All Things Digital

“Is that all there is, is that all there is.
If that’s all there is my friends, then let’s keep dancing.
Let’s break out the booze and have a ball,
If that’s all there is.”

Peggy Lee sang it best about troubled times in the classic song “Is That All There Is?”

But, dancing and making a video about dancing is obviously something that elevates Yahoo (YHOO), which is no small thing in this tough period for the iconic Internet company.

In the video below, Yahoo’s Yodel Anecdotal Blog Editor Nicki Dugan (whom BoomTown is immediately offering a job as AllThingsD.com video chief) takes the well-known dancing-fool Internet celeb Matt Harding of the Where the Hell Is Matt? Web site and places him all over Yahoo for 33 dancing sessions.

The video was recently shown at the company’s all-hands meeting, and it is simply delightful to see Yahoos looking happy simply by tripping the light fantastic.

I think activist shareholder Carl Icahn should make Harding one of his picks for the Yahoo board. (Icahn was officially appointed to the board yesterday, and his two board picks will be revealed Aug. 15.)

Highlights of the video of Harding dancing at Yahoo include Co-Founder David Filo’s infamous mess of a cube, a video conference jig with the team in Burbank, doing a sitting-down boogie with President Sue Decker, having a tango with Yahoo’s Purple Cow and a hip-shaking visit to “Frenemy Territory” at Google.

Best of all, of course, is a do-si-do with Yahoo Co-Founder and CEO Jerry Yang, who seems to be channeling an odd combination of Tony Manero in “Saturday Night Fever” and Barney the purple–how perfect!–dinosaur in his dance stylings. (Enter a caption contest here related to the picture above.)

Happily, this is the kind of dancing it is enjoyable to see Yang doing, because the two-stepping, shuffling and tap-dancing he is going to have to do to stay in power–after the much less sanguine shareholder vote this past week–is going to be much less fun to watch.

Here’s the video from Yahoo (all credit to Dugan and Yahoo) and the wonderful “Dancing 2008″ video that Harding did all over the world (I dare you not to smile):

While looking for news, any news, at Yahoo’s annual meeting in San Jose this morning, who should tap BoomTown on the shoulder but a blast-from-the-past Yahoo, former CEO Tim Koogle.

Koogle still has about 10 shares of the stock apparently, and I am not entirely clear why he is here, though I will surely find out what’s what.

But Koogle looks fabulous.

Also in attendance, besides various members of the Yahoo (YHOO) board and, of course, CEO Jerry Yang (he also looks fabulous, but rejected my effort to put Yahoo crisis PR dandy Adam Miller’s silk pocket square in his blue blazer for a little panache).

Also: Yahoo’s other Co-Founder, David Filo, President Sue Decker and 3,367 PR staffers (presumably here to make sure the press does not rush the stage in order to make some news).

Like the zombies in “Night of the Living Dead” who will not die, the notion of a big, sloppy deal for Microsoft to buy Yahoo is revived yet again in an article in The Wall Street Journal today.

Unfortunately for both Yahoo (YHOO) and Microsoft (MSFT), it mostly serves to point out once again just how messy and pathetic the proceedings have been and continue to be.

But, as to the central idea, that Microsoft is aching to do a multi-part deal with various partners that would render Yahoo asunder, BoomTown is altogether dubious that this will ever come to pass.

Nonetheless, the very idea of something, anything happening served its main purpose–to buck up Yahoo’s sinking stock, which got a nice pop from the article, after falling below $20 a share on yesterday. (It is now back at $21.55!)

I have argued many times that Microsoft should just make an offer for Yahoo whole, because it has few other such powerful options in its quest to compete with Google (GOOG) in the search space, even given the checkered history and bruised feelings evidenced in the piece in the Journal.

Still, as was posted here earlier this week, Microsoft is considering sweetening a search-ad proposal, including buying a big chunk of Yahoo and improving terms, and News Corp. (NWS), Time Warner’s (TWX) AOL and even Comcast (CMCSA) might enter the picture.

But the idea of engineering a giant Internet group hug among and between these players is a daunting task.

In fact, that plan is an oldie (but maybe not such a goodie)–for Microsoft to buy the search and search-ad assets of Yahoo and for the rest to be spun off into some sort of online content/software/social-networking company and mashed up with assets from either News Corp.’s MySpace or Time Warner’s AOL.

