Last week, an obviously jet lagged (and badly dressed, as some troglodyte commenters on Yahoo pointed out, but it was snowing!) BoomTown visited Henry Blodget at Yahoo’s Tech Ticker studio in Times Square in Manhattan to talk about a range of digital topics.

The video interviews included: How well Apple (AAPL) will do without Steve Jobs on deck; whether blogging reporting and professionalism standards need to rise; when Microsoft (MSFT), Google (GOOG), Yahoo (YHOO) and Time Warner (TWX) online unit AOL will stop dancing around various deals; and finally, how the recession is impacting Silicon Valley.

The short answers: Fine; yes; the anticipation is killing us; and badly, but tech will get through it with some pluck and baling wire!

But if you want a longer explanation, watch the videos.

Apple and Steve Jobs:

Blogging Standards:

A Deal for MicroHooGoogOl?:

The Recession’s Impact in Silicon Valley:

BoomTown extends apologies to the late Francis P. Church, who penned the original “Yes, Virginia, There Is a Santa Claus” editorial in the New York Sun on Sept. 21, 1897.

But with just a little rejiggering, his eloquent words work perfectly as a translation for Apple’s press release about its withdrawal from San Francisco’s Macworld and no keynote speech from Apple CEO Steve Jobs yesterday, which doubtlessly shook the Apple (AAPL) faithful to the core.

Oddly enough, it matches up surprisingly–and a little disturbingly–well.

Thus, here’s a little holiday inspiration to help those poor souls make it through these darkest of days:

Dear Editor:

I am 28 years old. Some of my little fanboys say there is no Steve Jobs at Macworld. My imaginary friend at AppleInsider says, ‘If you see it on BoomTown, it’s so.’ Please tell me the truth, is there a Steve Jobs?

–O’Hanlon, a geek in Virginia”

Apple wrote: CUPERTINO, California—December 16, 2008—Apple today announced that this year is the last year the company will exhibit at Macworld Expo. Philip Schiller, Apple’s senior vice president of Worldwide Product Marketing, will deliver the opening keynote for this year’s Macworld Conference & Expo, and it will be Apple’s last keynote at the show. The keynote address will be held at Moscone West on Tuesday, January 6, 2009 at 9:00 a.m. Macworld will be held at San Francisco’s Moscone Center January 5-9, 2009.

Translation: Virginia geek, your little friends are wrong (and they also have no life, which is self-evident). They have been affected by the skepticism of a skeptical age. They do not believe except they see. They think that nothing can be which is not comprehensible by their little minds. All minds, Virginia geek, whether they be men’s or children’s, are little. Not as elegantly tiny as the iPod Nano, but little nonetheless. In this great universe of ours, man is a mere insect, an ant, in his intellect as compared with the boundless world about him, as measured by the intelligence capable of grasping the whole of truth and knowledge.

Apple wrote: Apple is reaching more people in more ways than ever before, so like many companies, trade shows have become a very minor part of how Apple reaches its customers. The increasing popularity of Apple’s Retail Stores, which more than 3.5 million people visit every week, and the Apple.com website enable Apple to directly reach more than a hundred million customers around the world in innovative new ways.

Translation: Yes, Virginia geek, there is a Steve Jobs. He exists as certainly as love and generosity and devotion and the fabled touchscreen tablet Mac exist, and you know that they abound and give to your life its highest beauty and joy. Alas! how dreary would be the world if there were no Steve Jobs! It would be as dreary as if there were no amazingly great iPhones. There would be no childlike faith then, no poetry, no romance, no Pull My Finger app to make tolerable this existence. We should have no enjoyment, except in sense and sight. The eternal light with which childhood fills the world would be extinguished.

Apple wrote: Apple has been steadily scaling back on trade shows in recent years, including NAB, Macworld New York, Macworld Tokyo and Apple Expo in Paris.

Translation: Not believe in Steve Jobs! You might as well not believe in those admittedly freaky iPod shadow dancers. You might get your other pretend friend at MacRumors to hire men to watch in all the Chinese manufacturing factories on Christmas eve to catch Steve Jobs, but even if you did not see Steve Jobs ordering up new Mini desktop computers, what would that prove? Nobody sees Steve Jobs, but that is no sign that there is no Steve Jobs. The most real things in the world are those that neither children nor men can see. Did you ever see the iPod dancers dancing bizarrely on the lawn? Of course not, but that’s no proof that they are not there. Nobody can conceive or imagine all the wonders there are unseen and unseeable in the world.

Apple wrote: Apple ignited the personal computer revolution in the 1970s with the Apple II and reinvented the personal computer in the 1980s with the Macintosh. Today, Apple continues to lead the industry in innovation with its award-winning computers, OS X operating system and iLife and professional applications.

