What’s in a name?

Well, a lot, actually, and BoomTown supposes it would be just like those Pacific Northwest types at Microsoft to name the new version of its search service “Bing,” presumably after the cherry that is a big product in the company’s home state.

That moniker is one of many being bandied about in a group the software giant could be considering for the big relaunch of its search service, which it has been prepping.

But Microsoft should forget the fruity metaphor, also rename its MSN online service “Bada” and use this motto: “Bada Bing, Bada Boom, Notta Bada Algorithm!”

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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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Here’s an interesting irony–Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz will have her 99th day in office on the very one that the Internet giant will announce its first-quarter earnings: April 21, 2009 at 2 p.m. PST.

Technically, it will mean that she has been running Yahoo for 100 days, a time when most administrations get their first evaluation.

Thus, if it’s good enough for President Obama, it’s good enough for Bartz!

While most expect the results for the quarter to be weak, due to the econalypse, the overall verdict from BoomTown’s needling of Yahoos to give me info on their new leader recently: Love, love, love Bartz’s innate decisiveness, and wanting more of the same.

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This weekend on Twitter, someone paid BoomTown a compliment of a sort: “I read you because you are a solid fact-based reporter with a Miss Cleo intuition ”

Yipes, because of being fact-based and since I had brought her up in an originating tweet, I had to point out that the well-known-via-infomercials Psychic Friends Network shaman turned out to be a bit of a fraud, although she’s always entertaining, with her jaunty Jamaican accent (she was not, of course, from there).

Nonetheless, it got me thinking about how I would predict what would result from all the deal-making that is suddenly in the air, after six months of ennui from the current economic downturn.

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Former Google exec Tim Armstrong officially started his job as new AOL chairman and CEO today and sent out a hello-there memo to the troops.

According to Armstrong, he is poised to “bring back the magic of AOL.”

BoomTown loves magic tricks!

Armstrong is also promising to look closely at AOL over the next 100 days, which “will end in Dulles with an All-Hands meeting in mid-July.”

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Dear Elliot Schrage:

BoomTown wins.

As Sheryl knows from experience, don’t mess with the Swish. Or Texas. Or Zohan.

Just don’t mess.

For everyone else, here is the entire memo that Facebook sent out this week to its staff about the departure of CFO Gideon Yu and the financial status of the social-networking start-up, which some had been questioning.

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The undoing of previous management of AOL continues at the Time Warner online unit with even more reorganization of its Platform-A advertising unit.

Sources said the changes are part of a simplifying of the division, one of three at AOL (the others are communications and content).

Platform-A head Greg Coleman penned a memo about the changes, which went out to staff this morning and is below in its entirety.

Headline: Execs moving in and out of musical chairs and fewer cooks in the kitchen, or “more people on the street selling.”

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Here are three screenshots of Microsoft’s internal test of a new search product called Kumo.

The long expected upgrade to Live Search from Microsoft is being tested for a public rollout later this year.

Sources at Microsoft said the company has not yet decided whether it will keep the Kumo name, which sounds a little too much like that crazy dog from the Stephen King novel.

Maybe that’s the point, at least related to Google. (Chomp!)

In Japanese, actually, Kumo has two definitions–cloud and spider.

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Another Web company, another management restructuring!

Yahoo reorg fever struck AOL today too, as its advertising head, Greg Coleman (pictured here), moved the exec chairs around his domain at AOL’s Platform-A unit.

Coleman–who actually once was Yahoo’s sales head before taking the new gig at the Time Warner online unit earlier this month–is replacing some execs and elevating others.

You know the drill!

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Goodness gracious, make it stop!

You must know by now how much BoomTown loves internal Yahoo memos. But this is getting ridiculous.

It’s been like a flash flood after a long drought at Sunnyvale HQ today, as Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz turns on the firehose of a whole lot of communicating.

“I know you guys have reorg fatigue,” wrote Bartz in the latest email to employees about the management reorganization finally announced this morning.

Also memo fatigue at All Things Digital HQ, if you can believe it.

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Along with Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz’s external email earlier today, the company also outlined the new management structure in another memo.

It’s pretty much what BoomTown has been reporting all week. Top-down simplification, which is another word for: Carol rules over Yahoo.

CTO Ari Balogh gets a lot of stuff as new head of products, and so does U.S. head Hilary Schneider, including mobile, as EVP of North American Region. Bot report to Bartz.

Here’s the entire memo of Yahoo’s new organization.

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Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz declared reorg today on the company’s corporate blog, Yodel Anecdotal.
Here is her entire memo:
Getting our house in order
Posted February 26th, 2009 at 9:16 am by Carol Bartz, CEO
A month and a half in the saddle and today I have the perfect excuse to get blogging.
I’ve been on a whirlwind tour for [...]

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Yahoo’s not the only place BoomTown gets internal memos from!

Here’s two corporate missive about big changes in AOL’s international–such that it is–unit, as the head–Maneesh Dhir (pictured here)–moves on.

The longtime staffer at the Time Warner unit will “return to his entrepreneurial roots,” according to a memo from AOL CEO Randy Falco below.

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There’s no question Yahoo owes longtime veteran exec Ash Patel a lot, as it has grown into a global Internet behemoth.

Since getting to the company in 1996–which essentially means he was present at the creation–Patel has pretty much been involved in all of Yahoo’s well-known consumer products.

But, because of his impact and longevity, Patel has also become a symbol for many inside Yahoo right now, who mention him most often in the should-he-stay-or-should-he-go-now debates about who should lead the company into the future.

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On Friday, BoomTown first reported that new Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz is likely to be announcing a sweeping new management structure soon, which can only mean the possibility that some existing top execs are likely to be broomed out, even as some new ones are ushered in.

“This is going to be a full-scale peanut butter recall,” joked one exec, referring to the infamous “Peanut Butter Manifesto,” which was sent around the company several years ago by former exec Brad Garlinghouse. It laid bare the problems at Yahoo, most especially a decided lack of decision-making and lugubrious levels of managers.

Here is the sticky skinny.

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