That second company, in a previous scheme, was called “TrafficCo,” which News Corp. head Rupert Murdoch acknowledged in an interview Walt Mossberg and I did with him at the sixth D: All Things Digital in late May. (Murdoch actually says it outright in this video of the interview.)

Clearly, such a deal would be good for News Corp. (owner of this site) and Time Warner, as they try to figure out how to maximize their Internet assets.

And linking them with Yahoo–still, despite all, one of the most significant sites on the Web–might be just the ticket.

But getting there is the real problem, with a very inept board of Yahoo floundering about and with Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer in a bit of a pique over the situation.

Yahoo’s regulatory filing related to its upcoming proxy fight with billionaire investor Carl Icahn, for example, in which the company slapped Microsoft’s behavior in the takeover battle and called it “unresponsive and inconsistent,” really irked the folks at Microsoft’s Redmond, Wash., HQ.

In fact, the level of dysfunction and crossed signals in the Yahoo-Microsoft relationship, as depicted once again in the article, should give anyone pause.

Case in point, as I noted here: That Yahoo thought it was a good thing to send Yahoo Co-Founder David Filo–think Silent Bob and then think even more silent and of someone very unlikely to support a sale–with Co-Founder and CEO Jerry Yang to the key meeting with Microsoft to negotiate over a possible takeover pretty much encapsulates it all for me.

And then, with Yang offering to sell for $37 a share–while also adding he and Filo wanted $38–even though Microsoft had never gotten past $33, the situation actually worsened, if possible.

That meeting was immediately–within hours–followed by a complete Microsoft pullout.

But, like someone who cannot seem to stop falling down an endless series of stairs, there were even more comical meetings after that, with Yang, Ballmer, as well as Yahoo Chairman Roy Bostock and board member Ron Burkle, in which Yahoo essentially prostrated itself and was rejected again.

And yet hope–which I might call something else–lives on.

The last sentences of the Journal piece are particularly interesting in this regard:

“They believed that we needed them much more than they needed us,” one person close to Microsoft says. “Ultimately, we called their bluff.”

If that’s the case, people close to Yahoo say, they wonder why Microsoft continues to knock on their door.

Memo to Yahoo: Actually, it’s called Ding-Dong Ditch.

Several major investors in Yahoo–who have been, how shall BoomTown put this delicately, freaked out by the sudden departure of Microsoft from the deal two weeks ago–have blamed the passive-aggressive style of Yahoo, and especially Yahoo CEO and Co-Founder Jerry Yang, on the collapse of those talks as a big problem.

They were also plenty irked that Yahoo then said big investors were with them on turning down the $33 price in its takeover bid.

But this time, according to several investors, Yahoo is making sure things go a little better, especially given the increasing anger on the part of its shareholders and the recent proxy attack from billionaire investor Carl Icahn.

Thus, Yahoo’s Chairman Roy Bostock himself has assured major investors that there are now others in the room–such as Yahoo’s independent directors, who are being called “adult supervision”–to make sure Yahoo’s (YHOO) latest revived talks with Microsoft (MSFT) go more smoothly.

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Off with the Yahoo CEO’s head!

OK, maybe not so much, at least today.

Indeed, according to many sources, Jerry Yang’s head still sits squarely on his neck.

And, moreover, his job as CEO has not been usurped by Yahoo (YHOO) Chairman Roy Bostock, who was allegedly–as one rumor went–authorized by Yahoo’s board, instead of Yang, to restart negotiations with Microsoft (MSFT).

(Which is kind of obvious when you actually think about it, given that Bostock is mired in this takeover collapse mess up to his own at-risk neck along with Yang. Bostock has been deeply involved all along and will likely continue to be.)

Thus, lots of smoke and little fire, contrary to rumor-based reports, like this one from TechCrunch–most of which seem to hang on the thinnest of threads (Where in the world is Yahoo board member Eric Hippeau?).

More importantly, even though they move share price, these rumors show almost no knowledge of how public company boards actually operate, which is to say with slug-like speed, even when under fire as Yahoo clearly is.