Translation: You tear apart the baby’s rattle and see what makes the noise inside, but there is a veil covering the unseen world which not the strongest man, nor even the united strength of all the strongest men that ever lived could tear apart. Only faith, poetry, love, romance, and the fact that the Mac guy vs. PC guy ads are pure genius can push aside that curtain and view and picture the supernal beauty and glory beyond. Is it all real? Ah, Virginia geek, in all this world there is nothing else real and abiding.

Apple wrote: Apple is also spearheading the digital media revolution with its iPod portable music and video players and iTunes online store, and has entered the mobile phone market with its revolutionary iPhone.

Translation: No Steve Jobs! Thank God! he lives and lives forever, despite Henry Blodget-fueled health rumors to the contrary. A thousand years from now, Virginia geek, nay 10 times 10,000 years from now, he will continue to make glad the heart of Mac fanboyhood.

Silicon Alley Insider’s Henry Blodget sounds an important horn again, namely, outlining in graphically ugly detail why graphical advertising-based online businesses are in big trouble.

In his post, Blodget shows some convincing graphs about past performance trends, including the years after the first bubble burst, from 2000 to 2002, which could augur what is to come for the display business.

That means uh-oh for companies like Yahoo (YHOO), CNET (CNET) and all the many start-ups like Facebook that are focused on display ads as their main revenue source.

Search advertising, he notes, seems to be in better shape to face off the stiff winds to come, although most of that money goes to the dominant Google (GOOG) in this arena.

Money quote:

How do we know online display ad spending will fall? Because by Q2 of this year it had already slowed sharply–to mid-single-digit growth–and that was before things even began to get bad.

According to IAB, the growth of non-search online ad spending (display, classifieds, lead-gen) was 14% in Q1 and 5% in Q2. 5%! That’s before the horrific fall-off in consumer spending in September. We’ll be lucky if non-search spending is up year-over-year in Q3. By Q4, it will almost certainly be negative.

Blodget is predicting a 10 percent decline next year and more in 2010, which is–considering that the entire economy is in trouble this time–probably conservative to me.

As to all those start-ups who have been telling me Advertising, of course as their business plan, it might be time to get another plan for what is to come.

Today, BoomTown will be spending the whole day–complete with lunch!–at Yahoo’s Sunnyvale, Calif., HQ to visit various and sundry execs in charge of a wide range of products.

Why? Well, as interested as I am in all of Yahoo’s always messy corporate and stock machinations, it’s just as important to get a handle on exactly what actual products and services the company is working on to get out of its quandary.

That’s important because Yahoo’s prospects have gotten so bogged down of late that even the possibility of an overpriced deal to buy Time Warner (TWX) online unit AOL, including its access business, whacked its stock yesterday.

Yahoo (YHOO) shares dropped to $12.65 yesterday, down 84 cent or 6.2 percent, partly due to the weaker market, but also because of the rumor that Yahoo was possibly going to pay too much for AOL.

That too much would be $8 to $10 billion.

The report by Silicon Alley Insider’s Henry Blodget, which included an odd Yahoo-labeled 18-wheeler semi-truck sighted near AOL, turned out to be not so solid and was later refuted by Blodget himself.

Nonetheless, it was a point well taken from the bad reaction that few think a merger is a good idea at anything other than low, low prices.

Why? Well, for one, the uncertain immediate future for the graphical ad business–big earners at AOL and Yahoo–going forward.

Other key issues: AOL’s growing weakness. Its revenue (half of which comes from the ISP business, by the way) and also its operating income are down.

Even the less stellar performance of Yahoo of late looks good in comparison.

Of course, the pair are still talking in that lugubrious way, as has been reported previously here.

And, if forced to bet, I would suspect there will be a deal done eventually.

But, as they say, god–or the devil, as the case may be–is in the details.

Until then, as I hope to see today at Yahoo, both it and AOL have got to get busy making their standalone businesses shine a lot better than they do now.

As has been copiously reported here and all over, Yahoo and AOL have been engaged in never-ending talks about a possible deal to merge their flagging Internet businesses.

Now, sources tell me, the circle of executives at both companies interfacing with each other has been widened, for purposes of due diligence.

That chit-chatting includes Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang, who has been in New York several times recently [UPDATE: But not yesterday, in a story I had previously linked to here]–where AOL parent, Time Warner, is located–to meet once with its CEO, Jeff Bewkes, and see if they can actually complete the merger.

Now, all this frantic activity does not mean a deal will necessarily be struck. In fact, in typical Yahoo style, it is going very slowly and that is never a good thing in dealmaking.

