excite them right now: cars and comedy.

“47 percent of all radio listening happens in the car,” Conrad says. “That’s been largely off limits to us. But when Pandora is fully mature, a huge percentage of listening will happen in the car,” he continues, pointing to partnerships they already have with GM, Toyota, BWM, and others. “That is a big area of focus for us.”

In terms of comedy, this is a new vertical Pandora has launched that also takes advantage of their Genome project. “Bill Cosby is really excited about it!,” Conrad says almost giddy.

“You’ll certainly see us do more exciting things,” Conrad notes without going into specifics.

As for the “cloud” music services that have burst into the spotlight now that Amazon, Google, and Apple are in the game, Conrad says they should only help Pandora as they help the entire online music movement. “The figure that surprises most folks is that about 80 percent of music consumed each week comes from music radio. Only 20 percent comes from owned music,” he says. “We’re really focused on defining the future of radio. That’s the mainstream opportunity. That’s how we can change the world in a big way,” he says, noting that he includes Spotify and Rdio in that cloud owned music space as well.

As for the IPO itself, Conrad says that he really doesn’t think it will change where the company is right now at all. The plan has been to ramp up hiring for a while, and that will continue. “But geez, I’m the product guy, who knows,” he concludes.

“I’m spending a lot of time today thinking about how many people helped get us here. Designers, engineers, our partners, our listeners, our investors — and now our public market investors. It’s incredible how many talented and devoted people it takes to build a long-term and enduring company. I just feel really lucky to have been a little part of that,” Conrad ends with.

A great story. A comeback story. And we’re happy that Conrad is willing to openly acknowledge the vital role TechCrunch played. I’m kidding — sort of.

Long live “P”.

The company raised $235 million in the IPO, offering approximately 14.7 million shares of common stock. A total of 6 million shares are being offered by Pandora, with selling stockholders offering 8.7 million shares. In addition, Pandora has granted the underwriters a 30-day option to purchase up to approximately an additional 2.2 million shares to cover over-allotments.

Pandora initially filed its S-1 in February, creating a ton of hype about the music company’s IPO. A few weeks ago, the company released its most recent revenue numbers, which reflected an increase in both sales and usage for the internet radio service. But the company, which now has 94 million users, has yet to make a profit.

How Pandora’s stock value will fare in the long term is unclear, given both the company’s financials and the mixed performance of tech company stock in the past few IPOs. LinkedIn shares popped 84 percent on the first trade of its offering to $83 per share, but dropped below this number of late (today’s LNKD shares opening at $76 per share).

Yandex shares opened at $35 per share, but have dropped slightly to $31.60 at market close yesterday. And Fusion-IO shares began trading at $25 per share (up 30 percent from pricing) but have leveled off at $23.00 per share.

As Pandora CEO Joseph Kennedy tells CNBC this morning, “the investors will determine the stock price.”

Photo Credit: @tconrad

That club was once reserved for the big blue-chip industrial companies: Chrysler (C), Ford (F), Sears (S), U.S. Steel (X), and Woolworth (Z). Of that list, only Ford and U.S. Steel remain. Chrysler was acquired by Daimler and lost the C to Citibank. Sears lost the S to Sprint Nextel. Woolworth went out of business.

Of course, there are already several tech companies in the single letter club. Agilent Technologies (A), NetSuite (N), Sprint Nextel (S), and AT&T (T). But none are pure consumer-based Internet companies.

Zillow, the real-estate website, applied for the NASDAQ ticker symbol Z in a filing last month. But, it hasn’t started trading yet. Pandora has beaten them in the race.

In the past, the NYSE has said it was holding M for Microsoft (MSFT) and I for Intel (INTC). M is Macy’s but I is open. There are no signs Microsoft or Intel are planning a change.

There was also talk at one time that Yahoo (YHOO) might take the Y spot, which is now at Alleghany. Go figure. Perhaps because it ends in Y.

What about possible stock symbols for Facebook, Twitter, or Groupon. F is already Ford, T is AT&T, and G is Genpact. In Groupon’s filing, they wrote they expect to apply for the symbol GRPN. Symbols don’t usually change unless there is an acquisition, or the company goes bust, so those companies would need to pick something else.

At one time, stock symbols were printed on the ticker tape and handwritten on transaction slips. So, shorter was faster. Today stock symbols have less importance, but the single letter companies can still say they are part of a very exclusive club.

My grandfather used to try to fool people with a joke saying of the thousands and thousands of companies traded on the stock market, how many have a single letter as a ticker symbol? He always enjoyed when someone not thinking clearly might say 50 or 100. He would proudly tell them there can only be 26. With Pandora getting added tomorrow, there will only be 20.

Pandora’s stock will begin trading tomorrow morning on The New York Stock Exchange under the symbol “P.” The company expects to raise as much as $235 million in the offerring and will offer 6,000,682 shares of its common stock with the selling stockholders offering 8,683,318 shares of common stock in the IPO.

Pandora initially filed its S-1 in February. A few weeks ago, the company released its most recent revenue numbers, which reflected an increase in both sales and usage for the internet radio service.

For example, Pandora is adding a new registered user every second and now has 94 million users. In Pandora’s fiscal year ended January 31, 2011, Pandora streamed 3.8 billion hours of radio listening. In the three months ending April 30, 2011 Pandora posted revenues of $51 million, up from $29.6 million during the same period in 2010.

Pandora follows in the footsteps of Fusion-io, LinkedIn and Yandex, which all increased their pricing significantly prior to going public. And the opening trading price for these companies’ stocks all rose as well. We’ll see where Pandora opens tomorrow.

Update: And here’s their official release on the pricing/offering set for tomorrow:

PANDORA PRICES INITIAL PUBLIC OFFERING

OAKLAND, Calif., June 14, 2011 – Pandora Media, Inc. (NYSE: P), the leader in internet radio in the United States, today announced the pricing of its initial public offering of approximately 14.7 million shares of common stock at a price to the public of $16.00 per share. A total of approximately 6.0 million shares are being offered by Pandora, and a total of approximately 8.7 million shares are being offered by selling stockholders. In addition, Pandora has granted the underwriters a 30-day option to purchase up to approximately an additional 2.2 million shares to cover over-allotments, if any. Pandora will not receive any proceeds from the sale of shares by the selling stockholders.

The bookrunning managers of the offering are Morgan Stanley & Co. LLC and J.P. Morgan Securities LLC. Co-lead manager of the offering is Citigroup Global Markets, Inc. and co-managers are William Blair and Company, L.L.C., Stifel Nicolaus Weisel and Wells Fargo Securities, LLC. Pandora common stock will trade on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol “P.”

According to the filing, Pandora aims to raise as much as $202.6 million in the offerring (up from $141.6 million), and will offer 6,000,682 shares of its common stock with the selling stockholders are offering 8,683,318 shares of common stock in the IPO.

Pandora initially filed its S-1 in February and now has 94 million registered users. A few weeks ago, the company released its most recent revenue numbers, which reflected an increase in both sales and usage for the internet radio service.

For example, Pandora is adding a new registered user every second. In Pandora’s fiscal year ended January 31, 2011, Pandora streamed 3.8 billion hours of radio listening. In the three months ending April 30, 2011 Pandora posted revenues of $51 million, up from $29.6 million during the same period in 2010.

Pandora isn’t the only company to up the price range of its stock prior to its IPO. Fusion-io, LinkedIn and Yandex also increased their range prior to their IPO debuts.

So when they can’t dish, what do they do? Hide.

No one wants to mess with the Securities and Exchange Commission. So I should have realized sooner the reason why so many attendees that I usually talk to at conferences seemed to vanish into thin air during the All Things Digital Conference.

The Greylock partners– four of them were here– were all conspicuously absent the last few days. LinkedIn founder and Greylock partner Reid Hoffman was here….supposedly but I never laid eyes on him. Ditto James Slavet. And John Lilly was around opening night, but I didn’t see him again. I saw David Sze at check in, but he only resurfaced again an hour or so ago looking for a lost phone. It was the first time I’ve ever seen him refuse to stop and chat. Moments later, the Groupon S1 came out and Pandora priced. I don’t know if he ever found his phone, but fortunately he’ll soon be able to buy about zillion replacements.

Andrew Mason was supposed to sit down with us after his fireside chat, then suddenly had to leave immediately. And of course Mark Pincus pulled out of the conference at the last minute altogether, spurring Zynga IPO speculation. This after Hoffman, the Pandora founders and several others politely declined our invitations to speak at New York Disrupt, saying our San Francisco conference was far better timing. (I should note that Marc Andreessen was also nowhere to be seen except on stage last night, but that’s just Andreessen.)

It’s tough days to be a tech reporter trolling the halls for news, when the newsmakers vanish. Nearly all of Groupon’s investors, its press people and its CEO were all in the same hotel with the tech press elite and somehow the story didn’t leak. Score one for the SEC and a big fail for the tech press. I’d resign in shame, if every reporter here didn’t fail just as terribly.

So who was visible in the hallways this week? Two people of note: Twitter CEO Dick Costolo and Facebook CEO Sheryl Sandberg. Indeed both were quite cordial and easy to find, roaming the halls for several days without handlers. In absence of other news coming out of this event, take that tidbit for whatever it’s worth.

According to the filing, Pandora aims to raise as much as $141.6 million in the offerring, and will offer offering 5,000,682 shares of its common stock with the selling stockholders are offering 8,683,318 shares of common stock in the IPO. The pricing of the stock puts Pandora’s valuation at over $1 billion.

Pandora initially filed its S-1 in February and now has 94 million registered users. Last week, the company released its most recent revenue numbers, which reflected an increase in both sales and usage for the internet radio service.

Avid fans of the popular service already know what that means — for the rest of you, Pandora lets users mark the song that’s currently playing with a Thumbs Up or Thumbs Down. The effect is pretty straightforward: hit a thumbs up and Pandora will try to play more music that sounds like the song you’re listening to, thumbs down and Pandora will immediately jump to the next song and send a minor electric shock to CTO Tom Conrad.

In other words, these thumbs are explicit signals that users are sending to Pandora to help fine-tune their radio stations, and it shows that plenty of people actually try to take advantage of the personalization features as opposed to just letting the radio play in the background all day.

In a blog post announcing the news, founder Tim Westergren writes:

Of the many milestones we’ve hit over the past 6 years, this is perhaps the one that makes us most proud. We created Pandora to bring personalization to radio, to allow each individual to determine the sound of their stations, and to make it as simple and intuitive as possible. There is no greater evidence for us of meeting that objective than the ongoing engagement you have all shown in your use of the thumbs.

Guest author Patrick Reynolds is currently an Executive Vice President at Triton Digital and a former ad guy.

I just read that Spotify is coming to the U.S! Oh, wait. That was an article from 2009. I hope they really mean it this time. I love the product. To grease the skids for them a bit, I’ve put together a little travel guide for what they can expect in advertising and media circles when they do arrive.

Lots of love in digital circles.

Being Swedish I’m guessing they’re fantastic dressers and that their accents will make even the Brits envious. American agencies all have European envy, and Spotify is certifiably a big deal abroad. Agency status meetings will be preceded by Absolut and herring in honor of Spotify’s arrival.

The bottom line: where others bat their eyes to catch agency attention, Spotify already has them lined up and swooning. That’s a big advantage.

To be a wishbone.

Traditional radio buyers will claim Spotify is the next-generation in radio. Digital buyers will argue that if it’s consumed via computer or mobile phone, it’s digital. They’ll butt heads like those rams you see on the Discovery Channel or in pickup commercials. My guess is digital departments or shops will usually win if Pandora is any guide. The real cage match will occur over budgets as the victor, now fully kicking sand at the vanquished, will ask for some of the rival’s budget to spend with Spotify. Otherwise well-adjusted people will resort to tactics that would make Lisbeth Salander blanch.

The bottom line: Spotify will further test agency models of who does what, and at what compensation level.

Stiffer competition than imagined.

It’s very interesting how competitors like to categorize one another. Pandora is “not radio” to a lot of radio folks. It’s playlist-based and therefore . . . different. Whatever you call it, to my mind it’s competing for ears and attention. That’s why I maintain that the biggest competitor to “radio” by any definition is the iPod and its ilk. Everyone is competing to be the preferred provider of music and other audio-based content. I honestly don’t think listeners delineate between devices or playlists vs. live content. All that said, Pandora’s been spotted a significant lead.

Slacker is absolutely massive in mobile. Rhapsody scratches a similar itch. And oh yeah, there are also thousands of local terrestrial stations looking to take the piss out of Spotify from the moment they hang their shingle. The difference between European markets and the U.S. cannot be understated.  In the UK , for instance, there are dozens of sizable stations. In Buffalo alone there are dozens. In New York there are hundreds. In the US there are thousands. Spotify will be that moose that stumbled upon thousands of bears just waking from hibernation. Those bears may have hated each other yesterday, but today they all agree that they want to take that moose down, perhaps collaboratively.

The bottom line: the importance of being “local” versus “personal” will be further tested.

To get better.

For all the reasons above, Spotify will evolve and improve if it is to survive over here. This is an elbows-out kind of country. Out of necessity, Swedish civility will eventually give way to good ol’ Yankee bare-knuckled aggression. They’ll advance the conversation about royalties and hopefully bring some clarity to that nightmare. They’ll give some competitors a haircut. Some of the weaker ones may even fold. But Spotify won’t sew it up as some predict. The US is just too big and diverse to be conquered by one insurgent. Incumbents are well funded, determined to maintain what they’ve built, and practiced at doing so.

The bottom line: the game’s changing. And getting more interesting. Technology’s making this a competition on content, not geography. I predict listeners will care a lot less about where you’re from than what you’ve got. Soon we’ll find out who’s got what. Welcome to America. Contrary to popular opinion, not everyone gets a trophy just for showing up.

In Silicon Valley it’s not just who you invest in that matters– it’s also when you invest in them. The earlier the investment, the riskier the bet. But the more jawdropping the returns if the company hits it big. It’s so lopsided, that typically just 5% of those unsure, early bets create some 95% of the entire venture industry’s returns. Miss one of them, and it haunts you for years. Snag it, and you can brag for even longer. This simple reality is precisely what makes the venture business hard, and the justification for why partners make such huge fees.

So what’s up with the surge of the strongest early stage firms jumping so heavily into late stage mega-deal fray? Have the Valley’s superstars lost sight of these rules or are the rules changing?

Earlier this year, we wrote a lot about the shift in power at the early stages with the rise of super angels, but you could argue there are far greater ripple effects to this new late stage frenzy. That’s not only true for the Valley, it’s true for Wall Street. And you could argue, those ripple effects are less well-understood.

Super angels move small chunks of money, hedged across thousands of startups. Worst case, they all go belly up. More likely, the bulk of them barely return capital and a few do really well. Either way, plenty of angels will make bad bets and stop being angels, but the financial damage is otherwise pretty limited. There are plenty of jobs awaiting even the most outrageously failed entrepreneurs.

But the billions of dollars in late stage deals being invested by the top firms in Silicon Valley are another matter. First of all, we’re talking about far bigger chunks of cash, mostly from pension funds and endowments. And these firms are making investments in the handful of sure $1 billion-plus winners that Wall Street and the Valley have spent more than a decade of sub-market returns waiting on to mature. Each deal represents dozens or even hundreds of people cashing out, while others take on a greater risk. And each deal represents another delay in companies like Facebook or Zynga going public.

And quietly there’s plenty of grousing going on about the trend. Some of it is pure player-hating, and some of it raises good points.

For example, the vast majority of VC firms who can’t raise a $1 billion expansion fund cry that these new mega-funds aren’t real venture capital investing, they are firms acting like hedge funds. Some allege they are even abusing their positions as the current darlings of the venture world to make huge trades in well-baked companies without any board obligations, but still get paid like VCs with huge management fees on these mega funds.

Within the elite Sand Hill Road club, VCs snipe about who is still adding value and draw distinctions between a negotiated late-stage deal and a pure secondary stock purchase. And, those who were smart enough to get in early on a giant like Zynga, Twitter or Facebook, chafe when a VC that’s thrown money at a rich secondary valuation now proudly lists those companies as core companies in their portfolios.

And then there are early stage companies hoping to disrupt giants like Zynga and Groupon and wonder if they should take money from a firm who is placing a much bigger bet on the well-funded giant. You could argue a firm staying out of the late-stage fray entirely may have a marketing advantage with them. And, as always, in the press there’s the page-view grabbing panic over whether the multi-billion dollar valuations are a sign of another bubble.

There’s even plenty of moaning about the deals on the east coast: At the Securities & Exchange Commission alarm bells are going off about whether these massive trades are just clever routes to skirt disclosure of a public stock. New York investment banks are furious that these deals allow anticipated IPOs in companies like Facebook to be put off as long as the company wants– robbing them of those lucrative banking fees. If they want a piece of the pie, they’re relegated to selling limited shares under huge restrictions, ala Goldman Sachs, or cozying up to an industry insider like JP Morgan did with Chris Sacca.

It seems the only ones who unabashedly love the trend are the handful of companies who now have free money whenever they want it at seemingly any price, without any of the downsides of going public.

Over the next few weeks, we’re going to do a couple articles digging deeper into this trend, the most important players and what it represents for the startup world and the tech markets at large. First, we wanted to pierce the marketing spin and shine a light on who has done what– and when they did it.

What’s unique about this trend is how huge the amounts of cash and valuations are, yet how small the number of players are. Only a small portion of firms can raise this kind of money and have the right connections to get into the best deals. Likewise as the Valley has become more polarized between huge winners– who raise hundreds of millions of dollars and employ thousands of people– and the small lean startups– who are built to flip– there are only so many deals that can justify these sums of cash and these valuations. But that doesn’t mean companies that probably shouldn’t get funded at these prices won’t. The several-billion-dollar-question worrying many limited partners is how speculative this trend will get.

Below is a graph of arguably the top Valley VCs, which of the big Internet companies they invested in, at what price they invested and whether or not they took a board seat in that round (a sign they’re investing time in the company, not just money). Green boxes denote an investment that’s all but certain to return capital; red boxes show investments that are at or near the last professional negotiated valuations and could still prove too heady. Current company valuations are based on negotiated deals with accredited investors or potential acquisitors, not secondary market speculation. Most of the numbers were from published reports or inside sources. (Click to enlarge.)

While most of these deals and prices had been reported before, a few things jumped out at me once I collected the data in one place. It’s clear the quality of deals is slipping. When DST pioneered this category, the firm was adroitly responding to a gaping market need. These companies needed huge amounts of cash to scale to the unprecedented 1 billion person online market potential, but the IPO market was closed. That’s no longer the case. “Oh, how it’s no longer the case! Please, dear God, call me!” some poor banker is no-doubt lamenting, reading this post.

Today, the best companies of the last ten years have all raised late stage money, and the prices are no longer a bargain. There’s only so fast that pipeline can fill back up. While I could argue $50 billion is a fair market price for Facebook, I find it hard to argue that Twitter is worthy the same or more than cash-generating Groupon or Zynga, given Twitter has gone through three CEOs in its young life, has no clear product visionary, and still isn’t making much revenue. Far more egregious: The idea that Spotify, which hasn’t been able to launch in the US despite more than a year of trying, is valued at the same price as soon-to-be-public Pandora. We’re seeing a clear move away from no-brainer bets towards more late-stage speculation. History has never shown that strategy to produce venture-style returns, said several top limited partners on the condition of anonymity.

But more remarkable is what this chart tells us about the fortunes of Silicon Valley’s top venture firms. For all the headlines that late stage is simply something “everyone is doing,” this chart shows a dramatically different story. Behind these red and green boxes lurks the same kind entrepreneurial drama that usually goes on in the companies VCs back. While dozens of venture firms are quietly going out of business for the first time in more than a decade, this chart represents the haves. And yet, there’s still plenty of drama as they grapple for position in this new venture reality.

This chart shows dramatic comebacks. In the wake of the dot com crash, limited partners privately told me that Accel Partners was one of two major firms that would never raise a fund again. When I mentioned this to Jim Breyer in 2006, he didn’t deny it. But he almost single handedly pulled the firm back from the brink. Accel missed Twitter and Zynga and others, but who cares? If you do the math, Accel is all but certain to have the best returns of the lot based on that $100 million bet on Facebook alone that seemed crazy at the time. The price the firm payed for Groupon is the icing on a massive Web 2.0 cake.

Similarly, Greylock had virtually no presence on the West Coast and no brand in consumer Internet. An early investment in LinkedIn and comparatively early investment in Facebook catapulted the firm into being one of the top names. And aside from Groupon, Greylock’s late stage bets haven’t been as valuation-aggressive as those done by other firms. If Pandora’s IPO prices where analysts expect, that $150 million valuation will look like a bargain.

On the other side of the chart– literally and figuratively– are Kleiner Perkins and Andreessen Horowitz, the two most aggressive at the late stage game, but utterly different stories are behind the common strategy. Andreessen Horowitz was formed after most of these companies, so getting in early stage rounds was impossible. But that doesn’t mean the firm’s partners were late to the Web 2.0 movement. The graph doesn’t include Marc Andreessen’s personal angel investments in Twitter and LinkedIn, nor does it include his position as one of Facebook’s few board members, because it happened well before he invested. For Andreessen Horowitz, the emphasis on late stage deals doesn’t represent any sort of shift. The firm was founded explicitly to invest in the best companies whenever the partners could get in. This was clearly telegraphed by the firm’s first deal: A beyond-late-stage investment in the already-acquired Skype.

Kleiner Perkins has been a different story. This is a firm that largely missed the early days of the Web 2.0 movement and has jumped back into it aggressively in the last year. The centerpiece of the strategy was a relatively early investment in Zynga. To be fair, this chart doesn’t show the early stage bets they’ve also been making in companies like Shopkick, Path and Klout. The success Kleiner has had reclaiming Web relevancy has been a testament to the lasting power of brand in the startup world. Few firms could have pulled it off. But plenty of people have questioned the prices they’ve paid to get back in the game– especially at the later stages. In both the cases of Andreessen Horowitz and Kleiner Perkins there’s plenty of industry eye-rolling when the firms rattle off investments in these very late stage deals as sample portfolio deals. Give them credit for getting shares in these scorchingly hot companies even at these prices, but its important for entrepreneurs and the press to realize when they invested.

That leads us to Sequoia and Benchmark– the two firms that are the most absent when it comes to these companies. Not reflected in this chart are Benchmark general partner Matt Cohler’s personal stakes as one of the earliest employees of LinkedIn and Facebook. Indeed, while Benchmark has resisted buying Facebook shares, Cohler has funded some of the most exciting companies to spin out of the Facebook mafia including Asana and Quora. The real surprise is Sequoia — a firm that was known in the 1990s for flawlessly picking nearly every consumer Web giant. While this chart doesn’t count the stellar return from YouTube or promising recent investments like Square, LinkedIn is the only sure-winner it has a large stake in.

I wanted to keep this graphic focused on the top traditional Valley firms, but there are two obvious omissions. One is DST, which started this trend with its aggressive investments in Facebook that now seem boringly reasonable by comparison to recent deals. We’ll have more on DST’s impact in a future post. In nearly 15 years reporting in Silicon Valley, I can’t think of another outsider who has so dramatically beat the Sand Hill Road establishment at its own game– not to mention redefining that game for them. No easy feat in a Valley awash in too much cash to begin with.

The other omission is a Valley outsider too: Union Square Ventures, the earliest investor in Zynga and Twitter. There are no signs of Union Square getting into the $1 billion fund game although it has raised a later stage fund called The Opportunity Fund. But at just $165 million, it’s not nearly as large or aggressive. It’s mandate is selectively investing in companies with a valuation north of $100 million– that’s still pretty early compared to what’s going on in the Valley these days. And Opportunity Fund usually invests in companies already in Union Square’s portfolio, says general partner Fred Wilson. In terms of returns, we hear that Union Square has sold enough of its Zynga and Twitter stakes to repay both funds and still leave it with plenty of upside. In terms of bragging rights, Union Square has bested these Valley insiders at the early stage game with at least two of our billion-dollar winners.

In case you missed it, being a super angel is officially passe. The new hotness is having a late-stage growth cash. Sequoia Capital is doing it. Andreessen Horowitz is doing it. Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers is doing it. Accel is doing it. Hell, even Chris Sacca is somehow doing it.

Greylock is the latest to officially join the club, with news today of an expansion to its current fund, bringing the total to $1 billion– almost double its original $575 million size. The firm will be able to invest up to $200 million per deal.

But other than having more cash on hand, not much else at Greylock is changing. The firm has been doing growth deals already, most notably Pandora, which has filed to go public and the recent Groupon mega-deal.

I talked to Greylock’s David Sze for more than an hour about the news yesterday and at least half of that was an argument over whether or not his 2006 investment in Facebook counts. He argues at a near-insane $500 million valuation it was a huge departure for the firm, and made him the laughing stock of Sand Hill Road…until it proved to be one of the savvier bets of the early Web 2.0 era.

That investment in Facebook was certainly a landmark deal for Greylock, cementing its West Coast comeback and landmark deal for the Valley, giving everyone explicit permission to pay outrageous valuations just to get a piece of a hot company. You still hear it referenced in conversations over how someone could justify a given price.

But calling it a late stage deal doesn’t give Sze enough credit for what was really a gutsy venture deal. It wasn’t just a nosebleed valuation that made Facebook a risk back then– the company itself was far from a sure thing. Facebook hadn’t opened beyond colleges and high schools, the newsfeed hadn’t launched and this was even before the lucrative several-hundred-million dollar Microsoft ad deal. Indeed, MySpace was still the social networking company to beat.

That deal was still a venture investment. The recent mega secondary buy of Facebook shares by Elevation, Kleiner Perkins, Andreessen Horowitz and others are closer to trades. It’s no longer a matter if Facebook makes it; it’s not even a matter of whether Facebook will be the biggest company of this era. It’s an issue of how much you have to pay for shares, and how much room there is for a pop at the eventual IPO. These trades still take connections, since the companies are still private and most of them have the right of first refusal on who can buy their shares. But let’s not kid ourselves that these investors are rolling up their sleeves and helping Facebook build its business the way Jim Breyer and Peter Thiel did.

And that’s what’s raising concerns about these mega-growth funds: That VCs aren’t acting like venture investors who help build companies, they’re acting more like hedge funds. There is also historic precedent to be concerned about a rush to seemingly certain late stage payouts: Most firms fled towards these deals in the late 1990s when IPOs were all but certain and many funds were washed out when the market corrected. Industry-wide, firms took a hard stance of returning to that they knew post-2000: Early stage investing. To see funds creep up from $350 million towards $1 billion after so many people said the bubble proved venture capital doesn’t scale should give the industry pause.

My concern: How many of these great late stage deals are possibly left? These $1 billion+ price tags are going to get a lot more risky as this trend continues and deal quality inevitably slips. There’s only one Facebook, and the economics of Zynga and Groupon make them unique mega-bets too. Twitter is nowhere near as certain of a bet, with three CEOs tagging in already in its young life, nowhere near the revenues of those other giants, not a lot of product innovation of late and an increasingly annoying almost MySpace-like spam problem. As a product, Twitter is one of the seminal Web properties ever to be developed. But the other three Web giants are valued in the double digit billions, because of their product and the businesses they’re building. I’m not saying it’s a bad deal, but it represents a shift in the risk late stage investors are taking.

But Twitter at $10 billion looks like a sure thing compared to the latest investment made by DST– the firm who really started this whole wave with its initial Facebook deal in 2009. DST is rumored to be investing as much as $100 million in Spotify at a $1 billion valuation. Spotify: A company in the most volatile sector of the Web who has tried and failed for more than a year to enter the US market. If Twitter is a company being valued on people’s widespread love of its product, Spotify is a company being valued on the promise that people outside of Western Europe will love its product, should it ever be launched to the wide-world. What’s next a $500 million valuation for Instagram?

But while there may be legitimate reasons for concern, the truth is growth-stage frenzy has little in common with 1999. For one thing, what’s driving the demand for these mega-deals is completely different than the dot-com bubble because there are still few IPOs. Indeed, companies like Facebook, Twitter and Zynga are raising all this money precisely because they don’t want to go public yet. Nothing could be less 1999 than that. It also limits the collateral damage on the economy should deal quality dramatically slip because the risk is mostly staying amid insiders, not being passed on to everyday investors hoping for a winning lottery ticket.

Perhaps the most important distinction is that back in the late 1990s, anyone with a venture capital shingle could raise $1 billion, and that’s hardly the case now. Limited partners are clamping down on VCs hard– a correction from the bubble that’s only hitting the slow-moving venture industry now. Today, only the top ten firms can raise this kind of cash– and I’m being generous by saying ten. Sacca’s fund will likely be the exception of an individual-run mega-fund, based on a shrewd positioning of his close relationship with Twitter, not a new trend of angels pivoting into $1 billion fund traders.

Greylock’s approach wisely takes the potential for a decline in the quality of new deals into account. This isn’t a dedicated growth fund, like those raised by Sequoia Capital, Kleiner Perkins and Accel. It’s just the latest vintage to be invested from seed stage deals to Groupon-like mega deals. And Greylock isn’t hiring a specific late stage staff, rather the late-stage activities will be run by Sze, like the Discovery seed fund is run by Reid Hoffman. Any partner can do a seed deal, and any partner can do a late stage deal. Greylock’s thesis is that late stage companies need constant innovation too, and face a lot of the similar challenges of early stage ventures. While the biggest challenge of a seed-stage company these days is recruiting talent, the biggest challenge for large companies is retaining it.

There’s another important distinction: Greylock’s economics are budget-based, not fee-based. Typically VCs charge 2%-3% of a fund to cover office expenses, but instead, Greylock gives LPs a budget for what it needs to run the office. That allows them to sidestep the biggest ethical gripe some people have about these mega-funds: That they’re a clever way for VCs to put large amounts of money to work that don’t require board seats, and more than double their management fees.

The shrewdest pivot to date may be Yuri Milner’s move to early stage with his open offer to fund all Y Combinator grads for generous terms. Because while Millner may have single handedly disrupted the pre-IPO landscape, he’s going to have a hard time getting what good deals are left with almost all of the top VCs now in the late-stage secondary hunt.