And if Yang were to go, I would guess it would be under his own steam or he’d be run out with Yahoo’s directors on a rail by angry shareholders.

Still, as a post yesterday of BoomTown’s book excerpt on the AOL Time Warner (TWX) debacle illustrates, even shoving aside a much-pilloried exec like former Chairman Steve Case, who presided over the merger disaster of all time, it took months and months and months and months and finally came well after the wheels fell off the bus there in a move made by Case and not his detractors.

And such a move to denude Yang, in the midst of the most trying time for the company, would make Yahoo’s board seem like particularly thickheaded morons–backing Yang strongly one day and throwing him overboard the next.

That is not to say Yang has not lost a mountain of credibility with Wall Street, investors, his own employees and in the industry in general, over the way he has handled the situation with Microsoft. The fallout from the debacle has damaged him badly.

The reviews are in and it is pretty much one million angry thumbs down.

Unfortunately, Yahoo’s leadership team has not exactly distinguished itself in the aftermath with their public statements, whether it be Bostock’s fanciful musings that Yahoo had the support of shareholders or President Sue Decker’s ungracious dissing of disgruntled Yahoo employees or pretty much the bulk of the backpedaling Yang has done.

And I don’t even know what to say about the excuse about the $33 offer not being written down as a problem by Yahoo execs, which makes them all move a little closer to Nearly Headless Nick in “Harry Potter,” in my estimation.

I do get their fervent need to explain themselves, especially in the face of such ferocious criticism.

But it has been so cringe-inducing to watch, that part of me wishes they would slink back into that cave Yang and his team have been living in all year long.

Obviously, Yang cannot and must now take the heat and find a way to clearly articulate a really good vision of what lies ahead for Yahoo.

That does not mean dangling the possibility of another deal with Microsoft to placate critics or pretending Yahoo wanted such a merger.

The very fact that Yang brought the painfully terse Yahoo Co-Founder and tech guru David Filo–who has fervently opposed a lot of Yahoo hookups in the past, like with eBay (EBAY) many years ago–with him to the key meeting last weekend with Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer was all I needed to know to determine that the company did not want to sell.

So, Yang and the board got what they wanted–for now, at least–which is a very painful dose of independence.

If they want that to mean going back to talk with Microsoft, Yahoo should stop playing games and do so with a minimal amount of jockeying.

If it means making a series of bold moves to focus and define its business, then Yahoo should do that and quickly.

And if Yang can’t lead or is still lonely–he said last year of the CEO job, “It is a lonely job in the sense that you have to make some of the tough calls”–he needs to step aside for a new leader of Yahoo.

Because, even if Yang lives to fight another day, this much is clear: The clock is running down for him and his stewardship of Yahoo.

Yang is, as Dean Vernon Wormer of “Animal House” said so eloquently, on double secret probation.

So, if I were to predict, I would say six months without meaningful change is all he has.

And after that, I would imagine, is when the blade really starts really falling.

After today’s events, I guess you could say Yahoo (YHOO) and Microsoft (MSFT) tried, holding a series of meetings about a possible takeover that ended up proving exactly how incompatible the companies were.

Kind of like Oscar Madison and Felix Unger, but not funny in any way at all.

Consider a series of meetings, according to sources close to both companies, that took place over the last several weeks, which finally came after Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer lobbed the Saturday stink-bomb letter to Yahoo in early April, saying he planned to go hostile.

That apparently prompted some movement out of Yahoo, which had been trying to avoid any kind of substantive discussions with Microsoft until then and had been spending its time looking for all sorts of semi-wacky alternatives.

Thus, according to sources close to Microsoft, a meeting on April 15 in Portland, Ore. (a state in which BoomTown said meetings were likely to take place last week).

At that meeting, Yahoo execs laid out the same case they had been doing for investors, a road-show presentation of the company’s growth plans to underscore its case for a higher valuation.

At the same time, Yahoo would not give a specific valuation for the company at that meeting, said sources.

But on a call with bankers and advisers from both sides on April 18, a big number was put forward by Yahoo of at least $40 a share. This was, of course, a nonstarter for Microsoft, which began plans for its hostile proxy fight.

As the deadline loomed on April 29, Yahoo sources said execs there wanted to avoid such a battle.

