Yahoo has hired a new head of mergers and acquisitions–former General Electric (GE) M&A exec Andrew Siegel, who will now be VP of corporate development.

Yahoo (YHOO) CFO Tim Morse dropped the news with exactly no details about that title in an interview with The Wall Street Journal about the Silicon Valley Internet giant’s third-quarter earnings.

Another question apparently not answered was what exactly is the status of its current top M&A exec, Greg Mrva–who has had the title Siegel has now posted on his LinkedIn profile–as well as that of VP of mergers and acquisitions more recently.

In other words: Where the heck is Greg?

BoomTown was considering a search party–get it?–if Yahoo hadn’t outsourced that to Microsoft (MSFT). Thus, Plan B: Mrva milk cartons!

On Facebook, Mrva is still listed as being in the Yahoo network, although there was a report floated recently by Silicon Alley Insider that he was asked by Morse to leave his M&A job at Yahoo and find a new one at the company.

Whatever the situation–either Mrva running it with Siegel or being hipchecked out by him–helming M&A at Yahoo can’t be a fun job right now, given that the company has been looking to sell quite a few of its assets, including its Zimbra open-source email business, its personals unit, its HotJobs online classified business and many more to come, said sources.

In fact, in a recent post, BoomTown wrote: “Mrva’s new job title should be: VP of un-mergers and de-acquisitions.”

The effort to unload big swathes of Yahoo is part of an aim by new management to slim down its diverse portfolio, even as it strives to redefine itself with a new, pricey marketing campaign that seeks to position the company primarily as a consumer offering.

Mrva has been the main exec shopping Yahoo properties around, according to many sources, a job that will now apparently be Siegel’s.

Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz has said the company is also looking for acquisitions, mostly small, so perhaps there will be more to do for the company’s dealmakers than running an Internet garage sale.

I contacted Yahoo to find out what’s up with Siegel and Mrva, a well-liked exec in Silicon Valley, and also have reached out to him. When either responds with anything of note, I will update here.

Earlier today, Silicon Alley Insider reported that layoffs at AOL, which had been announced in January, were finally taking place.

Actually, said an AOL insider, about 10 percent of the layoffs, or 70 people, have been let go since the announcement. The pace just got ratcheted up today, adding another 300 to the pyre at the troubled Time Warner (TWX) online division.

But, said several sources, the slashing of staff might go well beyond what has been announced, as AOL continues to drill down on its three-pronged strategy: social networking and communications (People Networks), content (MediaGlow) and advertising (Platform-A).

That’s no surprise since AOL’s options have landed, to say the least, in that dreaded rock-and-hard place.

The interest by Yahoo (YHOO) in merging with AOL, for example, has waxed and waned–it’s waned right now, sources said, though not completely–and there seem to be no true suitors on the horizon.

And new Platform-A head (and former Yahoo sales exec) Greg Coleman–whose business has to drive revenue growth–cannot perform miracles in such a weak environment, no matter what cool new products and offerings either People Networks head Joanna Shields or MediaGlow President Bill Wilson create.

Thus, with the ever-weakening economy, there is still fat to be cut out, especially since Time Warner CEO Jeff Bewkes either has to sell AOL off or make it work a whole lot better.

And working better likely means more cuts–and a whole lot more of them.

That’s caused a lot of people inside AOL and also a wider circle at Time Warner to increasingly point the finger of blame at AOL CEO Randy Falco, wondering if and when he will suffer too.

“Why Randy Falco gets to keep his job is a mystery to a lot of people,” said one top exec at another division.

While one might look at, say, the media giant’s magazine division and ask the same of its head, Ann Moore, the more obvious answer is that times are tough all over and not just at Time Warner.

Said an AOL insider who does not like Falco’s leadership, but was sympathetic: “He probably should have pushed to sell it off more when times were better, but that was being run by corporate, so now he just has to deal with a weak economy and an online property whose value has been declining for a long time.”

In any case, for now, there’s no joy in Mudville. When the domestic layoffs are done by the end of this month, a source said, the company will turn to international firings (it’s harder to dump folks in Europe, apparently).

But, as another baseball maxim goes: At least when it comes to cuts at AOL, it’s never over until it’s over.

According the latest meme to sweep the digerati over the last several days, here are the words that should make the brainiac satraps over at Google very, very nervous: “See what’s happening–right now.”

That’s the motto right below the box on Twitter’s search engine–a page that looks awfully familiar to anyone who uses the Internet, since it is essentially a light-blue-colored rip-off of Google’s “I’m Feeling Lucky” mantra.

