For the record: Disney (DIS) says it always intended to move the company, which offers “bite-sized ideas for green living” via email and a Web site, from its corporate strategy group to its interactive division, which will happen later this year. At that point, “it will still continue in some form,” says spokesman Michelle Bergman.

That doesn’t sound good. Disney says it plans to conduct a review of the unit, so it’s not ready to answer some basic questions about the email newsletter company. Like: Are co-founders Heather Stephenson (who lives and works in San Francisco) and Jennifer Boulden (who until this summer lived and worked in Bozeman, Mont.; she’s now in Los Angeles, I’m told) staying on? Will Disney have to take a write-down on the property? Will there be layoffs? “It’s too early to say. I can’t tell you,” Bergman says.

Okay. But If I had to bet, I’d say at least some of the dozen-plus employees will be hitting the job market.

Disney paid a reported $20 million for the property a year and a half ago, and the plan was to create a big green-centered business around it, but that hasn’t panned out, sources said. The company, founded in 2005, is one of the many lifestyle newsletter businesses backed by Bob Pittman’s Pilot Group.

Comcast (CMCSA) bought DailyCandy, the best known of Pittman’s stable, for $125 million a little more than a year ago. That was surely one of the last “pre-Lehman” Web 2.0 M&A deals, but grunts and murmurs out of Philadelphia and Pilot indicate the business has held up during the recession. And Thrillist, a “DailyCandy for dudes” effort that has yet to sell, seems to be booming.

It’s part of Gartner’s annual “Hype Cycle for Emerging Technologies” report, which is basically a fancy version of one of those “What’s Hot in 2009″ issues that magazines like Entertainment Weekly put out (EW is still around, right?).  Gartner has been pumping these out since 2005, and if nothing else, they’re fun to look at. Click the chart to enlarge:

The gist, as I understand it, is pretty straightforward: The promise of new technology moves much faster than the technology itself, which means that expectations get inflated, then deflated, before the technology eventually becomes mainstream (if it ever does). Can’t tell you what methodology Gartner uses to assemble the chart, but I have a hunch that you could figure out the top of the expectations peak with a simple Google (GOOG) search.

Of course, even though the chart looks cool, there’s more art than science here. As Reuters points out, Gartner’s 2006 report told us that Web 2.0 would would go mainstream by 2008. Today, Gartner tells us that Web 2.0 is still another two-to-five years away from breaking big. Meanwhile, be advised that we still have more than a decade before “human augmentation” plays in Peoria.

And I’m still not sure what it is, exactly, that you’re supposed to do with this knowledge. Should Amazon (AMZN) be psyched or worried that e-book readers have reached the top of the hype cycle? If the tablet computer is already climbing up the “Slope of Enlightenment,” does that mean Apple’s (AAPL) presumed-to-be iWant is already late to the party?

But who cares? I love the terminology. I always imagine that the “Trough of Disillusionment” can be found somewhere near the horse latitudes, or perhaps the Fortress of Solitude.

Sheinbaum, who started working for the company as a consultant in 2000 and took the top job in 2005, says he doesn’t have a new job lined up yet, though I’m told he has options. “I let them know after nine years it was time to look for the next thing,” he says via email.

I’m told that Comcast (CMCSA) is still pleased with the acquisition, which may have been the last Web 2.0 deal to close before last fall’s crash.

Here’s word from Comcast: “We wish Pete well, thank him for his work in growing Daily Candy. Catherine Levene, Chief Operating Officer and [founder] Dany Levy will continue to lead operations. For Comcast Interactive Media, IM, Daily Candy is overseen by Chuck Davis who is EVP at CIM and also runs Fandango. The transition under CIM has gone well and the company continues to grow–DC has added DailyCandy Video and DailyCandy Weddings.”

Here’s an interview with Sam Schwartz, the Comcast executive who engineered that deal and who says he’s still interested in other Web M&A:

In that spirit, here’s a walk down memory lane for anyone who worked in tech, media or public relations during that era: a list of Web 1.0 buzzwords–and real-world translations–circa January 2002.

It comes via Buzzkiller, a side project that a group of my former co-workers at Forbes put together; this chart in particular was something they assembled for Inside.com, a Web 1.0 era publication that didn’t survive the crash. But many of the buzzwords listed here did–remember when “ping” was something you rarely heard used as  a verb?

Here’s an excerpt (click to enlarge):

Sadly, Buzzkiller itself hasn’t really survived, at least in its gloriously snarky former incarnation, which can you still see here. But maybe some unemployed or underemployed folks can pick up the torch.

[Image Credit: Library Of Congress via Flickr]

Instead, the New York-based company has just raised a $4.5 million Series B round that its CEO, 22-year-old David Karp, says will fund it for two and a half years. Union Square Ventures and Spark Capital, which led the company’s first $750,000 round a year ago, also led this financing. My educated guess is that its investors now value Tumblr at around $15 million.

Tumblr is a “microblog” platform that is supposed to let its users quickly create nice-looking posts with a minimum of effort; it sits somewhere between Twitter and full-fledged blogs like Blogger and TypePad. It is popular with a relatively small but prolific user base: Its 500,000 users have created pages that draw 15 million unique visitors and 61 million page views a month, Karp says.

Money? Nope. Tumblr is free–and has no ads cluttering up its hipster vibe.

Way back in 2007, those kinds of numbers would have been catnip for the likes of Google (GOOG) or Yahoo (YHOO). Now, though, even deep-pocketed buyers aren’t racing to snap up revenue-free start-ups. But Karp says raising money from his previous investors was easy: “These guys came to us with a deal that made us incredibly comfortable.”

Karp says he’s going to start generating money in early 2009. Not by selling ads on his members pages–Karp thinks the site will eventually incorporate ads in some way, but not yet–but by selling users “premium” services, most of which he’s not ready to describe. He does promise they will be “really sexy.”

More practically, Karp points out that other Web services, like the WordPress blogging platform and Yahoo’s Flickr photo service, have been able to upsell many of their users with goodies like extra storage. He figures many of his users will pay up, too.

The new money means he’ll have time to prove his thesis. Karp has just doubled his staff–which means there are now all of six people on payroll. One of them, hired in September, is John Maloney, Karp’s former boss at Urban Baby, where he started his Web career. Maloney is now in charge of business operations.

The money also means there are heightened expectations. Karp has done much more than people twice his age (and has the press clips to prove it). But the newest funding round means his investors think the company will be worth as much as $50 million by the time he sells it or raises more cash. In order to prove them right, he’s got a lot of work ahead of him.

[Image Credit: David's Log]