So Yang and Yahoo Chairman Roy Bostock held phone calls with Ballmer two times that day to suggest ways to avoid a hostile bid and also a walk-away move by Microsoft.

They also suggested, said Microsoft sources, other kinds of deals short of a merger, including a search partnership. Ballmer suggested a face-to-face meeting the next day, on April 30.

At that meeting, which took place in Silicon Valley at Yahoo’s law firm, Yang suggested $38. He also continued to press on major issues like possibly problematic regulatory issues around the pair’s email domination and also suggested the idea of a search deal, like the one Yahoo had been discussing with Google (GOOG).

Finally, as a last-ditch effort, Yang and David Filo–who founded Yahoo with Yang while the pair were at Stanford University as grad students–flew to Microsoft’s home in the Seattle area today to meet at the airport with Ballmer and also Kevin Johnson, the main Microsoft exec who had been spearheading the deal.

It was, of course, the kind of meeting–just the key execs alone–that should have taken place months ago.

Ballmer suggested $33 and a plan to assuage Yahoo’s regulatory worries, while Yang countered with $37, a price the board had approved, even though both Filo and Yang wanted the higher prices.

Worst of all, Yang told Ballmer that, if Microsoft chose to conduct a proxy fight, he would not abandon pursuing the deal with Google to outsource Yahoo’s online ad business, which Yahoo could sign even if Microsoft made a hostile bid.

Such a deal with its archrival, Microsoft execs thought, was impossible to accept and could also be hard to unwind.

“There was not a lot more to say after that,” said a source close to Microsoft.

Yang and Filo left the meeting, but the die was cast. While they expected a counter, Ballmer instead lowered the boom in a phone call and sent a letter saying so in detail soon after.

Another Yahoo source who was told the details of the meeting agreed that even today’s meeting was probably a lost cause.

“There has never been a moment when there was agreement on anything,” said the source. “Can you just imagine how a merger would have been with this as a prelude?”

Indeed. Cats and dogs. AOL and Time Warner (TWX). Oil and Water. Obama and Hillary. You get the picture.

After a months-long standoff, Microsoft (MSFT) has abandoned its bid for Yahoo (YHOO), people involved in the discussions said today.

Microsoft confirmed to BoomTown that talks between the two companies, which have been taking place all week, collapsed Saturday when they could not agree on a price.

According to sources close to Microsoft, the talks broke down this afternoon after a face-to-face meeting in the Seattle area that included Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer, Kevin Johnson, president of Microsoft’s Platforms & Services Division and Yahoo Co-Founders Jerry Yang and David Filo.

According to sources, Microsoft offered $33 a share, and Yahoo countered with $37 a share. The talks went nowhere from there.

Microsoft was also concerned with the lack of friendly integration and other major strategic problems, including the email monopoly that would arise from the merger of the two companies, as well as any outsourcing ad deal Yahoo might sign with Microsoft archrival Google (GOOG) before Microsoft completed an acquisition.

In addition, Microsoft sources said, Yahoo requested other unspecified costs that Microsoft was unwilling to accept.

As BoomTown has written recently, there have been ongoing meetings between the two companies recently in a bid to avoid a nasty takeover battle.

According to sources close to Microsoft, they include a meeting on April 15 in Portland, Ore. (as BoomTown said here), another by phone on April 18 and a meeting that included Ballmer and Yang in California on April 30.

At several points during the last few weeks, Yahoo execs had asked for over $40 a share to consummate the deal, a price Microsoft rejected. Yahoo’s Yang subsequently called Ballmer with the lower $37 price, which was discussed today.

In a letter to Jerry Yang, Steve Ballmer said that Microsoft will not move forward with a proxy fight and will instead pursue a more “organic” strategy in the online advertising market.

…It is clear to me that it is not sensible for Microsoft to take our offer directly to your shareholders. This approach would necessarily involve a protracted proxy contest and eventually an exchange offer. Our discussions with you have led us to conclude that, in the interim, you would take steps that would make Yahoo undesirable as an acquisition for Microsoft.”

A deal with Google is what Ballmer is specifically referring to in his last sentence.

That is not to say that Microsoft might not circle back and again attempt to acquire Yahoo at some point in the future, especially if the company’s stock tanks on Monday, as many expect it will.

