Former Bebo CEO Joanna Shields and Shine Group Chairman and CEO Elisabeth Murdoch have formed a content start-up to produce across media platforms, both online and offline, with a focus on social engagement, according to sources.

The new venture, which does not have a name, is being financially backed by both Shine and Shields.

Based in London, it will invest, develop and partner to create a variety of content offerings that also incorporate interactive and social networking elements.

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Longtime Yahoo exec Brad Garlinghouse’s appointment to a new job at AOL today is yet another sign of an interesting trend for those keeping score of the comings and goings of top Internet execs.

As anyone who watches the digital space knows by now, this kind of management musical chairs is common and never-ending, although it seems more frantic than ever of late.

In fact, borrowing a quote by IAC/InterActiveCorp chairman and CEO Barry Diller from an onstage interview I did with him at the sixth D: All Things Digital conference, and switching out Hollywood for Silicon Valley: “[It] is a community that’s so inbred, it’s a wonder the children have any teeth.”

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Incredibly, this is the seventh year of the D: All Things Digital conference.

We feel very lucky to get here, especially in the midst of what our own site’s Digital Daily scribe, John Paczkowski, has so perfectly dubbed the “econalypse.”

Ironically, Walt Mossberg and I planned to launch the very first conference in the middle of the last major downturn for tech, in 2001. But, in the carnage of the Web 1.0 meltdown, we actually held off for two years, with our first D gathering taking place in 2003.

Well, we’re still going–making the same long-term bet that the digital revolution will keep rolling as we did at D1. Here’s our lineup for D7.

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Finally, someone who might actually understand the Internet will be taking charge of the thus-far lackadaisical government body that plays the largest role in spurring its growth.

It looks like Julius Genachowski will be tapped by President-elect Barack Obama to take on the always controversial job of chairman of the Federal Communications Commission. The news was reported in several places late yesterday, and sources with knowledge of the situation also confirmed the appointment to BoomTown.

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We’re posting all the interviews from the sixth D: All Things Digital conference that took place in late May.

Here’s an interview I did with Barry Diller, the always clever chairman and CEO of IAC, the Internet conglomerate whose holdings include Ask.com, Match.com and many others.

After a bruising court battle with shareholder and cable mogul John Malone of Liberty Media over the last year, Diller finally broke apart IAC six weeks ago. His reason: The company had become too complex and its stock had suffered due to the operating confusion.

This is part three of three parts.

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We’re posting all the interviews from the sixth D: All Things Digital conference that took place in late May.

Here’s an interview I did with Barry Diller, the always clever chairman and CEO of IAC, the Internet conglomerate whose holdings include Ask.com, Match.com and many others.

After a bruising court battle with shareholder and cable mogul John Malone of Liberty Media over the last year, Diller finally broke apart IAC six weeks ago. His reason: The company had become too complex and its stock had suffered due to the operating confusion.

This is part two of three parts.

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We’re posting all the interviews from the sixth D: All Things Digital conference that took place in late May.

Here’s an interview I did with Barry Diller, the always clever chairman and CEO of IAC, the Internet conglomerate whose holdings include Ask.com, Match.com and many others.

After a bruising court battle with shareholder and cable mogul John Malone of Liberty Media over the last year, Diller finally broke apart IAC six weeks ago. His reason: The company had become too complex and its stock had suffered due to the operating confusion.

This is part one of three parts.

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Don’t miss this very good interview–does he ever give a bad one?–that IAC/InterActive Corp’s Barry Diller did with The Wall Street Journal’s Shira Ovide in today’s edition.

After a bruising court battle with shareholder and cable mogul John Malone, Diller finally broke apart the Internet conglomerate six weeks ago. His reason: IAC had become too complex and its stock had suffered due to the operating confusion.

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While Microsoft’s CEO Steve Ballmer and Yahoo’s CEO Jerry Yang hemmed and hawed about what had happened in their disastrous takeover battle that ended not with a bang, but a whimper, everyone else who appeared onstage at the sixth D: All Things Digital conference last week was a bit more definitive about what should occur now:

Get it done.

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Ok, not that secret a project.

BoomTown has known about it forever and Radar Online gave the lowdown about the creation of the hip-sounding news aggregator Web site–headed by high-profile editor Tina Brown–by Barry Diller’s IAC in a report in early April.

While still in its planning stages, though, it just hired a new GM to run the business: Caroline Marks.

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Earlier this week, BoomTown posted our speaker list for the sixth edition of D: All Things Digital, which will take place in a few weeks–May 27 to 29, to be exact–in Carlsbad, Calif.

Just recently, we added Jerry Yang, CEO and co-founder of Yahoo, and now he is being joined onstage at the conference by Yahoo President Sue Decker (pictured here in a lovely Wall Street Journal dot-drawing).

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Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer of Microsoft (MSFT). News Corp.’s (NWS) Rupert Murdoch. Jeff Bewkes of Time Warner (TWX). Yahoo’s (YHOO) Jerry Yang.
All of them engaged in roiling Internet deal-making of late and all of them in just three weeks on the same stage–but not, thankfully, at the same time, or we’d need a professional [...]

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BoomTown had a lovely lunch yesterday with Jim Lanzone, former CEO of Ask, the little search engine that, well, tries, at least.
Lanzone had been at the company, which is owned by Barry Diller’s InteractiveCorp (IACI), for more than a half-dozen years, before stepping down in January in a management reshuffle at the company that put [...]

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How’s this for a juicy quote?:
“I am beginning to think these people are insane. … Everything they cite is hogwash.”
That’s what is known as a classic Barry Diller, who can be relied on to come out with a good one when provoked.

In this case, the provocateur is Liberty Media’s John Malone (pictured on the right [...]

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One of the great things about interviewing Barry Diller, the Hollywood mogul turned Internet impresario (via InterActiveCorp), is that he actually answers questions you ask him.

Here is a sampling of quotes from my one-on-one interview with him onstage at the Monaco Media Forum on Friday morning, taken from the not-so-audible audio of my Flip [...]

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