But, posits the new theory, it’s Google (GOOG) that should perhaps not be feeling so lucky when it comes to Twitter search because it is becoming the place for what is now being called “real-time” search.

Yesterday there was a Silicon Alley Insider piece alarmingly titled “Google Next Victim Of Creative Destruction?” by former AOLer John Borthwick–who should know a thing or two about the topic, given that he was a top exec at the once-vaunted online service as it imploded.

In it, relating a presentation to AOL execs in their heyday by the well-known management author, Clay Christensen, here’s Borthwick’s money quote:

[Christensen] said time and time again disruptive business confuse adjacent innovation for disruptive innovation. They think they are still disrupting when they are just innovating on the same theme that they began with. As a consequence they miss the grass roots challenger–the real disruptor to their business. The company who is disrupting their business doesn’t look relevant to the billion dollar franchise, it’s often scrappy and unpolished, it looks like a sideline business, and often its business model is TBD. With the AOL story now unraveled–I now see search as fragmenting and Twitter search doing to Google what broadband did to AOL.”

Having written an entire book about the disaster that became AOL, I would have to disagree a lot with Borthwick that the innovation of broadband killed the company.

For example, I would have started with AOL’s ponzi-scheme of an advertising business model, gross mismanagement, greed, backstabbing between Time Warner (TWX) and AOL after the merger and a complete noninterest in innovation in AOL’s later years as the key reasons for its demise, before I even got to broadband.

That aside, Borthwick does go on to make an interesting argument I have been hearing a lot of late among the digerati: that Twitter’s search results–and not its often-inane tweets–are its real treasure.

An investor in a start-up called Summize that was acquired by Twitter and is now its search engine, Borthwick correctly focuses on some interesting splintering off of two key search areas, video and real-time search.

Google already owns plain-vanilla search in a game-over way, with a disturbing share that just keeps getting bigger and bigger.

And, given Google’s ownership of YouTube and the fact that the online video service massively dominates the online video market, the search giant effectively owns video search. (One might note that it has been, heretofore ineffectively, hard at work trying to monetize it.)

But it is Twitter, as it quickly increases its user base from one million to three million to six million–and, doubtlessly, millions more now–that is the king of real-time search, which is to say, search that is done as news events unfold (the plane in the Hudson River, an earthquake, the Super Bowl, whatever) or other ongoing topics of the day.

Thus, while Google essentially controls the pages of about everything on the Internet, Twitter owns the social conversation online.

Writes Borthwick:

Imagine you are in line waiting for coffee and you hear people chattering about a plane landing on the Hudson. You go back to your desk and search Google for plane on the Hudson–today–weeks after the event, Google is replete with results–but the DAY of the incident there was nothing on the topic to be found on Google. Yet at http://search.twitter.com the conversations are right there in front of you. The same holds for any topical issues–lipstick on pig?–for real time questions, real time branding analysis, tracking a new product launch–on pretty much any subject if you want to know whats happening now, search.twitter.com will come up with a superior result set.”

Unfortunately, after that, except just stating that Google will inevitably fall over and die, because of the Twitter effect, Borthwick provides absolutely no explanation of what possible business model could make real-time search that kind of killer.

Will it be a text-based online advertising model like Google’s AdSense? Or are people who Twitter and search Twitter not as open to such ads when they are conversing?

Or could Twitter sell the analytics from these social searches to big brands, so they can do a deep dive into consumer behavior? Or is the bulk of that chatter–like, say, “Cheetos are yummy, but messy”–completely useless to them?

Does Twitter winning in real-time search mean no one wants regular Web search anymore? Or can both co-exist and be lucrative?

“Who knows?” is probably a better answer to all of this at this point, given how nascent and small the Twitter audience–save for in the noisy echo chamber of Silicon Valley and the media, where it looms large–still is.

That’s not to say I don’t use Twitter search more and more or that it’s probably a whole lot easier to monetize the start-up’s search than the content of its 140 characters.

Said a Twitter insider who is watching its search business grow a lot and notes that it is much bigger than people realize: “The search results are distinct to anything out there.”

That is true, and I would also say it is extremely useful too (even though bigger will inevitably make it less so, as there will be more dreck to slog through).

That’s why Facebook, as first reported here, made that $500 million run at Twitter and also why it opened its APIs on status this week to slow Twitter’s growth and cut its momentum a bit.

But Facebook also made the move to help itself. After all, many more young people–for all Twitter’s buzz–use its status update (ask some–I did), so it is in Facebook’s interest to keep it that way.

Of course, Google could also try to kill Twitter, by starting its own real-time search service, although that is the kind of innovative and viral thing that big companies usually cannot pull off as easily or deftly.

