My favorite anecdote collected so far about new Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz is the one in which she called together two separate groups of execs who were direct reports of former Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang and President Sue Decker.

Bartz, several sources recounted, went around the table and asked them one by one what they actually did, making various outspoken comments along the way about management.

Stories like this about Bartz’s take-charge style have been ricocheting through Yahoo as she navigates the troubled company to come up with a plan to revive it.

But of all the various things many employees I have talked to hope she does first is dump the “matrix” organizational structure that many at Yahoo have grown to despise.

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Well, you knew the kids would eventually get tired of throwing all those sheep and posting drunken pictures of themselves.

Now comes a more sober–but still utterly self-absorbed–new craze on social-networking sites, most especially Facebook of late.

It’s called “25 Random Things.” Once you’ve been tagged, you are supposed to write a note with 25 random things, facts, habits, or goals about you. At the end, choose 25 people to be tagged.

I suddenly miss SuperPoking.

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Twitter–the non-money-making start-up that lets a user update status in a pithy manner–had a banner day last week with the inauguration of President Barack Obama, which followed all the tweets about the successful airline crash in the Hudson River in Manhattan, which came after…well, you get the point.

That kind of frenetic news cycle has kept Twitter growing quickly, and apparently is setting the stage for raising a big new round of funding.

But before the valuation becomes so rich as to make Twitter completely impossible to buy by anyone, the company might want to reconsider what it considered and abandoned late last year, which was an acquisition of Twitter by Facebook.

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Here’s the video of Web 2.0 Summit host John Battelle interviewing Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg a few weeks ago, in which Battelle floated a rumor that the social-networking site might be interested in buying Twitter.

If you want to see the exchange, it starts at 22:15 minutes, when Battelle asks: “Is Twitter just a feature of Facebook?”

Awkwardness ensues from there until 23:07 minutes, with no direct question about an actual acquisition effort asked–getting Zuckerberg out of fibbing, since talks between the pair were then going on.

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About three weeks ago, Facebook and Twitter ended several weeks of serious talks, in which Facebook was offering to acquire Twitter for $500 million of its stock, which also included a cash component. While rumors of Facebook’s interest were brought up in an interview with Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg at the Web 2.0 Summit a few weeks ago, some shot down the idea as silly. Quite incorrectly, as it turns out, since top execs at both Facebook and Twitter were right then at the tail end of discussions, which were initiated by the privately held Facebook in mid-October, about bringing the two together. Those talks, sources on both sides said, are now over. So why did the deal break down?

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Yesterday, BoomTown opined that Microsoft was nearing a decision on who would become the head of its digital efforts.

And, according to several sources and some puzzling by me–if the deal can be sealed–I think that Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer’s top choice is former Yahoo tech star Qi Lu.

If Ballmer manages to pull off the hire of Lu–on the heels of already grabbing another top Yahoo search exec, Sean Suchter, which I posted on yesterday–the aggressive exec could almost be bypassing a Yahoo search partnership he has long sought by sucking the talent right out of the place instead.

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Microsoft officially rolled out its next version of its Windows Live Services tonight, with a heavy emphasis on socializing its online offerings and giving users better tools to share all sorts of information from across the Web within them.

Microsoft said the changes–similar to those made by Yahoo and AOL recently–would “begin rolling out to customers in the U.S. over the coming weeks and will be made available globally in 54 countries and in 48 languages by early 2009.”

You might call this the “Facebooking” of Windows Live, which is the brand name for Microsoft’s communications and other related online services aimed at consumers, especially because the much anticipated changes also include a new profile and a “What’s New” feed.

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On Wednesday, the annual Web 2.0 Summit kicks off in San Francisco.

The lineup is particularly good this year and it is also a perfect time to take the temperature of the Internet’s movers and shakers, given all the hubbub of late with the weak economy.

Speakers will include bicycle champ Lance Armstrong, Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang, former VP Al Gore, Google.org head Larry Brilliant, Paul Otellini of Intel and Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg, among others.

But, best of all for BoomTown, singer Lionel Richie will be performing at a MySpace Music party.