That could be a problem for Yahoo in its quest to remain independent.

The options for Yahoo include a partnership with AOL (TWX) or News Corp. (NWS), an outsourcing deal with Google–which may present other antitrust problems–or actually improving its business.

That’s the one thing, of course, that’s been a problem for Yahoo managers and what landed them in this mess in the first place.

According to several sources close to Yahoo, the company will outline in much more detail its open-platform strategy next week, in its efforts to keep its cred as a big supporter of openness and also show it has a clear path to reinvigorate itself despite current turmoil.

Yahoo (YHOO) has been accelerating its open activities of late, mostly related to its search and ad infrastructure.

But, in his appearance at the Web 2.0 Expo in San Francisco next Thursday morning at a keynote speech titled “Yahoo and Open Platforms,” sources said Yahoo CTO Ari Balogh (pictured here) will sketch out a more significant broadening out of its open platform plans, which would touch consumers more directly.

That could include opening up everything from communications tools like mail to content to all sorts of products Yahoo offers its users to third-party developers.

In addition, the company plans to make as much of those and its own offerings more distributed, sending it all back out to the Web.

This kind of conceptual shift is something many have felt Yahoo has needed to do in a bolder manner, as consumer interest in massive centralized portals like Yahoo has waned.

The move, in many ways, has shades of what Facebook did last year when it opened its platform up to third-party developers, but also includes a vision of a more widgetized and social Yahoo, and a Yahoo available everywhere.

While Yahoo will not specify a date when all this will roll out, sources said Yahoo had hoped to have much of it in place by the end of the year.

This increasingly massive job of opening up more and more of the Yahoo platform to third-party developers and make its own products, APIs, code and content more highly distributed is being led by Balogh.

Balogh came to Yahoo from VeriSign, just days before Microsoft (MSFT) leveled its unsolicited takeover bid at the company.

Working with Yahoo Co-Founder and tech guru David Filo, Balogh has been given high marks from many sources I talked to within the company for bringing a faster-paced style than under longtime Yahoo CTO Farzad Nazem, who retired a year ago.

At the time, many felt Yahoo’s technology efforts had drifted under Nazem, whose internal nickname was “Zod,” as BoomTown reported back in June of 2007.

Setbacks in its Panama project to rehaul its online search-ad technology and a slowness in focusing on Web 2.0 distributed technologies have clearly contributed to Yahoo’s current predicament, in which its long-suffering stock declined enough to give Microsoft an opportunity to make its move on Yahoo.

Under that backdrop, Balogh is under intense pressure to deliver on one of CEO and Co-Founder Jerry Yang’s key focuses for Yahoo that he reiterated in a letter he sent on Feb. 14 to shareholders after Yahoo rejected Microsoft’s offer.

Underscoring the need to make Yahoo a “starting point” and a “must-buy” ad platform, Yang noted: “These key strategies will be enhanced by our adoption of new, more open technology platforms that will encourage the development of new applications and the involvement of third-party developers–and help enrich the user experience.”

While it does not get the credit it probably deserves, Yahoo has been moved squarely into the open-source space and, in fact, has made a series of announcements since the Microsoft bid from its implementation of Apache’s Hadoop in its search product to its support of the Google-led OpenSocial initiative to its recently announced AMP!, an ad-management software shipping this summer.

AMP!, said Yahoo, would allow “ad networks, through an open set of APIs, to innovate on top of the transparent marketplace.”

Yahoo Technology Evangelist Jeremy Zawodny might have signaled even more announcements in his well-read blog in mid-March, in fact, when he noted that Yahoo was a longtime proponent of open platforms and open-source technology.

Wrote Zawodny, who declined to speak to me yesterday about any further open initiatives, due to its quiet period around earnings next week, wrote on March 14:

“We’ve been on the openness road for a long, long time at Yahoo. And we take it rather seriously. Sometimes it hasn’t been as visible as others, but believe me, the trend is quite clear when you look at all the data. The Open Source adoption and work. The APIs. The way we communicate with users and partners. The Blogs. The RSS feeds…You’ll be reading more and hearing more about openness at Yahoo from me and Yahoo’s much higher up the food chain in the coming months.

Anyone who knows me knows that I come from open source roots and am a big proponent of opening things up more and more. I’d have left Yahoo years ago if I didn’t see it happening.”