But it is this kind of ramped-up blabbery that has many at both companies predicting–hoping, really–that a deal will go through, sooner or later, as soon as Time Warner and Yahoo can agree on a price.

Or, more precisely, a percentage, since Yahoo’s stock price has been falling like a particularly sharp knife of late.

Sources said Yahoo does not want Time Warner (TWX) to have any more than 25 percent of the new company in a trade for AOL’s assets–although that figure would be slightly more if the media giant throws in some of that “Harry Potter”-generated cash into the deal kitty.

Yahoo (YHOO) management, sources said, also think its assets are of significantly better quality than AOL’s, and it still has that powerful–although declining–share in the lucrative search market.

Thus, it does not want to pay the $8 to $10 billion price Time Warner wants, and it should not either. (Here is a good analysis on the price issue by Silicon Alley Insider’s Henry Blodget.)

But Yahoo shares closed yesterday at a troubling $14.58, down 73 cents, or almost five percent.

That means its market valuation also declined by many billion dollars very quickly. It is now at $20.2 billion.

These profound stock drops, said several sources, could spur Yahoo to act before it gets even worse, which is why talks have been more frequent in recent weeks.

While not the best state of mind, panic is always a good motivator, and both companies are surely desperate to turbocharge themselves in the face of tough competition and avoidable management mishaps in recent years.

The hope? That together the pair can do better than they have separately–by combining their advertising, content and communications assets, which are among the largest in the world.

In addition, the “new” Yahoo would be able to make massive cost cuts, including layoffs, under the cover of integration and starting off with a clean slate.

So who would emerge more powerful in a new set-up–AOL or Yahoo?

Here’s a short cheat list:

Content:

AOL and Yahoo have a similar range of content assets, with big sites in all the classic categories, like news, financial, sports and lifestyles. Yahoo’s content head is Scott Moore, while AOL’s is Bill Wilson (both pictured here, left to right).

As I wrote yesterday, I expect that the more dominant Yahoo will rule, slashing and burning most of the AOL-branded properties, keeping only interesting newer brands like sports blog FanHouse, celeb blog TMZ and the Engadget, Tuaw and JoyStiq tech blogs.

And while former Microsoftie Moore is the likely head of this behemoth, don’t count on the very adept Wilson, who is known as a skilled corporate player at AOL, to stick around without a big role in this arena.

Communications:

Again, advantage Yahoo, which has bigger calendaring, email and instant messaging assets, an area once overwhelmingly dominated by AOL. That was then, of course.

Still, AOL’s communications tools are used by a huge audience worldwide and the pair together would be a powerhouse. So much so, in fact, that this might be the one major regulatory hurdle any deal would face.

Advertising:

Again, Yahoo would probably dominate, having just hired well-known former Microsoft exec Joanne Bradford to head up U.S. advertising sales. AOL’s top ad exec is Lynda Clarizio, a former lawyer who is considered dogged but much less experienced than Bradford. (Both are pictured here, right to left.)

And, Yahoo does have its search ad business, however weakening, and a stronger graphical ad business, even if the sector will be most under siege in the current down economy.

Plus, AOL’s Advertising.com, while a major ad network, is more of a business subject to bruising competition and squeezed margins.

Community:

Tapan Bhat (pictured here) now rules community at Yahoo, as well as its homepage, having just inherited it from the departing Brad Garlinghouse.

But AOL has a savvy and voluble exec in Joanna Shields, who came recently via its Bebo social-networking acquisition. While AOL woefully overpaid for Bebo and got played into thinking that other bidders were more interested than they actually were, it was Shields (pictured here) who essentially did that playing.

Sign her up for a top exec role in the combined company pronto!

In all seriousness, there is room for both in the newco, as both AOL and Yahoo seriously bite in the social-networking space. They will surely need a lot more than Bhat and Shields if they want to become true players in Web 2.0’s hottest and probably most important trend.

Engineering:

Yahoo. I do not need to explain this, do I?

Okay: AOL has always been incompetent in the technical arena, since its beginning days, compared with Silicon Valley companies like Yahoo.

All yours, Ash Patel!

Management:

Now, it is here that it gets interesting.

Most feel the push by Yang to do an AOL deal–and make no mistake, it is being pushed by him most of all–is due to increased pressure from his board, as well as major investors, who have had just about enough of his leadership.

“There is no way Jerry stays on as CEO in a newco,” said one source about Yang (pictured here). “He’ll be kicked upstairs as chairman, and I will think [President Sue] Decker will also have to go eventually, since there will be a lot of resistance if she is named CEO.”

