Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz is making the most substantive changes in her exec ranks since she did a massive restructuring of its staff in late February, according to sources close to the situation.

“She is continuing to clean the place up,” said one top exec about the moves, which are likely to be announced internally tomorrow.

Will these changes also extend to Yahoo’s board?

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Tony Conrad, CEO and co-founder of Sphere–the contextually relevant content engine AOL bought in the spring of 2008 for upward of $25 million–left the Time Warner online unit last month, several sources have told BoomTown in recent weeks.

But, in an effort by AOL’s CEO Tim Armstrong to hold onto entrepreneurial talent, Conrad has agreed to become “Special Advisor” to its AOL Ventures Unit.

Apparently, he is also mulling a new start-up and remains a VC too.

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The new MSN homepage debuts tonight and you would be completely correct in thinking the recipe Microsoft has cooked up to inform its design ethos–white, clean and hiply modern–has definite echoes of a certain longtime tech rival.

That would be Apple, of course, with a big dollop of Twitter and Facebook tossed in, and finished off with a generous sprinkling of Microsoft’s new Bing search service.

For those who care: The MSN butterfly logo remains, although it appears to have lost a lot of weight.

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Microsoft’s MSN is in preliminary talks with MySpace about using the social networking site’s music service, MySpace Music, to power music offerings on the giant portal.

While sources at both companies cautioned that the talks are still early, Microsoft–which has its own music site that it programs with original and partnered content–execs are interested in goosing its offering.

That’s because MSN Music consistently ranks substantially lower than other big online music properties in terms of traffic, while MySpace Music is always near the top.

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This morning, BoomTown will be onstage at California First Lady Maria Shriver’s well-known Women’s Conference in Long Beach, Calif., to moderate a panel titled “Changing the World Through the Web.”

The panelists include Hollywood actor/producer, Katalyst co-founder and Twitter demigod Ashton Kutcher; Facebook’s Randi Zuckerberg; Premal Shah of Kiva.org; and Blue State Digital’s Joe Rospars, who was also new media director for Barack Obama’s presidential campaign.

In other words, as a group, they are all either prettier, smarter or better for the planet than anything I have ginned up so far.

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Microsoft digital head Qi Lu took to the stage at the Web 2.0 Summit conference this morning, where he confirmed a “strategic” deal with Facebook and Twitter to integrate real-time information into Microsoft’s Bing search service.

BoomTown broke the news of those deals earlier today.

Top Microsoft exec Yusuf Mehdi did a demo of the new tweet-powered search for Twitter; the Facebook integration is to come later.

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For the past few months, the Huffington Post has been on a bit of a tear–both in terms of traffic gains and in its hiring of some big talent for key positions.

Now, those execs are focusing on using that consumer momentum to achieve what has eluded the Huffington Post thus far: Making some serious bank from the privately held news and media site.

Here’s a chat I had with new President and Chief Revenue Officer Greg Coleman about how he is aiming to do just that.

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This week, BoomTown has found an interesting chart to peruse about the loyalty people have for their smart-phone apps.

The takeaway for developers: Try to stay in Quadrant I!

In other words, Sally-Field-at-the-Oscars territory–it’s where they love you, they really love you.

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According to sources close to the situation, AOL has been busy selecting the board for the company, which is still set to spin itself off by year’s end–even as it slows down a decision on a new search deal with either current partner Google or a more emboldened Microsoft.

AOL is using Spencer Stuart in the search for directors, led by well-known headhunter Jim Citrin, sources said, and the company has already settled on several outside candidates.

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Former Bebo CEO Joanna Shields and Shine Group Chairman and CEO Elisabeth Murdoch have formed a content start-up to produce across media platforms, both online and offline, with a focus on social engagement, according to sources.

The new venture, which does not have a name, is being financially backed by both Shine and Shields.

Based in London, it will invest, develop and partner to create a variety of content offerings that also incorporate interactive and social networking elements.

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In the ongoing game of Internet exec musical chairs, Greg Coleman, who has been a top exec at both Yahoo and AOL, is poised to become president of the Huffington Post, as well as chief revenue officer, several sources said.

The deal for Coleman to come on board at the privately held online news site–which has grown significantly over the last year and just added well-known online media exec Eric Hippeau as CEO–came together only recently.

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Starting today and through next week, BoomTown is headed south down California’s lovely Highway 1 for as much of a vacation as I can possibly take.

Which is to say, just a week off from posting.

In other words: Partovis, Wenda, Owen, play nice! Yahoos, please hold your internal memos. And I hope Apple’s tablet is not delivered from on high this week while I relax beachside (it won’t be).

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It looks like the local market is heating up even more, with MSNBC.com announcing the acquisition of Chicago-based EveryBlock.

Sources said MSNBC.com–a joint venture of Microsoft and NBC Universal–paid several million dollars for the “hyper-local” information site, which is up and running in 15 cities, including New York, San Francisco, Seattle, Chicago and Boston.

In June, Time Warner online unit AOL paid about $10 million to buy Patch Media, a platform that does deeply localized coverage of communities on a range of topics.

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In an unusually robust collaboration using Facebook Connect, the Huffington Post is launching a feature on Monday called “HuffPost Social News,” which lets readers create a personalized social networking-like news page on the Huffington Post itself.

While the Huffington Post had already been using Facebook Connect since January–which allows readers of the site to log in using their Facebook identity to interact, which is mostly used to leave comments–this essentially takes Facebook Connect and puts it on steroids.

While the use of “social news” will be seen by some as simply a clever PR term, it is an interesting development for both the popular online news site and for the social networking giant.

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Facebook said today it is acquiring FriendFeed, the online content sharing site.

It is a logical fit for the social networking site, which has lagged behind microblogging kingpin, Twitter, in the real-time search and status game of perception in Silicon Valley. FriendFeed has also trailed well behind Twitter.

Terms were not disclosed, but it is likely be well under the $500 million Facebook once offered Twitter. In fact, sources estimate to me that the price was about $50 million in cash and stock.

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