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We’re posting all the interviews from the sixth D: All Things Digital conference that took place in late May.

Here’s Part 4 of 4 of an interview I did with Facebook Founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg and COO Sheryl Sandberg.

The social-networking site has had quite a year as the hottest and most hyped on the Web 2.0 landscape. With fast growth and still-questionable monetization power, where Facebook is going will be a journey plenty will be paying attention to.

In this video, Zuckerberg and Sandberg take questions from the audience about privacy, older users, needed Facebook applications, how open its platform should be, data protection, the dilemma of too many Facebook friends and the importance of search.

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We’re posting all the interviews from the sixth D: All Things Digital conference that took place in late May.

Here’s Part 3 of 4 of an interview I did with Facebook Founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg and COO Sheryl Sandberg.

The social-networking site has had quite a year as the hottest and most hyped on the Web 2.0 landscape. With fast growth and still-questionable monetization power, where Facebook is going will be a journey plenty will be paying attention to.

In this video, Zuckerberg and Sandberg talk about why Facebook is a technology rather than a media company, as well as how to make money via advertising, how change is affecting the young company, the state of its relationship with both Google and Microsoft, whether Facebook should sell or go the IPO route, and where the company will be in five years.

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We’re posting all the interviews from the sixth D: All Things Digital conference that took place in late May.

Here’s Part 2 of 4 of an interview I did with Facebook Founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg and COO Sheryl Sandberg.

The social-networking site has had quite a year as the hottest and most hyped on the Web 2.0 landscape. With fast growth and still-questionable monetization power, where Facebook is going will be a journey plenty will be paying attention to.

In this video, Zuckerberg talks even more about sharing information, explains why he wants to stay CEO, discusses mistakes like Beacon and successes like Facebook’s open platform, and defends widgets. Meanwhile, Sandberg talks about why she came to Facebook from Google, compares widget popularity to Elvis fans and talks about where ad spending is going online (think virtual ice cream cones).

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Here’s one certainty in the hubbub that has resulted in the wake of the departure of high-profile exec Ben Ling from Facebook last week: COO Sheryl Sandberg is definitely not responsible for the melting of the polar ice caps.

That’s the joking question–Was global warming Sandberg’s fault too?–that was asked at a staff meeting at the social networking start-up last Friday afternoon, after the news of Ling’s departure, on the heels of some other previous employee exits, suddenly morphed into a series of increasingly vituperative posts on the Valleywag tech gossip site that all centered on what blogger Owen Thomas called Sandberg’s “reign of terror” at Facebook.

The truth of the situation, though, is actually a lot more interesting.

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We’re posting all the interviews from the sixth D: All Things Digital conference that took place in late May.

Here’s Part 1 of 4 of an interview I did with Facebook Founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg and COO Sheryl Sandberg.

The social-networking site has had quite a year, as the hottest and most hyped of the Web 2.0 landscape. With fast growth and still-questionable monetization power, where Facebook is going will be a journey plenty will be paying attention to.

In this video, I get a Princess Phone from Zuckerberg and Sandberg and apologize to Zuckerberg about calling him “toddler CEO.” Then Zuckerberg talks about sharing information, learning to develop by hacking on AOL, his time at Harvard University, and Sandberg talks about her time at Harvard, in the Clinton administration and at Google.

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BoomTown simply cannot resist the irresistible urge to compare the gripping quest for gold by Olympic rowers Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss with their more lackluster effort to grab a piece of Facebook via a lawsuit.

In an unlikely upset in the semifinal of the men’s pairs, the hunky brothers placed second and will go on to the finals on Saturday.

Apparently, the Winklevosses actually have some magical come-from-behind in them.

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According to sources, Facebook is moving to eliminate its observer status slot from its board. That position is currently held by Greylock Partners David Sze.

The reasons might be as simple as the fact that as Facebook grows, it needs a more formal board process, especially as it prepares for a public offering sometime in the future.

In that case, the observer slot might be eliminated, as the company moves to add more members to the board.

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