But, said other sources, these major management changes will not happen immediately, if at all, as it is too distracting in the wake of a deal and ruins the positive “story” that both companies will surely want to spin.

And spin they will! (Go, Tricia! Go, Jill!)

And while he has a reputation for sharkish political skills, especially compared to Yahoo’s very diplomatic U.S. head, Hilary Schneider, expect AOL President Ron Grant to be an important part of the transition, since he is good–almost too good–at cutting costs.

Most expect his boss, AOL CEO Randy Falco, not to be part of the new company, thereby separating him and Grant, who are nicknamed “Smithers and Burns” at AOL, after “The Simpsons” creepy duo.

Most likely, there will be a search for a top-level CEO to take over the combined company–someone of the stature of New Corp.’s No. 2 Peter Chernin or eBay’s former leader Meg Whitman (except now, she is apparently Sen. John McCain’s pick for Treasury Secretary, if the Republican Presidential candidate were to win the election).

“If this has any chance of working out, the board has to push restart on the leadership,” said one person close to the situation, who notes that this deal is Yang’s last chance to truly impact the future of the company he co-founded and preserve its legacy. “Everyone gets that, even Jerry.”

But I think the idea that Yang would leave if there were to be a merger of Yahoo with AOL is wishful thinking on the part of his critics.

He appears tome to be very committed to seeing his vision of turning around Yahoo through.

And those who have counted him out always seem to be the ones who have been typically wrong, such as Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer and shareholder activist Carl Icahn.

Because, for all the turmoil at Yahoo, it’s Yang still calling the shots.

Although we did not raid the offices of Silicon Alley Insider and “steal” Peter Kafka, as the fanciful SAI kingpin Henry Blodget alleges–had it been a raid, BoomTown would have properly hog-tied Blodget so he could not make such spurious allegations!–it is true that SAI’s current managing editor (pictured here) will be coming to work for us at AllThingD.com soon.

Indeed, Walt Mossberg and I, as well as the rest of the ATD team, are thrilled that Peter is coming onboard at the end of October. He will write a daily still-unnamed new media blog from New York City.

Walt and I have long wanted to bring in someone located on the East Coast and away from the echo chamber that Silicon Valley can be, because we both feel the ongoing digital revolution is taking place over a number of key industries all over this country and the world.

Peter was our first choice and has been on my must-read list since I began this blog. He is sharp, witty, confident and has the kind of reporting and writing chops that we think are key to giving readers high-quality, standards-based content they can trust.

With extensive connections across the media, advertising, entertainment and tech sectors, Peter will be doing original reporting, getting scoops, doing interviews, making videos and providing much needed and clear-headed analysis that he is so well known for.

Peter has worked at SAI since mid-2007. The first hire at the start-up tech business analysis site, he has focused on enterprise and beat reporting, as well as breaking news.

Previously, he spent 10 years as a reporter and editor at Forbes and Forbes.com covering media and technology. There he launched two tech columns, coordinated the video staff and represented Forbes on industry panels and in TV appearances for CNN, BBC and CNBC.

Peter was also a staff reporter with City Business in Minneapolis and a staff writer for the Minnesota Real Estate Journal in Bloomington from 1993 to 1997. Earlier, he was a stringer with the Milwaukee Journal and the Milwaukee Sentinel in Madison, Wis.

He holds a bachelor of arts from the University of Wisconsin and resides in Brooklyn, NY.

More importantly, Peter is a newly-minted father, which should give him more practice in prolonged sleep deprivation needed for his blogging.

He will begin at ATD on Oct. 27.

Along with Walt and me, Peter joins senior news editor John Paczkowski, author of the rocking Digital Daily column, who formerly wrote the award-winning blog, “Good Morning Silicon Valley” at the San Jose Mercury News, and Wall Street Journal reporter Katherine Boehret, who writes the most excellent weekly Mossberg Solution column.

We hope you are as thrilled as we are that Peter is coming soon to the ATD site.

(And if you want a little taste of Peter’s work, here’s a post he did yesterday on an appearance by Time Warner’s Jeff Bewkes at the Goldman Sachs media conference and another on Rupert Murdoch of News Corp. [News Corp. is the owner of Dow Jones and of this Web site].)

I also wrote about this issue–Yahoo (YHOO) CEO Jerry Yang’s chances in his proxy fight with activist investor Carl Icahn–in a post called, “Who Has Stolen the Old Jerry Yang? (But No Need to Return Him!)”

With the sale of paidContent to the Guardian Media Group and the talks TechCrunch has been in with AOL, there certainly is a lot of hubbub around tech blogging sites of late.