And it would come as no surprise if Google made an even larger bid for Twitter, given its interest in owning all search.

Or not, if Twitter can’t find a way to make real and sustained money from any of its many interesting parts, like search.

I, for one, hope it does, since it’d be nice to see someone tweet, um, tweak, the mighty Google for once, even if it does not have murder in mind.

Please see this disclosure related to me and Google.

BoomTown just could not resist making the obvious literary pun on the debut of Peter Kafka’s new daily blog, MediaMemo, on AllThingsD.com.

(He is pictured here.)

For those who were not dragooned into reading existentialist writers in college, I am referencing “Metamorphosis,” about a man who turns into a bug–except that the process is fraught with so much more meaning.

And thus it will be in Peter’s column, as the most excellent writer and reporter plunges into the topic–as he writes in his first explanatory post–of “the ongoing battle between the established media business and the technology that is reshaping it day by day.”

It is transformative, to say the least, from someone who will lead you through it with the kinds of standards, accuracy, great writing and insight that I hope you have come to expect from this site.

While Peter’s impending arrival to ATD was announced in mid-September, he actually debuts today and will be posting many times daily.

As I have previously written, Walt Mossberg and I have long wanted to bring in someone located on the East Coast and away from the echo chamber that Silicon Valley can be, because we both feel the ongoing digital revolution is taking place over a number of key industries all over this country and the world.

With extensive connections across the media, advertising, entertainment and tech sectors, Peter will be doing original reporting, getting scoops, doing interviews, making videos and providing much needed and clear-headed analysis that he is so well-known for.

Peter has been working at Silicon Alley Insider, most recently as its managing editor, since mid-2007. The first hire at the start-up tech business analysis site, he has focused on enterprise and beat reporting, as well as breaking news.

Previously, he spent 10 years as a reporter and editor at Forbes and Forbes.com covering media and technology. (You can read more of his bio here, along with his ethics statement.)

Walt and I are thrilled that Peter is coming onboard to join the rest of the strong ATD team, which includes: John Paczkowski, author of the rocking Digital Daily column, who formerly wrote the award-winning blog, “Good Morning Silicon Valley” at the San Jose Mercury News; and Wall Street Journal reporter Katherine Boehret, who writes the most excellent weekly Mossberg Solution column.

And we hope you will soon find–via following Peter regularly–why we are so very excited to welcome MediaMemo to the site.

Silicon Alley Insider’s Henry Blodget sounds an important horn again, namely, outlining in graphically ugly detail why graphical advertising-based online businesses are in big trouble.

In his post, Blodget shows some convincing graphs about past performance trends, including the years after the first bubble burst, from 2000 to 2002, which could augur what is to come for the display business.

That means uh-oh for companies like Yahoo (YHOO), CNET (CNET) and all the many start-ups like Facebook that are focused on display ads as their main revenue source.

Search advertising, he notes, seems to be in better shape to face off the stiff winds to come, although most of that money goes to the dominant Google (GOOG) in this arena.

Money quote:

How do we know online display ad spending will fall? Because by Q2 of this year it had already slowed sharply–to mid-single-digit growth–and that was before things even began to get bad.

According to IAB, the growth of non-search online ad spending (display, classifieds, lead-gen) was 14% in Q1 and 5% in Q2. 5%! That’s before the horrific fall-off in consumer spending in September. We’ll be lucky if non-search spending is up year-over-year in Q3. By Q4, it will almost certainly be negative.

Blodget is predicting a 10 percent decline next year and more in 2010, which is–considering that the entire economy is in trouble this time–probably conservative to me.

As to all those start-ups who have been telling me Advertising, of course as their business plan, it might be time to get another plan for what is to come.

Today, BoomTown will be spending the whole day–complete with lunch!–at Yahoo’s Sunnyvale, Calif., HQ to visit various and sundry execs in charge of a wide range of products.

Why? Well, as interested as I am in all of Yahoo’s always messy corporate and stock machinations, it’s just as important to get a handle on exactly what actual products and services the company is working on to get out of its quandary.

That’s important because Yahoo’s prospects have gotten so bogged down of late that even the possibility of an overpriced deal to buy Time Warner (TWX) online unit AOL, including its access business, whacked its stock yesterday.

Yahoo (YHOO) shares dropped to $12.65 yesterday, down 84 cent or 6.2 percent, partly due to the weaker market, but also because of the rumor that Yahoo was possibly going to pay too much for AOL.

That too much would be $8 to $10 billion.

The report by Silicon Alley Insider’s Henry Blodget, which included an odd Yahoo-labeled 18-wheeler semi-truck sighted near AOL, turned out to be not so solid and was later refuted by Blodget himself.

Nonetheless, it was a point well taken from the bad reaction that few think a merger is a good idea at anything other than low, low prices.

Why? Well, for one, the uncertain immediate future for the graphical ad business–big earners at AOL and Yahoo–going forward.

Other key issues: AOL’s growing weakness. Its revenue (half of which comes from the ISP business, by the way) and also its operating income are down.

Even the less stellar performance of Yahoo of late looks good in comparison.

Of course, the pair are still talking in that lugubrious way, as has been reported previously here.

And, if forced to bet, I would suspect there will be a deal done eventually.

But, as they say, god–or the devil, as the case may be–is in the details.

Until then, as I hope to see today at Yahoo, both it and AOL have got to get busy making their standalone businesses shine a lot better than they do now.

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 chit-chatting includes Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang, who has been in New York several times recently [UPDATE: But not yesterday, in a story I had previously linked to here]–where AOL parent, Time Warner, is located–to meet once with its CEO, Jeff Bewkes, and see if they can actually complete the merger.

Now, all this frantic activity does not mean a deal will necessarily be struck. In fact, in typical Yahoo style, it is going very slowly and that is never a good thing in dealmaking.

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

Or, more precisely, a percentage, since Yahoo’s stock price has been falling like a particularly sharp knife of late.

Sources said Yahoo does not want Time Warner (TWX) to have any more than 25 percent of the new company in a trade for AOL’s assets–although that figure would be slightly more if the media giant throws in some of that “Harry Potter”-generated cash into the deal kitty.

Yahoo (YHOO) management, sources said, also think its assets are of significantly better quality than AOL’s, and it still has that powerful–although declining–share in the lucrative search market.

Thus, it does not want to pay the $8 to $10 billion price Time Warner wants, and it should not either. (Here is a good analysis on the price issue by Silicon Alley Insider’s Henry Blodget.)

But Yahoo shares closed yesterday at a troubling $14.58, down 73 cents, or almost five percent.

That means its market valuation also declined by many billion dollars very quickly. It is now at $20.2 billion.

These profound stock drops, said several sources, could spur Yahoo to act before it gets even worse, which is why talks have been more frequent in recent weeks.

While not the best state of mind, panic is always a good motivator, and both companies are surely desperate to turbocharge themselves in the face of tough competition and avoidable management mishaps in recent years.

The hope? That together the pair can do better than they have separately–by combining their advertising, content and communications assets, which are among the largest in the world.

In addition, the “new” Yahoo would be able to make massive cost cuts, including layoffs, under the cover of integration and starting off with a clean slate.

So who would emerge more powerful in a new set-up–AOL or Yahoo?

Here’s a short cheat list:

Content:

AOL and Yahoo have a similar range of content assets, with big sites in all the classic categories, like news, financial, sports and lifestyles. Yahoo’s content head is Scott Moore, while AOL’s is Bill Wilson (both pictured here, left to right).

As I wrote yesterday, I expect that the more dominant Yahoo will rule, slashing and burning most of the AOL-branded properties, keeping only interesting newer brands like sports blog FanHouse, celeb blog TMZ and the Engadget, Tuaw and JoyStiq tech blogs.

And while former Microsoftie Moore is the likely head of this behemoth, don’t count on the very adept Wilson, who is known as a skilled corporate player at AOL, to stick around without a big role in this arena.

Communications:

Again, advantage Yahoo, which has bigger calendaring, email and instant messaging assets, an area once overwhelmingly dominated by AOL. That was then, of course.

Still, AOL’s communications tools are used by a huge audience worldwide and the pair together would be a powerhouse. So much so, in fact, that this might be the one major regulatory hurdle any deal would face.

Advertising:

Again, Yahoo would probably dominate, having just hired well-known former Microsoft exec Joanne Bradford to head up U.S. advertising sales. AOL’s top ad exec is Lynda Clarizio, a former lawyer who is considered dogged but much less experienced than Bradford. (Both are pictured here, right to left.)

And, Yahoo does have its search ad business, however weakening, and a stronger graphical ad business, even if the sector will be most under siege in the current down economy.

Plus, AOL’s Advertising.com, while a major ad network, is more of a business subject to bruising competition and squeezed margins.

Community:

Tapan Bhat (pictured here) now rules community at Yahoo, as well as its homepage, having just inherited it from the departing Brad Garlinghouse.

But AOL has a savvy and voluble exec in Joanna Shields, who came recently via its Bebo social-networking acquisition. While AOL woefully overpaid for Bebo and got played into thinking that other bidders were more interested than they actually were, it was Shields (pictured here) who essentially did that playing.

Sign her up for a top exec role in the combined company pronto!

In all seriousness, there is room for both in the newco, as both AOL and Yahoo seriously bite in the social-networking space. They will surely need a lot more than Bhat and Shields if they want to become true players in Web 2.0’s hottest and probably most important trend.

Engineering:

Yahoo. I do not need to explain this, do I?

Okay: AOL has always been incompetent in the technical arena, since its beginning days, compared with Silicon Valley companies like Yahoo.

All yours, Ash Patel!

Management:

Now, it is here that it gets interesting.

Most feel the push by Yang to do an AOL deal–and make no mistake, it is being pushed by him most of all–is due to increased pressure from his board, as well as major investors, who have had just about enough of his leadership.

“There is no way Jerry stays on as CEO in a newco,” said one source about Yang (pictured here). “He’ll be kicked upstairs as chairman, and I will think [President Sue] Decker will also have to go eventually, since there will be a lot of resistance if she is named CEO.”

But, said other sources, these major management changes will not happen immediately, if at all, as it is too distracting in the wake of a deal and ruins the positive “story” that both companies will surely want to spin.

And spin they will! (Go, Tricia! Go, Jill!)

And while he has a reputation for sharkish political skills, especially compared to Yahoo’s very diplomatic U.S. head, Hilary Schneider, expect AOL President Ron Grant to be an important part of the transition, since he is good–almost too good–at cutting costs.

Most expect his boss, AOL CEO Randy Falco, not to be part of the new company, thereby separating him and Grant, who are nicknamed “Smithers and Burns” at AOL, after “The Simpsons” creepy duo.

Most likely, there will be a search for a top-level CEO to take over the combined company–someone of the stature of New Corp.’s No. 2 Peter Chernin or eBay’s former leader Meg Whitman (except now, she is apparently Sen. John McCain’s pick for Treasury Secretary, if the Republican Presidential candidate were to win the election).

“If this has any chance of working out, the board has to push restart on the leadership,” said one person close to the situation, who notes that this deal is Yang’s last chance to truly impact the future of the company he co-founded and preserve its legacy. “Everyone gets that, even Jerry.”

But I think the idea that Yang would leave if there were to be a merger of Yahoo with AOL is wishful thinking on the part of his critics.

He appears tome to be very committed to seeing his vision of turning around Yahoo through.

And those who have counted him out always seem to be the ones who have been typically wrong, such as Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer and shareholder activist Carl Icahn.

Because, for all the turmoil at Yahoo, it’s Yang still calling the shots.

Although we did not raid the offices of Silicon Alley Insider and “steal” Peter Kafka, as the fanciful SAI kingpin Henry Blodget alleges–had it been a raid, BoomTown would have properly hog-tied Blodget so he could not make such spurious allegations!–it is true that SAI’s current managing editor (pictured here) will be coming to work for us at AllThingD.com soon.

Indeed, Walt Mossberg and I, as well as the rest of the ATD team, are thrilled that Peter is coming onboard at the end of October. He will write a daily still-unnamed new media blog from New York City.

Walt and I have long wanted to bring in someone located on the East Coast and away from the echo chamber that Silicon Valley can be, because we both feel the ongoing digital revolution is taking place over a number of key industries all over this country and the world.

Peter was our first choice and has been on my must-read list since I began this blog. He is sharp, witty, confident and has the kind of reporting and writing chops that we think are key to giving readers high-quality, standards-based content they can trust.

With extensive connections across the media, advertising, entertainment and tech sectors, Peter will be doing original reporting, getting scoops, doing interviews, making videos and providing much needed and clear-headed analysis that he is so well known for.

Peter has worked at SAI since mid-2007. The first hire at the start-up tech business analysis site, he has focused on enterprise and beat reporting, as well as breaking news.

Previously, he spent 10 years as a reporter and editor at Forbes and Forbes.com covering media and technology. There he launched two tech columns, coordinated the video staff and represented Forbes on industry panels and in TV appearances for CNN, BBC and CNBC.

Peter was also a staff reporter with City Business in Minneapolis and a staff writer for the Minnesota Real Estate Journal in Bloomington from 1993 to 1997. Earlier, he was a stringer with the Milwaukee Journal and the Milwaukee Sentinel in Madison, Wis.

He holds a bachelor of arts from the University of Wisconsin and resides in Brooklyn, NY.

More importantly, Peter is a newly-minted father, which should give him more practice in prolonged sleep deprivation needed for his blogging.

He will begin at ATD on Oct. 27.

Along with Walt and me, Peter joins senior news editor John Paczkowski, author of the rocking Digital Daily column, who formerly wrote the award-winning blog, “Good Morning Silicon Valley” at the San Jose Mercury News, and Wall Street Journal reporter Katherine Boehret, who writes the most excellent weekly Mossberg Solution column.

We hope you are as thrilled as we are that Peter is coming soon to the ATD site.

(And if you want a little taste of Peter’s work, here’s a post he did yesterday on an appearance by Time Warner’s Jeff Bewkes at the Goldman Sachs media conference and another on Rupert Murdoch of News Corp. [News Corp. is the owner of Dow Jones and of this Web site].)

With the sale of paidContent to the Guardian Media Group and the talks TechCrunch has been in with AOL, there certainly is a lot of hubbub around tech blogging sites of late.

One of the more interesting sites that has gone up over the last year is Silicon Alley Insider, which is headlined by former Internet analyst Henry Blodget (yes, that Henry Blodget).

But featuring Blodget’s speedy analysis of big trends, and news about Web and media players, with a sprinkling of reporting from its small team of writers, it’s been a sharp entrant into the sector.

Perhaps most compelling is that the site is backed by Web 1.0 entrepreneur Kevin Ryan, former CEO of DoubleClick (GOOG), who has nested SAI inside a network of new Web efforts at AlleyCorp.

Ryan founded what is essentially a Web 2.0 version of an incubator with former DoubleClick CTO Dwight Merriman.

While one can debate DoubleClick’s ads-in-your-digital-face strategy over its growth (it is now a division of Google), there is no question Ryan’s aggressive early efforts set the stage for the commercialization of the Web that continues today.

Now Ryan is trying to do the same for Web content on SAI. It just got a new small slug of funding; Blodget is also adding two new business sites to the mix.

What AlleyCorp all means is a bit eclectic. Ryan’s network of affiliated sites includes the content delivery network Panther Express, the 10gen apps development platform, a shopping engine called ShopWiki, the Music Nation independent music community and an online invitation-only, high-fashion sample sale site called Gilt Groupe.

Although SAI has a high profile, Gilt is perhaps the most intriguing of AlleyCorp’s sites since it is essentially an American copy of a highly successful European version.

Using the Web’s speed and the allure of an exclusive, limited sale of designer clothes, along with an Amazon-like shipping system, is perhaps the perfect mix of offline and online. It also has to potential to move into other e-commerce categories.

Here’s my video interview with Ryan about all this and more:

I have posted below a video interview with ContentNext’s founder Rafat Ali, who spoke about the deal. I caught up with him in his New York hotel this morning (by coincidence I flew into New York today on a redeye).

But the deal–which comes after the mid-May sale of Ars Technica to Condé Nast for a reported $25 million–begs the question of which tech blog might be next to be acquired.

And, after much noisy poking around today, BoomTown is giving the nod to one of the sector’s larger and splashier sites: TechCrunch.

Several sources told me TechCrunch has been in off-and-on talks recently with Time Warner’s AOL (TWX), which wants to pay from $20 and $30 million for the site.

I could not find out what price TechCrunch thinks is fair, although one might assume it is higher than that.

TechCrunch CEO Heather Harde told me via email that she had no comment. “My policy is not to comment on rumors of our business,” she wrote.

TechCrunch, which was founded in mid-2005 by Michael Arrington, is a group-edited blog that has grown large by focusing–”obsessively,” according to the site’s About page–on Web 2.0 start-ups, covering every jog and tittle of their life cycles.

Sources said the talks between TechCrunch and AOL have been ongoing for the past six to eight weeks, although the site has been in talks with several other large media companies interested in it in the past and these have not led to an acquisition.

AOL would probably be a good home for a site like TechCrunch, since it has a blog focus from its own Switched site and sites it bought, like Engadget.

AOL acquired that popular gadget site in 2005 in the $25 million acquisition of Weblogs, which was founded by entrepreneur Jason Calacanis.

Calacanis, by the way, runs an annual tech conference with TechCrunch, now called TechCrunch50.

Also, I have stayed in Calacanis’s house in the Brentwood (see post and video here), when I was interviewing a Disney exec onstage at a paidContent conference in Los Angeles recently.

Oh, yes, it’s a small tech blogging world after all.

But the money has suddenly become big for the sites involved in that universe too, although most still have relatively small businesses.

Nonetheless, tech bloggers have grown in number and influence, as sites–like this one–compete to break news and attract readers.

Such efforts take funding–despite the lower costs as compared with traditional media–and this probably means inevitable consolidation.

Before its acquisition by Guardian, for example, ContentNext had been raising several million dollars recently to fuel more expansion.

