Jim Bankoff–the well-regarded former AOL exec who runs an online sports news network called SB Nation–has nabbed $7 million in funding from investors, including Comcast Interactive Capital, said sources.

People familiar with the situation said SB Nation’s post-investment valuation, after this second round, will be $30 million and also include previous investors, such as Accel Partners and Allen & Co.

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BoomTown is at the lovely Santa Clara Marriott in Silicon Valley at the 2009 Yahoo annual meeting, liveblogging the event, which should be spectacularly dull.

Here is a rundown of what went on.

10:05 am: The meeting kicks off with a little video presentation with various and sundry television talking heads saying “Yahoo” in quick succession.

Actually, this was the year during which all of those hype-magnets repeated “Twitter” so many times that it has began to make my ears bleed.

But I like the spirit of trying to make Yahoo seem relevant and innovative again.

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Let’s be honest–even with the sassy stylings of CEO Carol Bartz, who will be appearing at her first Yahoo annual meeting this morning–there are few of these affairs that are even remotely exciting.

Last year’s Yahoo meeting did have a frisson of possibility, since billionaire investor Carl Icahn and Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer were fixing to put the double squeeze on the board and, especially, its then-CEO and co-founder Jerry Yang. Also, major Yahoo shareholders threatened a revolt.

But, none of that panned out. Thus, this year is likely to be a snoozer in comparison.

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Even in the midst of a tough investing environment, Silicon Valley legend and serial entrepreneur Marc Andreessen and his longtime investing partner, Ben Horowitz, have completed the raising of his new venture fund, according to the numerous sources close to the situation, and it is oversubscribed.

Sources said the fund–which was nicknamed “Project A,” but is actually called Andreessen Horowitz–will be $300 million. It is $50 million over the $250 million he and Horowitz had planned.

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Because a lot of tech’s big shots are converging on our seventh D: All Things Digital conference, BoomTown managed to grab Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg and Alexander Tamas, one of the key execs of the social-networking site’s newest megainvestor, Digital Sky Technologies.

Here’s my video interview with them about the $200 million that the Moscow- and London-based DST announced today that it had invested in Facebook, at a $10 billion valuation.

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Was it more than a month ago that the Google was rumored to be in “late-stage negotiations to acquire Twitter”?

Not so much late-stage, I guess. So, I guess it should come as no surprise that it was time to fob yet another rumor that yet another moneybags of a company–this time, Apple–is in “late-stage negotiations to buy Twitter.”

But despite very serious interest in the hot microblogging service by every company that can afford considering such a thing, including Apple, getting across that late-stage line would require major investors in the hot start-up to be very involved, and they are not as yet.

So, rather than be on the edge of your seat about all these endless, alleged late-stage high jinks, here is a five-step list to cut out and keep when the questionable rumors of “late-stage negotiations” with Microsoft, News Corp., Verizon, Cisco and more inevitably show up.

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Last week, StumbleUpon announced it was buying itself out of its much-vaunted previous corporate buyout, by being born again as an “investor-baked start-up.”

The Canadian-born social-bookmarking company, which was launched earlier, came to the Bay area in 2006 and got some fancy venture investors and soon became a traffic-generating hit.

Then StumbleUpon was bought by eBay two years ago for $75 million in one of Web 2.0’s high points.

End of a fairy tale? Um, nope.

Here’s CEO and co-founder Garrett Camp, talking to BoomTown in a video interview about it all.

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As everyone knows by this morning, Spot Runner–the heavily-funded and once-hyped online-offline advertising agency–is being sued by one of its more prominent investors.

Ad behemoth WPP essentially paints an ugly picture of Spot Runner as the Bernie Madoff of Web 2.0.

It is alleging in a lawsuit that Spot Runner, in a “pump and dump” scheme, sold over $54 million in “secondary” shares to line its own pockets without telling WPP much, all while losing money, running out of funding and not building a sustainable business.

Here’s the background and also an interview BoomTown did with CEO and co-founder Nick Grouf in better days.

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Internet navigation browser plug-in maker Cooliris, which lets users “see” the Web in a more visual manner, has gotten $15.5 million in additional funding from its investors.

The new round includes Kleiner Perkins, DAG Ventures, the Westly Group and T-Mobile’s T-Ventures, bringing its total funding to $18.5 million.

The Palo Alto, Calif.-based start-up is also releasing out of beta the latest upgrade to its 3-D “Wall” software, which displays more online content and information from around the Web, including from social-networking services like Facebook, shopping sites and from a user’s own hard drive.

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Former top Yahoo advertising exec David Karnstedt, who has been parked at a Silicon Valley venture firm since he left the company, has been named president and CEO of Efficient Frontier.

Interestingly, another former Yahoo exec, Ellen Siminoff, has also been CEO at the Sunnyvale, Calif.-based search engine marketing firm. She is now chairman.

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Facebook CFO Gideon Yu is leaving Facebook, as the company announced internally today that it was replacing him and searching for a new CFO on the path to an eventual IPO.

The Wall Street Journal also reported the news, noting that the huge social-networking start-up was looking for a CFO with “public company experience.”

But several sources within the company said the departure was more due to an increasingly strained relationship between Yu and Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg over strategic disagreements about a wide range of issues, from increasing ad revenue to fund-raising discussions with investors.

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Early this morning, Bloomberg reported that regulators are looking into Apple’s disclosures about the health–or lack thereof–of its iconic CEO Steve Jobs.

And while BoomTown has railed against the creepy obsession the media have had with Jobs’s health and the publishing of rumors and innuendos about it as fact without a whole lot of reporting, I hope it is true.

It is also entirely appropriate that the government agency charged with keeping an eye on public companies does investigate–at the very least, to get the story right.

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The stock seesaw for Yahoo–fueled this time by a story in The Wall Street Journal that claimed that former AOL CEO Jon Miller was buttonholing private equity firms for money to buy the Internet giant–continues.

Yahoo shares rose seven percent due to the report, to $11.50, up 76 cents.

Unfortunately for everyone but stock manipulators, the Journal story had a lot of problems, including the highly pertinent fact that Miller has not been actively working on such a deal with any more effort that he had been over the last six months.

“Nothing is different now than it was last week, or even months ago,” said one person close to the situation.

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With a $10 stock price, the turning down of Microsoft’s $31 a share offer, a collapsed search ad deal with Google, fleeing execs and bad news aplenty, it’s easy to blame Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang and call for his ouster.

After all, the buck does stop with him.

Or does it? Because, to my mind, if there is anyone to cast stones at in the ongoing crisis at Yahoo, BoomTown would have to toss a large boulder in the direction of the company’s incredibly shrinking board.

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Here’s a video of star VC John Doerr reciting his 10 tips for start-ups to follow in the economic downturn, dispensed at a VentureBeat roundtable event on the downturn yesterday.

And the Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers VC didn’t need a massive, noisy PowerPoint like Sequoia Capital to make his quick and clear points, which he delivered in four minutes flat.

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