One of the more interesting sites that has gone up over the last year is Silicon Alley Insider, which is headlined by former Internet analyst Henry Blodget (yes, that Henry Blodget).

But featuring Blodget’s speedy analysis of big trends, and news about Web and media players, with a sprinkling of reporting from its small team of writers, it’s been a sharp entrant into the sector.

Perhaps most compelling is that the site is backed by Web 1.0 entrepreneur Kevin Ryan, former CEO of DoubleClick (GOOG), who has nested SAI inside a network of new Web efforts at AlleyCorp.

Ryan founded what is essentially a Web 2.0 version of an incubator with former DoubleClick CTO Dwight Merriman.

While one can debate DoubleClick’s ads-in-your-digital-face strategy over its growth (it is now a division of Google), there is no question Ryan’s aggressive early efforts set the stage for the commercialization of the Web that continues today.

Now Ryan is trying to do the same for Web content on SAI. It just got a new small slug of funding; Blodget is also adding two new business sites to the mix.

What AlleyCorp all means is a bit eclectic. Ryan’s network of affiliated sites includes the content delivery network Panther Express, the 10gen apps development platform, a shopping engine called ShopWiki, the Music Nation independent music community and an online invitation-only, high-fashion sample sale site called Gilt Groupe.

Although SAI has a high profile, Gilt is perhaps the most intriguing of AlleyCorp’s sites since it is essentially an American copy of a highly successful European version.

Using the Web’s speed and the allure of an exclusive, limited sale of designer clothes, along with an Amazon-like shipping system, is perhaps the perfect mix of offline and online. It also has to potential to move into other e-commerce categories.

Here’s my video interview with Ryan about all this and more:

From Henry Blodget’s blog to Steve Ballmer’s brain…

But it’s not a bad theory, especially given the eerie quiet after the spate of very public Hamlet act by the Microsoft CEO yesterday. After telling The Wall Street Journal, “With the right circumstances it’ll happen. Without the right circumstances it won’t happen” today, this is how the New York Post characterized it:

“The frequently shouting, often sweaty Ballmer gave no indication as to the direction he was leaning, saying only that there were three paths the company could pursue: a friendly deal, an unfriendly deal or walking away.”

Well, that clears it up! (Not even one little bit.)

Actually, BoomTown posted earlier this week about informal talks already taking place:

According to sources close to both companies, there are informal discussions now taking place between Yahoo and Microsoft–via bankers, board members, shareholders and others close to both companies–to try to prevent a hostile takeover scenario or the sudden withdrawal of Microsoft’s offer.

So given Ballmer’s range of options this week seem wide enough to drive a semi through, perhaps that’s precisely what Yahoo is finally doing today, as its board meets, sources tell me, to discuss options.

Having successfully gotten the price talk up around the mid-$30s, after it was heading downward only last week and ladling on more Google (GOOG) scariness aimed at Microsoft yesterday–Fabulous online ad outsourcing deal coming! We swear! Google has magic powers to put a spell on you! Boooooo!–the bluffing by Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang would make the famous poker player Jerry Yang proud. (Both pictured here.)

So now, we wait and watch to see who wins this seemingly endless game of Silicon Valley Hold ‘Em.

So what prompted TechCrunch Editor Michael Arrington to pen a pugnacious piece on how blogs should not be raising so much venture capital and instead roll themselves into a “Dream Team,” with the unusual title of “More Bloggers Raising Money. Here Comes Politics. And Here Comes My Rant” yesterday?

Well, besides garnering Arrington a big dollop of traffic and attention, which is perhaps one of the blog entrepreneur’s most impressive talents, could it have something to do with the fact that he’s been busy recently talking to several well-known tech blogs about joining a roll-up organized by TechCrunch itself?

Or that he has told several people I spoke to that TechCrunch was considering doing this by raising as much as $15 million, giving it a $35 million valuation?

Reached by email last night, the voluble Arrington declined to comment.

Thus, a BoomTown translation of his TechCrunch piece is Job No. 1!

Arrington wrote: More blogs are raising venture capital, we’re hearing from people they’ve pitched. Newcomer Silicon Alley Insider is looking for a $3 million to $5 million round, if reports are correct. And paidContent is pitching for a second round in that same range (paidContent raised a round of “less than $1 million” in 2006). We’re also hearing that paidContent is trying to sell the company for $15 million or more, and just bail out with some spending money.

Translation: If that scalawag Henry Blodget thinks he can steal even an iota of my thunder, he better get ready to rumble. And while it is entirely incorrect that paidContent is selling itself or raising that much money, I love the smell of napalm in the morning and FUD in the blogosphere!

