Last year, Yahoo EVP Hilary Schneider and then-Media Group head Scott Moore had a summery seaside dinner with Demand Media co-founder and CEO Richard Rosenblatt in Santa Monica, Calif., right around the corner from the online publishing company’s HQ.

While many speculated that Yahoo could be doing some friendly kibitzing to get a sense of where the eclectic network of general- and special-interest sites was headed, for a possible acquisition, nothing came of it.

But now, a year later, with recent indications that a major strategy for new CEO Carol Bartz will finally follow through on making Yahoo’s massive but disparate service more social, especially in its content offerings, several sources close to the company tell me another look-see at Demand is likelier than ever.

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When I was in Manhattan recently, I made a lovely visit to the world HQ of Andy Plesser’s Beet.TV, where we discussed where online video is going. This is a big topic for BoomTown this year because the Web is clearly becoming a video-heavy medium. And the ever-affable Plesser does a solid job covering it. This past week, for example, he looked into everything from the Web sites of the Presidential candidates to Reuters’s video reporting of the escalating fighting in the South Ossetian town of Megvrekisi to a Canadian-video sharing site.

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Tonight, The Wall Street Journal and Reuters had nearly identical stories, noting that Microsoft was interested in buying Yahoo’s search business, which–oh, we bloggers are so touchy when we don’t get even a smidgen of credit, aren’t we?–BoomTown speculated was just what the software giant was interested in yesterday.

To be fair, both Reuters’ and The Journal’s reports make such a plan by Microsoft even more definitive and both have interesting new details, which are intriguing.

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No, not as the conquering hero of Yahoo yet, but to give a talk to students at Stanford University about topics Gates often focuses on.

In a speech titled “On Software, Innovation, Entrepreneurship and Giving Back,” Gates will address the young folks gathered tomorrow afternoon at Stanford’s Memorial Auditorium, as well as to a contingent of media. And he will do a question-and-answer session with only students.

A temporarily muted BoomTown will be there, so here’s a shameless offer to any hoodie-wearing student: Free latte to anyone who asks Gates about the Yahoo bid.

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With the deal for News Corp. to buy Dow Jones (owner of this site) for $5 billion struck late yesterday, it’s a sure thing that Reuters Group CEO Tom Glocer is probably happy he has his merger with Thomson Corp. almost done, especially as the race to provide digital news of all kinds–especially financial–just got [...]

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