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Banking giant Goldman Sachs has invested $500 million in Facebook, buying shares at a price that puts the value of the entire company at $50 billion. If all shares in the company were priced equally (they are not) then we could assume that Goldman, and co-investor Russian giant DST, bought 1% of Facebook. What's most important isn't the amount of literal control over the company that the banks bought, rather it's the valuation this gives the company and the relationship the investment fosters between Goldman and Facebook.

ReadWriteWeb readers, probably more concerned with technology and innovation implications than the business end of this deal, may benefit from a summary of the flurry of news coverage that began last night with the scoop by Andrew Ross Sorkin and Evelyn M. Rusli at The New York Times.

First it was the heated angels vs. venture capitalists debate, and then the infamous "angelgate" Bin 38 meeting. These and other happenings are still the talk of the startup investment scene, and at the epicenter - a notorious gang of in-betweeners known as "super angels."

Whether you agree with this nomenclature or prefer to call them "micro VCs," as an entrepreneur or young startup, it's important to understand these key players in the investment market. ChubbyBrain, a group of "data geeks" focused on helping entrepreneurs, has put together a handy list breaking down everything you need to know about the super angels.

The National Venture Capital Association (NVCA) announced Tuesday that it delivered letters signed by over 1,700 members of the entrepreneurial community to each U.S. Senator in hopes of raising awareness of potentially harmful legislation. The Senate is considering financial reforms that could eliminate capital gains tax incentives for venture capital carried interest, which the NVCA says could lead to a severe decline in VC investments.

A new study published by professors at the Harvard Business School shows that angel-backed companies are more likely to succeed and show more growth than those funded by venture firms alone. Researched and written by William Kerr and Josh Lerner, the report found that companies with angel funding see between 30% and 50% higher growth figures in terms of website traffic, are more likely to survive for four years, and are also in a better position to receive further rounds of funding.

Index Ventures, one of Europe's largest and most prominent venture capital firms, has announced the creation of Index Seed, a program with which it plans to invest more heavily in seed-stage startups throughout Europe, Israel and the Unites States. The formation of such a fund is just what the doctor ordered for young companies in Europe, as they have been largely underfunded in recent years.

Earlier this week, we reported on the fact that the first quarter of the year saw venture capitalist investments drop from the end of last year, but start at a higher rate than the beginning of 2009. In the article we mentioned the boom and bust cycle that is found in economics, which in America has been marked by the dot-com bust at the turn of the century, and the financial crisis of recent times. These two downturns are part of a cycle of ups and downs seen throughout history, but could they be getting shorter and more frequent?

Throughout the economic downtown of the last few years, which is only now slowly beginning to turn around, there have been few industries that continued to create jobs and support the economy. We've mentioned before (as many others have) how the government should be doing its best to foster more entrepreneurship, one of the few areas continuing to create jobs, and Wednesday the National Venture Capital Association and StartUpHire.com job board released data supporting these suggestions.

It was announced Tuesday that email management startup SendGrid had raised $5 million in Series A financing from a handful of prominent investors, including Foundry Group, Highway 12 Ventures, Dave McClure, David Cohen and Wordpress founder Matt Mullenweg. SendGrid, a graduate of last year's summer TechStars program, launched last fall and raised some seed funding from many of the same investors on its way to sending nearly 1.2 billion emails for its over 4,000 clients.

When looking to start a potentially venture-backed company, it's important to check the numbers to see if VCs are more or less likely to invest their funds. Back in January, we proposed that venture capitalist investments could see a bump in early 2010 thanks to increased fund raising at the end of last year. New data from the National Venture Capital Association, however, shows that in the first quarter of this year, VC investment has been modest at best, dropping slightly from the previous quarter, but starting stronger than 2009.

Looking for that next booming trend in the tech industry? Perhaps you need to look no further than music, as a report from the site Indie Music Tech shows that this year's first quarter music tech investments nearly doubled from the previous two years. Author Duncan Freeman estimates 25 deals in Q1 2010, far surpassing the 27 total investments in the opening months of 2008 and 2009, but averaging a slightly lower deal size at $4.4 million per investment.