Well, this unusual video by Demand Media is certainly a unique effort to get freelancers to consider doing work for its Demand Studios.

In it, staffers at the Santa Monica, Calif.-based network of social networking sites and apps maker went full Van Halen–with a celebrity assist by a leather-clad Brooke Burke, who runs the ModernMom site on Demand.

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What’s one of the ways you might attract a lot of attention online? Here’s one possible equation: Celebrity + Mom + Tips Galore.

That’s the formula behind a new site relaunching today called Modern Mom, which is backed by “Dancing With the Stars” winner Brooke Burke and partner Lisa Rosenblatt, wading into what the pair hopes will be a lucrative market.

It’s an interesting effort to watch in online publishing, to see if the pair can attract both an audience and advertisers without a big brand name in the mother space and by leveraging Burke’s online and offline popularity.

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Last year, Yahoo EVP Hilary Schneider and then-Media Group head Scott Moore had a summery seaside dinner with Demand Media co-founder and CEO Richard Rosenblatt in Santa Monica, Calif., right around the corner from the online publishing company’s HQ.

While many speculated that Yahoo could be doing some friendly kibitzing to get a sense of where the eclectic network of general- and special-interest sites was headed, for a possible acquisition, nothing came of it.

But now, a year later, with recent indications that a major strategy for new CEO Carol Bartz will finally follow through on making Yahoo’s massive but disparate service more social, especially in its content offerings, several sources close to the company tell me another look-see at Demand is likelier than ever.

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With Yahoo board Chairman Roy Bostock reportedly assuring investors and others that the company will have a CEO in place by the end of the year, it seems prudent for BoomTown to initiate an official Yahoo CEO Countdown.

After all, this column had a 100-Day No-Sacred-Cows Vision Quest to mark the time that Jerry Yang said he needed to give Yahoo a top-to-bottom look-see when he took over last summer as CEO.

So here’s today’s update: No Peter Chernin and a lot of thorny issues for other candidates.

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The Huffington Post, co-founded by Arianna Huffington, will announce this morning that it has raised $25 million, in a single investment from Oak Investment Partners.

The large round, which was led by Palo Alto, Calif.-based venture capitalist Fred Harman, will give the popular online news and blogging site a valuation of “just south of $100 million,” a source said.

The new funding, the Huffington Post’s third, will be used for expansion of its offerings and the hiring of editorial and business talent.

“I think the post-election perception of the Huffington Post has changed in the eyes of advertisers to being a key mainstream news site,” said Harman in an interview with BoomTown last night.

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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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I blame post-election exhaustion for rendering me comatose after Tuesday, which is how this video I did at the Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco last week got stuck in my to-do-later pile.

Well, it has since been fished out, including interviews with conference organizers, John Battelle and Tim O’Reilly, as well as Demand Media’s Richard Rosenblatt (who is apparently scared of me, which is just the way I like it) and Microsoft’s man-in-Silicon-Valley Dan’l Lewin.

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When I was in Los Angeles recently, I stopped by the Santa Monica offices of Demand Media, the network of social networking sites and apps maker, because of the rumors that I had heard swirling around that Yahoo was looking to purchase it for up to $2 billion.

As it turned out, reports of that possibility were greatly exaggerated.

In fact, Rosenblatt played down the idea of any Yahoo offer on the record, noting he was not interested in selling at this point anyway. And Yahoo sources confirm this and said that there has been no offer floated.

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