[BoomTown actually contacted paidContent's founder, Rafat Ali, who strongly reiterated that the site might raise a very small amount of money, nowhere close to $3 million to $5 million, and was not trying to sell the company at all.]

Arrington wrote: These rumored deals come as funding for bloggers is heating up in general. Just a month ago VentureBeat reported a $320,000 raise. In 2007 we saw Sugar Inc. ($10 million), GigaOm ($1 million), Xconomy, Blogher ($3.5 million) and The Huffington Post ($10 million) raise venture capital. That’s at least $25 million in 2007 invested in blogs and blog networks.

As far as we know, no significant investments were made in blogs in 2005. Weblogs, Inc. raised around $300,000 in 2004, but before they got around to spending it they had sold themselves to AOL (TWX) for an estimated $25 million. The investors, including Mark Cuban, received 15x on their initial investment.

Translation: And if that elfin Jason Calacanis can score, where’s MY payoff!?! I mean, I am the Jason Calacanis of Web 2.0, aren’t I!? The Mac Daddy of the widget economy! The Sultan of Zing! And did Calacanis ever have the chutzpah to pose for a picture lighting cigars with a handful of crisp, flaming Benjamins! I think not!

Arrington wrote: But apart from that first 2004 investment in Weblogs, Inc., there haven’t been any sales or liquidity events to suggest these investments will be a success. And back then blogging was a cakewalk. Most bloggers linked to each other constantly in a state of brotherly or sisterly love. No one was making any money or getting much attention, so for the most part people got along (with notable exceptions like engadget/gizmodo, who play to win).

Translation: The rain may never fall till after sundown./By eight, the morning fog must disappear./In short, there’s simply not/A more congenial spot/For happily-ever-aftering than here/In Camelot.

Arrington wrote: Those salad days are long gone. Writers suddenly want to be paid market wages, far above the $5 per post that they received two years ago. No, we’re talking a big salary, with benefits, and stock options. There went half your margins at least.

Translation: Wages?! Big salary!? Benefits!? Stock options!!!??? Half your margins!!? Who do these people think they are? The Web 2.0 shooting stars I write about incessantly in TechCrunch?

Arrington wrote: And writing good content is only half the battle. You have to figure out the complex, dynamic web of politics between bloggers and mainstream media before you post to know where to get support. And you’ll need support in the form of links from other prominent bloggers. An early push can take a post and make it a headline on TechMeme, which leads to page views and notice by sponsors. But since blogging is almost by definition a conversation between bloggers, fights tend to break out over emotional issues. Cliques develop. Can you count on them to support you down the road?

Translation: TechCrunch is from Mars, Valleywag is from Venus.

Arrington wrote: Personally, I’ve found that if a fight is necessary, fight clean and fight hard. Make it as bloody as possible and end it fast, with no loose ends dangling about. Leave no lingering emotional stone unturned. When everyone gets up and dusts themselves off, the issue should have been resolved one way or the other, and both sides should be happy to shake hands and tango another day, even if the handshaking is done privately. Those that aren’t capable of doing that tend to push themselves to the outskirts of the blogosphere, where their main job is to lob in attacks at random intervals, pursuing long-forgotten insults.

Translation: Bloody tango? Ouch. Ew. Yuk. And handshakes after that seems unhygienic. But let’s solider on. Aha! Another Broadway musical clue! The Jets are gonna have their day/Tonight/The Jets are gonna have their way/Tonight/The Puerto Ricans grumble/”Fair fight”/But if they start a rumble/We’ll rumble ‘em right.

Arrington wrote: So today, at best, I’d describe the blogosphere as a frontier town with no lawman (I mean, O’Reilly has a badge on, but no gun and no jail). You can do just about anything you want, but the politically savvy folks tend to arm themselves to the teeth and gang together to protect their property. Everyone else is in the middle of chaos, either fighting blindly for attention or politely asking (by linking early and linking often) if they can join the big Gang.

Translation: Wait, now the metaphor has shifted to the Old West? OK, we can keep up: Anything you can do, I can do better./I can do anything better than you./No, you can’t./Yes, I can./No, you can’t./Yes, I can./No, you can’t./Yes, I can, Yes, I can!

Arrington wrote: And now that the big guys in the Gang are being injected with capital, hiring tens of employees and expanding their businesses, they suddenly have a lot more to lose. Linking is never done just because. Rather, links are your political capital that must be expended appropriately. Don’t link at the right time and in two weeks when you’re pushing your own headline, you’ll wish you had. When you stop seeing other blogs as people you admire and want to discuss things with, and start to see them as your competitor, your brain shifts and you stop linking the way you had previously.