Added Zawodny with some mystery: “If you think the last few weeks are big, you haven’t seen anything yet! :-)”

How glad BoomTown was to finally see Jerry Yang up close and personal, after our valiant but futile efforts to get near the Yahoo co-founder and CEO in 2007.

No, we’re not stalking him in a restraining-order kind of way, although I did stake a claim to a front-row seat in the intimate theater at the Las Vegas Hilton for his keynote this morning at the Consumer Electronics Show, where Yang couldn’t help but see me.

Like he cared!

Not at all, as he was riveted to delivering his shtick about Yahoo’s mobile efforts (it’s a 3.0 version, according to Yang, which is a good move since Web 2.0–in general and in particular–has not been so kind to the Internet giant), as well as giving the audience a glimpse of some interesting new concepts related to its popular email program.

The front rows were so packed with top Yahoo execs–including President Sue Decker, as well as David Filo, Jeff Weiner, Brad Garlinghouse, Ash Patel, Dave Karnstedt, Bradley Horowitz, Hilary Schneider and even Chairman and former Yahoo CEO Terry Semel–that you had to wonder who was running the show back in Sunnyvale, Calif.

(I mean, say, if Google had decided to launch a sneak attack today with their bicycle brigade, it could have taken over Yahoo without a shot fired!)

Yang maintained a low-key tone throughout the presentation, as is his way (I kept imagining the performance being done by Microsoft’s Steve Ballmer, who would have sold it all hard until he popped a vein).

Nonetheless, Yang did get the message through that opening its platform up to third-party developers would be a big push in 2008 for Yahoo.

So, the widgets in the excellent mobile product, called Yahoo! Go 3.0, are laudable and much more innovative than anything out there, even though Yahoo has been too quiet about marketing its Yahoo! Go product until now.

But at CES, Yang brought Yahoo Connected Life Executive Vice President Marco Boerries (pictured here) out to show off the mobile apps, including one from MTV (Viacom head Philippe Dauman and MTV Networks head Judith McGrath were in the audience) that seemed fun.

More interesting was Yang’s presenting new concepts for its Yahoo Mail product, which will be more social, relevant and integrated. A lot of this functionality is already being used by the open-source email company Zimbra, which Yahoo recently acquired (and whose head Satish Dharmaraj I interviewed last week).

As I wrote in that piece, I love the innovations, including ranking of those you email with most frequently and instant mapping from email, as well as a plethora of great features for email.

So, one vexing part of Yang’s presentation was that this concept needs to become a reality tomorrow. He brought out Co-Founder and interim CTO Filo to basically promise “soon,” but I say: Make it snappy!

I know, we’re pushy when it comes to Yahoo, but it’s because we care!

Well, care is not the right word exactly, but we are certain that a powerful and pioneering company like Yahoo can out-innovate these Web 2.0 newbies who get ridiculous funding to make goofy widgets and have the nerve to call it a business.

Thus, we took the chance and his prone position after the speech surrounded by well-wishers to go up and say hello in person to Yang, whom BoomTown has known for longer than either of us would care to say.

And, miracle of miracles, Yang said it had been far too long since we had gotten together and agreed to meet in 2008, a meeting for which we have been asking and egregiously posting about forever, to no avail.

How much does BoomTown love CES? Not so much.

But if it gets me lunch with Yang, I love it. So, Jerry, it’s officially 2008 and I am waiting by the phone for your call.

Here is my video of parts of Yang’s keynote:

We have almost nothing to report today on Yahoo, except to point out that there are only three more days until the official end of CEO Jerry Yang’s 100-day No-Sacred-Cows Vision Quest.

While we expect the day to pass quietly at Yahoo’s Sunnyvale campus, BoomTown will mark the moment while on the Big Island of Hawaii, where August Capital VC David Hornik is holding his first gathering called The Lobby. He’s billing it as a “new media salon,” but all I know is that there are a lot of Silicon Valley types I can annoy in paradise!

Speaking of annoying, the departure of Yahoo’s marketing chief Cammie Dunaway was more than a little confusing in that it was clearly done quickly and without a lot of preparation. That leaves yet another empty slot at the top of the company going unfilled with more changes in the organizational structure of Yahoo.