Other sites have also recently raised funds, such as GigaOm, Silicon Alley Insider and VentureBeat.

Most of them have also been talking about various roll-ups between and among one other. Sources told me that VentureBeat, for example, has spoken separately in the past to both paidContent and TechCrunch about joining forces.

VentureBeat’s Founder Matt Marshall would not comment on that, but did note that “size matters, so you have to do what you can to get the economics of scale.”

That includes adding on more sites and doing conferences, as VentureBeat has done (its new conference is called MobileBeat, for example, which will take place in Sunnyvale, Calif. on July 24.)

“Consolidation is what you are probably going to see,” predicted Marshall about the tech blogging arena.

Here’s ContentNext’s Ali talking about exactly that and more today:

Yahoo leadership, trying to stave off a major clash at its annual meeting on Aug. 1 with activist investor Carl Icahn (pictured here), is contemplating offering him two board seats to assuage him, said several sources close to the situation.

The problem? Icahn, who has put up his own new slate of directors to replace Yahoo’s entire current board as part of a proxy fight, wants at least four, sources said.

While Icahn has publicly been lambasting Yahoo’s leadership since he made his investments in the company, getting a larger number of board seats might still give him enough power to make significant changes at the company, including removing CEO Jerry Yang.

Icahn has repeatedly said he intends to replace Yang and other Yahoo execs, if he gains power, and also offer Yahoo (YHOO) for sale to Microsoft (MSFT).

Nonetheless, both Icahn and Yahoo are not eager for a full-scale media circus that would surely be the result of a clash at the meeting, which–in turn–would further depress Yahoo’s already swooning stock.

Its shares have been flirting with declining lower than $20 a share for the past week–in fact, shares did that for a period of one day earlier in the week.

And both sides fear a more permanent fall to the mid-teens, as investors become disenchanted with the continuing turmoil there.

Thus, a spate of hush-hush, third-party, what-do-you-think-if communications between and among the various players in the saga–including Yahoo’s board, its top execs, major shareholders, Icahn and, of course, Microsoft.

It was the software giant that set this whole convoluted mess in motion, when it made a hostile takeover bid for Yahoo in February.

Since then, both sides then fumbled their way to a non-deal in the ensuing months, with everyone looking worse for the wear.

Microsoft is considering a proposal to take over Yahoo’s search and search-ad business, even as Yahoo flounders about at making other deals.

So, the drama continues, as all the major Web players–including News Corp. (NWS) and Time Warner’s (TWX) AOL unit–continue to try to figure out various scenarios to merge with each other or buy off various parts or, well, whatever.

For example, as BoomTown reported on Monday and Silicon Alley Insider on Tuesday (and The Wall Street Journal finally reported today), both Yahoo and Microsoft have been talking with AOL about a possible hook-up, a deal that both have entertained in the past many times.

But all these deals are complex and problematic, to say nothing of having to make them work after they are struck.

Which is why it is imperative that Yahoo finds a way to turn down the heat that Icahn might generate in the weeks to come, especially as more big investors indicate they will back him.

More on that dicey problem for Yahoo coming up next…

From Henry Blodget’s blog to Steve Ballmer’s brain…

But it’s not a bad theory, especially given the eerie quiet after the spate of very public Hamlet act by the Microsoft CEO yesterday. After telling The Wall Street Journal, “With the right circumstances it’ll happen. Without the right circumstances it won’t happen” today, this is how the New York Post characterized it:

“The frequently shouting, often sweaty Ballmer gave no indication as to the direction he was leaning, saying only that there were three paths the company could pursue: a friendly deal, an unfriendly deal or walking away.”

Well, that clears it up! (Not even one little bit.)

Actually, BoomTown posted earlier this week about informal talks already taking place:

According to sources close to both companies, there are informal discussions now taking place between Yahoo and Microsoft–via bankers, board members, shareholders and others close to both companies–to try to prevent a hostile takeover scenario or the sudden withdrawal of Microsoft’s offer.

So given Ballmer’s range of options this week seem wide enough to drive a semi through, perhaps that’s precisely what Yahoo is finally doing today, as its board meets, sources tell me, to discuss options.

Having successfully gotten the price talk up around the mid-$30s, after it was heading downward only last week and ladling on more Google (GOOG) scariness aimed at Microsoft yesterday–Fabulous online ad outsourcing deal coming! We swear! Google has magic powers to put a spell on you! Boooooo!–the bluffing by Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang would make the famous poker player Jerry Yang proud. (Both pictured here.)

So now, we wait and watch to see who wins this seemingly endless game of Silicon Valley Hold ‘Em.

Memo to Yahoo from Microsoft: We will begin bombing in 30 minutes!