Translation: Hey, how did we get to Washington, D.C. and the inside of Sen. Hillary Clinton’s cerebral cortex in the midst of yet another compromised political calculation? It’s like we’re on “Fantastic Voyage”!

Arrington: Luckily, the newbie bloggers are there to fill in the links when they’re needed. That’s why, if you are a mid-level blogger, you are likely courted by the bigger blogs looking to get your support. If you know what’s going on and are willing to play the game, you can see your blog rise very, very quickly. Choose the wrong blog, though, and you may find yourself alone and lonely in your forgotten blog.

As an aside, when I see a young but promising blogger, I’ll start linking to him or her constantly to build them up (others, like Winer, Scoble, Jarvis and Rubel did that for me). The goal is to help move them up to a position of influence as quickly as possible. The more non-crazy influencers in the game, the easier it is to ignore the noise generators and the better the overall conversation becomes. Over the last year, for example, Silicon Alley Insider, CenterNetworks, LouisGray and Mathew Ingram I’ve been pushing hard. These guys rarely agree with me, but when they talk I listen because they’ve put some thought into what they are saying and how they are saying it. Those guys haven’t hit the big politics yet, and tend to link out a lot to everyone. They are a very important part of the ecosystem–pushing their link votes toward stories they find interesting and helping those other bloggers get headlines and maintain their place in the Gang.

Translation: Next stop, the stylings of Mr. Michael Corleone! There are many things my father taught me here in this room. He taught me: keep your friends close, but your enemies closer.

Arrington wrote: So what’s the point of this rant? Well, all this money flowing into the blogosphere is disrupting the complicated and emotional, but also stable way things are done. Bloggers with money and employees and health care programs and boards of directors and shareholders have to play politics with a whole new group of people, splitting them away from what they do best–Fighting the Blog War. Their behavior can become erratic as they have to decide to tone down their writing to get a certain type of sponsor on board, which in turn lets them make payroll. Investors want to see growth, so more and more blogs are launched, but perhaps without the right talent to grow it into a long-term business.

If a VC hands you a check, their intention is not to hang around for 20 years while you build a nice lifestyle business for yourself. What they want to see is an exit, preferably a 10x or higher exit, within 3 to 4 years. But something tells me that few of these networks are going to be able to grow quite as easily as they think and reach those liquidity events. The talent is, increasingly, locked up. Even when new talent is discovered or trained, every niche has serious heavyweights already there with page views and advertising dollars to back them up for a long fight.

Translation: Finally, the point! Which is: Assimilate or Die!

Arrington wrote: At some point it’s going to become painfully obvious that the only way to get to a massive valuation is for the top talent to band together in a company where they each have an equity stake and therefore a reason to work all night on that next great story. They’ll each have their own space to stretch their legs and let their personality run around a little. Someone needs to pony up a big round of financing around an existing blog, or perhaps a new entity, and then start rolling them up into a big fat CNET-crushing $200 million/year in revenue business.

Translation: This is my sneaky but clever way of floating a trial balloon of an effort I am already trying to organize. The existing blog? Mine! The new entity? Run by me! The $200 million a year? Mine, again! Now, enough about me–what do you think of me?

Arrington wrote: It can happen. In fact it’s almost certainly going to happen. But if you bloggers go out there and raise $3 million to $5 million on say a $10 million valuation, you’ve just priced yourself out of the roll-up. That option will be closed to you, and you’ll be stuck out in the cold, taking life-support payments from Federated Media or another ad network, and having a generally awful time running your business.

Translation: Luca Brasi sleeps with the fishes.

Arrington wrote: What I’d like to see, and even be a part of, is the blogger equivalent to the 1992 U.S. Men’s Basketball Dream Team. That team could take CNET apart in a year, hire the best of the survivors there, and then move on to bigger prey.

Translation: After we are done bloody-tangoing with Neil Ashe at CNET (CNET), Owen Thomas and his evil overlord Nick Denton better sleep with one eye open.

Arrington wrote: Just the thought of being a part of something like that has held us back from raising any outside capital at all. I believe we have the beginning of a team that can play a role in this new Dream Team.

So think twice before taking that venture money, guys. You may be shutting more doors of opportunity than you realize.

Translation: By saying we have held back from raising any outside capital at all, what I really mean to say is that I am going to do it.

Resistance is futile.

Silicon Alley Insider’s Henry Blodget and I talk about what it will take to get Dell (DELL) moving–innovation–in this video on Yahoo’s Tech Ticker.

Here’s the video:

Silicon Alley Insider’s Henry Blodget and I talk about the current situation on Yahoo’s Tech Ticker video.

(Kudos to Yahoo for letting me be tough on the company’s strategy and executives on its own Web site.)

