With so many more ex-Yahoos out there now, BoomTown put out feelers to a range of them to ask whom they would like to run the company they no longer work for. After all, who better than to pick a new CEO than an ex? The response was swift and varied wildly, depending on which way the ex-Yahoo felt the company should go, from a basic turnaround expert to–drum roll, please–his digital Holiness, Steve Jobs of Apple. No kidding.

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BoomTown might have been remiss in my post yesterday on top candidates for the Yahoo CEO job, in the wake of news that Jerry Yang was stepping down, by leaving out several key possibilities.

Yesterday’s roster included News Corp.’s Peter Chernin, Google’s Tim Armstrong, Kevin Johnson of Juniper Networks and also two Yahoo board members, among others.

So here is an addendum to my initial list–all of whom are Yahoo outsiders, the likely choice versus more tarnished insiders.

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Obviously, the dream CEO for Yahoo is News Corp. President and COO Peter Chernin.

And, no surprise, he is the No. 1 choice of most inside and outside Yahoo in the wake of the news late yesterday that its current CEO and Co-Founder Jerry Yang is stepping down.

Well, Yahoo would certainly be a challenge for Chernin, in terms of a corporate cleanup challenge, especially compared to figuring out how to make bank on plush toys from “The Simpsons.”

But there are many other contenders for the job, despite the slog it could be. Here’s BoomTown’s list…

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Former Facebook exec Owen Van Natta will take the CEO job at a music discovery site called Playlist, a move that had been speculated last week, after he did not end up taking another position as head of MySpace Music.

Van Natta’s arrival at Playlist was not the only news for the Palo Alto, Calif.-based start-up–former AOL exec Bob Pittman’s Pilot Investment Group is also investing an undisclosed amount of money in Playlist, and Pittman will join its board.

The site, which has been called Project Playlist, had previously raised several million dollars. The new round of funding super-sized that, sources said, hovering at about $18 million.

“Discovery around music is exploding on the Internet,” said Van Natta to BoomTown, in an interview this afternoon, giving it as his main reason for joining Playlist.

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Another week, another nonpick for the still-outstanding position to lead Microsoft’s digital business.

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer has cast about for more than three months, both internally and externally, for the person who will turbocharge Microsoft’s Web efforts, but no one has emerged a favorite.

Nonetheless, new prospects include former Cisco exec and current Joost CEO Mike Volpi, sources said.

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The third time is charming, in fact, as has been every appearance on “Saturday Night Live” by Tina Fey impersonating Republican vice presidential candidate and Alaska Governor Sarah Palin.

This one, of course, is on last week’s debate between Palin and Democratic VP candidate, Sen. Joe Biden, with Queen Latifah also doing a perfect double-taking turn as moderator Gwen Ifill.

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You almost have to admire the shape-shifting–if not a wee bit slippery–stylings of Slide CEO Max Levchin.

The serial entrepreneur and widget king has signed distribution deals with media giants, such as Time Warner’s Warner Bros. unit, CBS and Comcast’s E! Entertainment channel, to allow users of its FunSpace video service to look at clips from shows.

To make money, Slide will get a cut of ads sold by its media partners.

Oh my, how incredibly traditional of Levchin.

But it should probably come as no surprise that Levchin is now singing a bit of a different tune these days, as the daunting task of actually building a sustainable business model and attracting long-term advertisers has dawned on him and probably many other Web 2.0 wunderkinds.

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How did we miss this one from Saturday Night Live this past weekend?

If you are feeling bad about the tech stock meltdown yesterday, this spoof–the second hysterical one–video by Tina Fey as Alaska Governor and Republican Vice Presidential candidate Sarah Palin will make you feel much better.

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Well, here’s a good reason not to write off Joost quite yet:

When it officially debuts its new Web-based service in mid-October, the London-based company will have some pretty hot content with its half-dozen seasons of the former NBC hit, “Friends.”

Also, there will finally be no more irksome plug-ins.

There will also be cooler social-networking elements.

While all this is not going to make up for the lost time the online video service has wasted with its annoying P2P-based desktop client download, going to a Web-based, all-Flash service with more robust content is certainly the right way to stop rival service Hulu from continuing to clean Joost’s clock.

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On one of my many trips to Los Angeles (what can I say? I like to hang where LoRo* hangs), I dropped in to see Nick Grouf of Spot Runner.

As many might know, Spot Runner is an online-offline ad agency play that has gotten big funding and even bigger hype of late.

Usually, BoomTown runs screaming from such Web 2.0 dandies, but there is definitely some there there at Spot Runner.

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A lot of people have been piling on CBS for its deal to buy Web site operator CNET Networks for $1.8 billion in cash.

Not BoomTown.

And it is not because newly crowned CBS Interactive CEO Quincy Smith is the ever-amusing Energizer Bunny of the Internet.

Okay, CBS paid too much and that makes the whole thing suspect. But is it the wrong direction?

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Recently, while I was at a conference in Los Angeles, I caught up with Veoh Founder Dmitry Shapiro.

BoomTown will be focusing a lot on online video this year and Veoh is one of the several online video sharing sites–a group of smaller players that includes sites like Joost, Hulu, Dailymotion, Vimeo and others that I like to call not-YouTube.

Still, it is making progress.

Today, the Los Angeles-based Veoh announced that the ABC television network would put full episodes of its hot primetime shows–such as “Ugly Betty” (love it) and “Desperate Housewives” (not so much)–up on the site.

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So what other Web media company facing a hostile investor does CNET remind you of?

Disgruntled investors, a troubled Web 1.0 company whose management is recalcitrant to give in, an obviously powerful, but underutilized set of assets.

The acquisition of CNET by CBS for $1.8 billion in cash is the happy ending of this scenario. Now Yahoo needs one too.

The sky is indeed falling, Jerry Yang, so get to the king of Microsoft before the Icahn fox–as it did the guileless Chicken Little–eats you up.

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Walt Mossberg interviewed CBS CEO Les Moonves at the fifth edition of our D: All Things Digital conference last May, where he talked about the media giant’s Internet aims.

The 53-minute interview is highly pertinent to today’s acquisition of CNET by CBS for $1.8 billion in cash.

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Spot Runner, the online ad agency, delivered yet another Web 2.0 miracle today, raising another $51 million in funding from a diverse group of investors.
Among other services, Spot Runner makes and places low-cost television and radio ads for small businesses and is trying to bridge the gap between the traditional and online ad market.
In this [...]

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