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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Oh, this is just too good to pass up, so it is once again time for BoomTown to let you know exactly what Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang actually meant in his internal memo to employees about the hiring of Bain & Company to evaluate its troubled business systems.

Jerry wrote: yahoos,

it’s time for another update.

Translation: Yep! Still no adult punctuation! We might continue to face serious big-boy issues at the company, but we refuse to give in on our insistence on kindergarten spelling patterns.

In that vein, would you like a nice cold glass of chocolate milk before I get to the bad news?

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When Yahoo holds its first board meeting tomorrow–with three new board members, including shareholder activist Carl Icahn–there will be little time for getting-to-know-you chitty-chat.

In fact, it should be all business for the group, which needs to push the reset button hard for Yahoo.

In fact, Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang is acutely aware that he and his management team have only a few months to really show investors and employees that they can get things moving at the beleaguered company.

Thus, on deck: talks to buy Time Warner’s AOL, strategies to attract talent, and how to deal with the weak economy.

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It is absolutely worrisome that Yahoo’s share price continued its downward swirl today, closing at a five-year low today at $17.75.

The downward drift far from the it-can’t-drop-below-$20 barrier makes it clear that Wall Street is valuing the company at close to what it could sell its assets off for and not much more and this obviously puts additional pressure on the already squashed-down Yahoo management to perform.

In fact, with all this pressure, you’d think Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang would have turned into a twin of the cursed Hope Diamond by now.

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How much is AOL really worth?

Well, its own owner, Time Warner, has been trying to put a big, shiny $10 billion price tag on the much-beleaguered online unit for months now, as it dribbles out tiny leaks about its hot-and-cold-running acquisition talks with both Yahoo and Microsoft.

But after yesterday’s less-than-impressive results for AOL, which dragged down the crowing Time Warner CEO Jeff Bewkes could deservedly do over its “Dark Knight” and “Sex and the City” film successes, can it even hope to get that much?

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The vote is now in and it’s not so pretty for Yahoo, as it turns out.

Broadridge Financial Solutions’ corrected tabulation of the vote at the Yahoo annual meeting on Aug. 1, without the “truncation errors,” came out and shareholders are actually mighty irked at Yahoo leadership.

Most glaringly, it shows Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang’s disapproval more than double what was previously reported, rising from 14.6 percent votes withheld to 33.7 percent. Yahoo Chairman Roy Bostock increased from 20.5 percent withheld votes to 39.5 percent.

Yang, who has been under fire for his management of Yahoo, is likely to now endure yet another round of questioning about whether he should stay in his job in the wake of this clearly massive show of disapproval by investors.

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Here’s the full statement from the outside firm that tabulated Yahoo’s recent shareholder vote.

Bottom line: An underreporting of shares withheld for certain directors, which the Lake Success, N.Y., firm is calling a “truncation error.”

That sounds painful.

And it is likely Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang will feel much of that pain, as sources said the shares are largely those that were withheld from him by disgruntled shareholders.

The mistake will not change the vote’s overall outcome, but it will surely make Yang’s no-vote tally worse.

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All Yahoo needs now is for former Florida Secretary of State Katherine Harris to show up and start recounting votes.

It could happen, given all the crazy characters who have been drawn to the much-beleaguered Internet company like a magnet, in 2008.

It’s almost as if there is a voodoo curse on Yahoo and, so, you didn’t think the digital gods would let it have more than one weekend of good news, did you?

No, they will not, it seems.

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There is a mini-tempest brewing over how shares were tallied in the Yahoo annual meeting last Friday, specifically around whether a group of votes withheld by one of Yahoo’s major shareholders was not counted, counted incorrectly or even voted incorrectly by the investor.

According to sources close to the thinking at Capital Research & Management, the proxy committees for its two large funds that hold a significant stake in Yahoo recommended last week that they withhold votes specifically from CEO Jerry Yang and from various board members, such as Chairman Roy Bostock, to register disappointment with their performance.

Thus, sources said, the investment fund has approached outside vote tabulator Broadridge Financial Solutions, a Lake Success, N.Y.-based financial services company that does securities clearing and processing, about whether those votes were correctly counted.

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It is not exactly news that influential major Yahoo investor Gordon Crawford was displeased with Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang, given the amount of money Crawford must have lost by now, backing the troubled Internet company.

What effect that will have on Yang, though, will probably be negligible–except for perhaps feeling badly, as he has great regard for Crawford–because I think he has never been more determined to stay put.

In fact, I predict a series of partnerships and high-profile announcements–starting this week ahead of the annual meeting–to give Yahoo and Yang an image of momentum he dearly needs.

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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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Microsoft’s not the only one backing billionaire investor Carl Icahn in his quest to unseat Yahoo’s leadership and board–major Yahoo investor Gordon Crawford told Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang in a face-to-face meeting last week that he was seriously considering voting against Yahoo in the looming proxy fight.

The troubled meeting that took place last Tuesday in Los Angeles between Capital Research Global Investors’ Crawford and Yang–accompanied by three Yahoo board members–could be seen as a portent of what is to come at the company’s annual meeting on August 1.

And those signs are definitely not good for Yahoo’s current leaders.

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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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You would have to have been under a rock not to have heard about the controversial piece in Vanity Fair magazine this month about the troubling personal and professional escapades of former President Bill Clinton since he left office.

And the reason for these disturbing developments, besides Clinton himself? The piece actually placed a good bit of the blame on Clinton’s close friend, grocery magnate and billionaire Ron Burkle, who also has been one of the key directors at Yahoo in its takeover fight with Microsoft.

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BoomTown’s most favorite part of the Yahoo takeover circus?

The dueling letters, of course! How the lovely practice of missives has fallen out of favor, as soulless emails have grown in use.

Well, not in the land of hostile takeovers!

So here’s our decoding of billionaire investor Carl Icahn’s thankfully brief letter to Yahoo’s Chairman Roy Bostock, informing Yahoo that he begins bombing in five minutes.

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