Here’s the video:

Our diagnosis: Not crazy, but iconoclastic.

Here’s the video:

But not today.

That has not stopped the speculation from flying all over the place–mostly due, I think, to the fact that no one can exactly figure out what either party is going to do to get its game on again in the Web space.

Thus, a merger! Of course!

Of course not, of course.

But that did not stop the latest rumor–floated by that professional rumor-floater Henry Blodget on his Silicon Alley Insider blog last week just as we entered into the news doldrums of Thanksgiving–from raising the shares of Yahoo for a bit.

Blodget posited in his post on the recent–and, let me say, borderline kooky–rumblings from a spate of Microsoft execs, led by borderline-kooky-rumbler-in-chief Steve Ballmer, about various Web companies.

(Often, for wont of an Internet strategy of its own, Microsoft higher-ups can often be found pooh-poohing others’ efforts or important online trends Microsoft missed completely.)

You will recall, of course, it was Ballmer who insulted Facebook (see my post here) just weeks before handing over a huge sack of investment dough to the hot social network.

Of course, Microsoft execs, like Ballmer as well as ad head Kevin Johnson, have also been saying their goal was to be in the top two spots in the online ad space for a while now.

Johnson, for example, recently said that the company wanted to triple its search share to 30% and jack up its small 6% online ad share to 40%.

It’s nice to have dreams!

And since No. 1 is currently occupied by the heretofore unassailable Google, it’s an open secret that Microsoft covets the market share of No. 2 Yahoo.

It’s also no secret that Yahoo and Microsoft have been talking for a long time now about a variety of ways they could partner, especially since Yahoo was once Microsoft’s principal ad partner, to take on the Google juggernaut.

A few years ago, for example, former Yahoo CEO Terry Semel journeyed to see Ballmer at Microsoft’s HQ in Redmond, Wash., to talk about ways to join forces, given Yahoo’s eroding second spot and Microsoft’s distant No. 3 position.

Ballmer reportedly saw this play by Semel as a weakness on Yahoo’s part instead of an opportunity and it never happened. But it’s clear that the only way for Microsoft to get to No. 2 is to buy its way there.

Hence Yahoo.

“Buying Yahoo would give Microsoft 30% search share instantly. It would also boost Microsoft’s ad share close to that 40% goal,” wrote Blodget.

Smartly, Blodget floats the rumor and then slaps it down, noting correctly that “a Microsoft acquisition of Yahoo would be disastrous for Yahoo.”

He’s right about that, of course, because it would only suck Yahoo into a nightmare of merger distraction the already distracted company does not need, rather than giving it more heft to battle Google in the ad space.

In addition, for all its troubles (and we have noted those here many times), Yahoo’s current CEO Jerry Yang has a real chance, if he employs a little more boldness, to revive the company and whip it into better shape than it has been in of late.

And, if that does not work, Yang still can sell it off later.

Blodget does note that if Microsoft made a lightning-fast, cash-rich Rupert-Murdoch-takes-Dow-Jones (owner of this site!) offer on Yahoo, it could all be done quickly.

But not, as I said, today.

Please see this disclosure related to me and Google.

At first, it was all business when Chernin said while he had a “healthy” level of respect and paranoia for Facebook–which is the hot-on-its-heels-second social network breathing down the neck of News Corp.-owned MySpace–that in most countries MySpace continued to set the growth pace.

And then Chernin, who is quite a bit sassier in person, showed a little bit of that humor when he noted: “Assuming we’re [MySpace] worth significantly more than they are, I think they’re worth at least $15 billion.”

That’s right, MySpace, You’re No. 1 and don’t let that Harvard/Silicon Valley geek make that look like No. 23!

Sounds like Chernin has joined the Mark Zuckerberg School of Pick-a-Silly-Number-out-of-the-Air Mathematics Club, which we at BoomTown look upon with such respect!

OK, using that logic, let me sharpen up my pencil here and make an estimate of the worth of this News Corp.-owned site, AllThingsD.com.

Hmm. Hmmm. Throwing in a few free subscriptions to the print Wall Street Journal, a stale box of Walt Mossberg’s Cohibas and noodling over Henry Blodget’s latest riff on someone else’s asinine analysis that TechCrunch is worth $100 million, we are prepared to declare that ATD is worth $654 and some change John Paczkowski has in his pocket.

Why so low? You might say lack of self-esteem. We’d say it’s our lack of lack of shame.

In any case, if you want to hear him talk more, I got to interview Chernin at D5 this year, where we talked about MySpace and the social-networking business, as well as other issues like the then-still-undone deal to buy Dow Jones.

See here: