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In the latest example of VC chatter - wherein multiple venture capitalists simultaneously blog about a hot issue - the topic du jour is the debate between convertible debt and equity rounds. The spark came from a Friday night tweet by Y Combinator founder Paul Graham (yes, he finally joined Twitter) that declared convertible notes victorious since each of this summer's YC class opted for them. This morning, several VCs have weighed in on the issue, so here's what entrepreneurs and early-stage startups need to know about the debate.

If you asked startup founders whether they would rather give away 5% equity in the company or one of their toes, many would choose the toe. CEOs like Zynga's Mark Pincus have always argued for startup founders to "own their destiny" and maintain control and ownership of their company. That's why it was surprising to read VC Deal Lawyer Chris McDemus' recent article entitled If You Provide a Strategic Technology or Outsourced Service, Consider Taking Some Equity in Your Fee Structure.

Will 2009 be the big year for corporate transparency, for a global conversation - perhaps for bargain basement online marketing tactics instead of old-school huge commercial campaigns?

Peter Kim, a former Forrester analyst now working on stealth enterprise software company, recently polled 14 of the most high-profile thinkers about social media marketing and asked them what they expected to see 2009 bring. The end product was an attractive 23 page PDF that we've embedded below, but we thought we'd pull out some of the thoughts we found most interesting for all you skimmers out there.