Here’s my favorite quote from former Microsoft exec Jeff Dossett from a phone interview he gave to BoomTown this afternoon, after his appointment as Yahoo’s new U.S. Audience head:

“Where others see risk, I see opportunity,” said the man who has climbed Mount Everest twice. “We have this great Web asset … and, from here on out, it is all about execution.”

You can tell from the gumption in this ain’t-no-mountain-high-enough sentiment that Dossett just got to Yahoo and sees a challenge at the troubled Internet giant where others see, well, a long-running quagmire.

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About a month ago, BoomTown reported that MSN executive producer and general manager Jeff Dossett was contemplating joining Yahoo.

Microsoft released a statement that day saying Dossett was indeed stepping down from his MSN duties, as I had posted, but noted that he was staying put at the software giant.

Oops, it looks like I was right in my report: “The Secret Microsoft Invasion of Yahoo Continues: MSN GM Headed There Soon?”

Dossett has accepted a job as SVP, U.S. Audience at Yahoo, Yahoo said this afternoon, while also confirming my previous report that Yahoo Media Group head Scott Moore was departing.

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Aside from upcoming layoffs, it seemed as if Yahoo had stanched the flow of major execs from the company.

Not so, it seems, as sources with knowledge of the situation confirm that the two top execs of the troubled Internet company’s media unit will be announcing their departures later this week.

SVP Scott Moore, who runs Yahoo’s media group out of its offices in Santa Monica, Calif., and also Al Warms, who came to Yahoo from its BuzzTracker acquisition last year, will both be leaving, although it is not clear what their plans are.

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As has been copiously reported here and all over, Yahoo and AOL have been engaged in never-ending talks about a possible deal to merge their flagging Internet businesses.

Now, sources tell me, the circle of executives at both companies interfacing with each other has been widened, for purposes of due diligence.

That includes Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang, who is in New York this week–where AOL parent, Time Warner, is located–to meet once again with its CEO, Jeff Bewkes, to see if they can actually complete the merger.

Now, all this frantic activity does not mean a deal will necessarily be struck.

But it is just this kind of ramped-up blabbery that has many at both companies predicting that a deal will go through, sooner or later, as soon as Time Warner and Yahoo can agree on a price.

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Jeff Dossett, a longtime Microsoft exec and current executive producer and general manager of MSN, is leaving the company, sources said, and is likely to land at Yahoo soon.

A longtime and experienced mountain climber, Dossett has been one of the more senior digital execs at Microsoft.

It is an interesting digital-musical-chair trend, in fact. On Monday, another former Microsoft big shot, Joanne Bradford, will start her job as Yahoo’s top U.S. sales exec.

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Yesterday, Yahoo trotted out a range of top execs who were unusually loquacious at its “open house,” where the company made a valiant effort to explain an aggressive strategy to open up its platform and products.

So here are video interviews I did with a range of Yahoo’s top execs, including Audience Product Division EVP Ash Patel, Yahoo Media Group head Scott Moore, social media guru Marc Davis, Yahoo! Mail kingpin Scott Dietzen,, Connected Life EVP Marco Boerries and PR minion Brad Williams.

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Okay, BoomTown arrived late to Yahoo’s media event to show off its “open” strategies across its properties (I had a most excellent excuse in that it was my youngest son’s very first day of school).

So it was kind of jarring to hear Yahoo Media Group head Scott Moore talk about an email demo about adding social elements that had preceded his presentation, which he had not seen himself.

“I always think of the media properties the sexy [part of Yahoo],” said Moore. “But that kind of made mail sexy.”

Sexy email! Yahoo is saved!

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Yahoo–because it has decided its living-inside-a-cave press strategy has been, shall we say, a bust–has invited a passel of media tomorrow to its Santa Clara, Calif., HQ and will trot out a range of its top execs to talk specifically about the various facets of its “open” strategy.

In an attempt to redefine and refocus itself, Yahoo has correctly wed itself to the trend toward more open platforms, rather than locking consumers into its once tightly closed portal gates.

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After the news broke that former Microsoft exec Joanne Bradford was headed to Yahoo as the head of its U.S. ad sales and more, I got to talk to both her and her new boss, Hilary Schneider, on the phone this morning about the move.

Bradford left her job as national ad sales chief at Spot Runner, where she arrived just six months ago, to take the position of SVP of U.S. revenue and market development at Yahoo.

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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 Time Warner’s CEO Jeff Bewkes.

As you will see, Bewkes is a live wire, sassing me about the hard time I was giving him about the rough road AOL has had as a Time Warner property.

In this video, Bewkes takes questions from the audience about CNN, Glenn Beck and Lou Dobbs, Bebo, content, the greening of Time Warner and he also gets in a stats tussle with Yahoo’s media head Scott Moore.

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Scott Moore, who runs the Yahoo Media Group, sat down with BoomTown at the company’s Santa Monica headquarters last week to talk about the future direction of content at the company.

While the Media unit has had its ups and downs over the years about exactly what it should be–such as the controversial Hollywood-esque Lloyd Braun strategy–one thing that Yahoo has consistently done well is to aggregate and distribute its own and others’ content.

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When I was in Los Angeles recently, I stopped by the Santa Monica offices of Demand Media, the network of social networking sites and apps maker, because of the rumors that I had heard swirling around that Yahoo was looking to purchase it for up to $2 billion.

As it turned out, reports of that possibility were greatly exaggerated.

In fact, Rosenblatt played down the idea of any Yahoo offer on the record, noting he was not interested in selling at this point anyway. And Yahoo sources confirm this and said that there has been no offer floated.

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As expected, Yahoo will announce its reorg tomorrow morning, along the same lines as BoomTown outlined in detail last week.

The only issue that arose was over the appointment of Ash Patel to head the new Global Products group. His appointment was greeted with internal dissent, but Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang was said to have insisted that Patel remain on as planned.

Last week, I outlined the sweeping internal changes at Yahoo, which will again dramatically change the structure of management.

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Oh, Scott! Oh, Tapan! Want an extra office? Perhaps a giant sword?

Of the four powerful direct reports to former Yahoo Network division head Jeff Weiner–Front Door and Network Services’ Tapan Bhat, Brad Garlinghouse, who heads Yahoo’s communications and communities arenas, Media Group head Scott Moore and Yahoo Search’s Vish Makhijani–it seems only two are sticking around for now in the current state of extreme flux at Yahoo.

That would be Moore and Bhat, who are being quiet–very quiet–as the new reorg chugs into place next week.

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Company in crisis? Employees morale plummeting? Shareholders in revolt? Stock slumping? Barbarians at the gate?

The perfect time to get out the Rubik’s Cube for yet another Yahoo reorganization!

BoomTown now has the outline of the likely sweeping management changes at Yahoo, to be announced next week by the troubled Internet company.

The reorg, which will drastically change the structure of management, explains a lot about the spate of recent departures by top execs at the company.

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