Essentially, President Sue Decker said in a memo that she was splitting up the Network Marketing Division from the Customer Experience Division, which were both under Dunaway. While there are interim people in place, it is obvious the job Dunaway had will be cut back in power.

While that might be a good thing, and change is often for the best at Yahoo these days, getting major execs to sit still for a while is also advisable. Of course, Yahoo does not always have complete control of this situation.

Right now, for example, there is no CTO in place at Yahoo, following the departure in June of longtime tech head Farzad Nazem.

I have been talking a lot to Yahoo techies about that situation, which remains in flux. According to them, they don’t expect a hire at all (which Yahoo had said it would undertake when Nazem left).

Instead, it is being managed by a troika of execs in three areas–Executive Vice President, Platforms and Infrastructure Division Ash Patel; Executive Vice President of Engineering Search and Search Marketing Qi Lu; and Dr. Usama Fayyad, Chief Data Officer and Executive Vice President, Research and Strategic Data Solutions.

Of course, co-founder David Filo, who has remained at Yahoo all this time (even still tinkering with its servers) hovers quietly above it all as the iconic techie of Yahoo.

So I call and email Yahoo PR all the time in what is now a futile quest to get some sit-down interview time with CEO Jerry Yang, whom I have known and covered for, I don’t know, what feels like a kabillion years.

So far, no dice!

I don’t know why, but it might have to do with Yang wanting to be sealed in a non-press bubble, while he does his 100-day evaluation of the company (although he has certainly gotten out and about in Silicon Valley, visiting everyone and their cousins in the tech sector of late).

Or maybe they don’t like the ongoing leaks to me and other reporters about the company’s doings from, well, everyone with an Internet connection at Yahoo (and that does not include the people who have left of late, of whom there are many).

So much is the displeasure that Yang made an impassioned plea to staunch the uncontrolled flow of tidbits about the company to the hundreds of VPs he gathered almost a week ago at what some who attended are now calling the “Kumbaya Summit.”

Though uninvited, I wrote a detailed account of the meeting, which included an appearance by Apple’s Steve “Oprah” Jobs, from such sources.

At the meeting, Yang argued that these alleged leakers, whom I would rather compare to whistle-blowers, were harming the company.

I don’t know about that, as I think most of them truly care about Yahoo, but feel frustrated with the leadership and want to do something to get things moving.

(And let’s hope execs there don’t get all vindictive and conduct a press-leaking witch hunt to find any of these employees, because I know that will only result in filling my inbox with even more juicy scoops for a long time to come.)

So it’s freeze time for BoomTown and we must remedy this sad state of affairs (see this nice picture above of Yang and other Yahoo co-founder David Filo at D3 with Walt and me in happier times).

But better yet: What if we could mend our relationship and also do good at the same time! And BoomTown readers can help.

In September, I wrote a post about a cool charity site called DonorsChoose.org, which funds classroom projects in high-need public schools, using the Web to match teacher project requests with donors.

The site allows teachers nationwide to upload proposals for resources and projects–from books to playgrounds–they need funding for and matches them with donors.

DonorsChoose then authenticates every project proposal before posting it, buys the resources when a project is funded and sends the goods off to teachers, with some donors also adding more money to pay for fulfillment costs.

Now, in the month of October, it has launched a “Blogger Challenge,” wrangling some bloggers to compete to raise money among our readers by picking favorite projects and setting a fund-raising goal.

Here is the AllThingsD page on the DonorsChoose site, and you can also access it using the nifty fund-raising thermometer on the left rail of this page.

I picked tech projects in both San Francisco (where I live) and Washington, D.C. (where Walt Mossberg lives) and we have set a goal of $25,000.

Some of the other bloggers involved, besides me, include Peter Rojas of Engadget, Michael Arrington of TechCrunch, Anil Dash of Six Apart, Fred Wilson of A VC, Lockhart Steele (formerly of Gawker) on his Curbed and Eater blogs, Apartment Therapy and Tomato Nation.

And Web companies are also participating: Google is giving an award for the bloggers who raise the most money, Six Apart an award for the bloggers who help the greatest number of students and Federated Media will award the bloggers who come up with the most creative incentives for readers to give.

We hope to win that too, via our dastardly master plan of winning the award Yahoo is giving. The company is sponsoring an award for the bloggers who inspire the most readers to give and the winner will get a free lunch with Jerry Yang!

That’s where you come in! I need numbers! Hundreds! Thousands! From Yahoo’s troops even!

Even Yang agrees!

“The DonorsChoose.org Blogger Challenge could inspire the blogosphere to help hundreds of thousands of students from low-income communities,” said Yang in the press release from DonorsChoose about the challenge. “This challenge represents a great union of citizen journalists and citizen philanthropists. Yahoo is excited to see which bloggers can engage the most readers in improving our public schools.”

In point of fact, Yahoo has been very generous to DonorsChoose, giving out donation certificates to its employees, helping in the charity’s tech build-out and being uniformly generous in making donations.

Sure, you can get riveted to TechMeme’s new Leaderboard (we’re No. 45! we’re No. 45!) if you want to know where you rank with a bunch of fellow bloggers or you can pick your little head up and look at the wide world out there in desperate need of some geek-fueled help.

Yes, we can! And, as a reward for your generosity to those in need, I will make a video for you of Yang munching on a grilled cheese sandwich!

Also below is a video I did of DonorsChoose Founder Charles Best, talking about the charity:

And here again is the AllThingsD page on the DonorsChoose site.

I will admit it–most funding announcements for tech start-ups bore the living daylights out of me.

Writing about however many millions of dollars go to however many frivolous widget companies is about as interesting as watching Robert Scoble’s blog video lectures. (Sorry, Bob!)

So it is nice to see a good (and good-for-you) charity site like DonorsChoose get some money and, hopefully, attention.

The site, which lets teachers upload proposals for resources and projects–from books to playgrounds–they need funding for and matches them with donors, has to be limited in geography. But today, it will open its services to every public school in the U.S. to allow teachers nationwide to get their wish lists fulfilled online.

With the national expansion, the nonprofit hopes be on track to becoming 100% self-sustaining, according to its founder, a former Bronx schoolteacher named Charles Best.

That’s due to $11 million in possible funding from a panoply of big Web players. EBay Founder Pierre Omidyar has promised to pony up $6 million, with Yahoo’s David Filo, longtime VC Vinod Khosla and Netflix’s Reed Hastings adding in the rest. (Khosla was an early supporter, allowing the site to expand to the San Francisco area from its New York base.)

The catch for the funding? Omidyar will release the bulk of his commitment only if DonorsChoose completes the round by Nov. 30.

It seems like a pretty good investment to me, using the Internet to clarify and amplify the donating process. Sort of like eBay meets Match.com meets Amazon. So far, the site has given away $14.5 million to projects.

Best says DonorsChoose authenticates every project proposal before posting it. Then it purchases the resources when a project is funded and sends the goods off to teachers, with some donors also adding in more money to pay for fulfillment costs.

That will now be a lot cheaper and more efficient due to a donation by Ariba of fulfillment software and services to DonorsChoose that the site values at over $2 million. That follows a donation by Filo, said Best, of five Yahoo engineers who were lent to DonorsChoose full-time for five months to rewrite its code base.

But Best is more articulate than I can be, so here is a video of him talking about his site:

The photo montage and guide I did of the Facebook management ranks of late was well received, so it is clearly time for one for Yahoo, if only to aid those completely confused by all the comings and goings in upper management.

One difference compared to the all-male revue at Facebook (I know there are some fine women execs at the social network, but they are not at the tippy-top), women play key roles at Yahoo.

So here’s the latest dream team head shots and a little background on each below the photos:

Yahoo co-founder and now CEO Jerry Yang is holed up on his 100-day vision quest, trying to channel some of the sass and energy of the early days of Yahoo, when life was a purple and yellow heaven of big, wet kisses from the press, a rocketing stock price and no irksome algorithm twins Larry and Sergey.

Those were the days, my friend, he thought they’d never end.

Well, they did–with a thump.

But Yang has been through a downturn before–remember 2001?–so it would be stupid to count him out.

Passionate, serious, often sarcastic (although I suspect that might just be to me and I deserve it), he is not the young fogey he appears to be. Plus, people at the company, for the most part, are rooting for him.

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