Speaking of VCs who blog: Meet Bill Burnham

We’ve been wondering why Bill Burnham, a former VC with Mobius Venture Capital, has been blogging so hard. Turns out, he’s busy raising an early-stage venture fund called Celsius Capital, which he mentions on his own site. VentureWire adds today (sub req) that he’s setting a target of $150 million.

[UPDATE: Just saw that Private Equity Week, sub req, ran a fuller story last week. Also, note that Burnham responds with a comment to this post below.]

In his own words, Burnham says the firm will be harnessing “innovation arbitrage” opportunities in the software and information services sectors across China and the U.S. So, yet another new firm starting in the valley — despite earlier predictions of consolidation.

He’s been churning out some good reads lately. The latest is a stab at Friendster, where he argues the early social networking company has missed the point. Social networking is analogous to the Internet; It is a tool, but you need more than that to make a business. MySpace works, he argues, because it has used music and other things to build a real community around. And his top-ten 2005 software trends are worth a look too. We haven’t caught up with him recently, but we’ll be asking him how much his blog has helped to build up relationships with entrepreneurs. This could be the way of the future, especially for young, early-stage venture funds.