Whether it is love-bombing or the other kind, it’s still a mystery to BoomTown.

But, according to sources close to Microsoft (MSFT), as early as today, sometime after the market closes, might be when it renders its decision on the next step in its Yahoo (YHOO) takeover battle.

Unless it changes its mind, of course, and decides tomorrow. Or Saturday.

It depends on your definition of imminent. Microsoft’s seems to be a little flexible.

Good lord, the suspense is killing us. Well, not really, as once this decision is made, there will be another and then another and then another.

It’s like the Democratic presidential race, except there’s no Reverend Wright to liven up the proceedings.

But sources close to the company said Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer first wanted to ping the board and also Microsoft employees to gauge sentiment, which he did yesterday and today.

At the town hall meeting, which BoomTown reported was taking place today with less-than-enthusiastic support for the Yahoo deal from Microsoft troops, Silicon Alley Insider managed to call into the meeting and got this Ballmer quote:

“We’re interested to pay for it at some level and beyond that level we’re not willing to pay for it. I know exactly what I think Yahoo is worth and I won’t go a dime above.”

His options: Walk away for a little bit. Walk away permanently. Raise the price. Lower the price. Hold pat and initiate a proxy fight, releasing a slate of alternate directors.

That or solve its vexing problem in the online ad business by buying Google! Hey, it could happen! OK, not so much.

In all seriousness, BoomTown prediction: Walk away for a little bit. It’s the most dastardly thing to do, possibly tanking Yahoo’s stock and showing who is in charge. Second choice: Proxy fight.

We’d like see a slight price rise, to $33 a share, which would be hard for Yahoo to refuse and a 48-hour deadline to start negotiations. It would seem fair and urgent and give Yahoo little room to maneuver.

But it is hard to see how Ballmer will be able to overcome his obviously impatient nature and reward Yahoo for its recalcitrant behavior.

In any case, time will tell. Or not!

So what prompted TechCrunch Editor Michael Arrington to pen a pugnacious piece on how blogs should not be raising so much venture capital and instead roll themselves into a “Dream Team,” with the unusual title of “More Bloggers Raising Money. Here Comes Politics. And Here Comes My Rant” yesterday?

Well, besides garnering Arrington a big dollop of traffic and attention, which is perhaps one of the blog entrepreneur’s most impressive talents, could it have something to do with the fact that he’s been busy recently talking to several well-known tech blogs about joining a roll-up organized by TechCrunch itself?

Or that he has told several people I spoke to that TechCrunch was considering doing this by raising as much as $15 million, giving it a $35 million valuation?

Reached by email last night, the voluble Arrington declined to comment.

Thus, a BoomTown translation of his TechCrunch piece is Job No. 1!

Arrington wrote: More blogs are raising venture capital, we’re hearing from people they’ve pitched. Newcomer Silicon Alley Insider is looking for a $3 million to $5 million round, if reports are correct. And paidContent is pitching for a second round in that same range (paidContent raised a round of “less than $1 million” in 2006). We’re also hearing that paidContent is trying to sell the company for $15 million or more, and just bail out with some spending money.

Translation: If that scalawag Henry Blodget thinks he can steal even an iota of my thunder, he better get ready to rumble. And while it is entirely incorrect that paidContent is selling itself or raising that much money, I love the smell of napalm in the morning and FUD in the blogosphere!

[BoomTown actually contacted paidContent's founder, Rafat Ali, who strongly reiterated that the site might raise a very small amount of money, nowhere close to $3 million to $5 million, and was not trying to sell the company at all.]

Arrington wrote: These rumored deals come as funding for bloggers is heating up in general. Just a month ago VentureBeat reported a $320,000 raise. In 2007 we saw Sugar Inc. ($10 million), GigaOm ($1 million), Xconomy, Blogher ($3.5 million) and The Huffington Post ($10 million) raise venture capital. That’s at least $25 million in 2007 invested in blogs and blog networks.

As far as we know, no significant investments were made in blogs in 2005. Weblogs, Inc. raised around $300,000 in 2004, but before they got around to spending it they had sold themselves to AOL (TWX) for an estimated $25 million. The investors, including Mark Cuban, received 15x on their initial investment.

Translation: And if that elfin Jason Calacanis can score, where’s MY payoff!?! I mean, I am the Jason Calacanis of Web 2.0, aren’t I!? The Mac Daddy of the widget economy! The Sultan of Zing! And did Calacanis ever have the chutzpah to pose for a picture lighting cigars with a handful of crisp, flaming Benjamins! I think not!

Arrington wrote: But apart from that first 2004 investment in Weblogs, Inc., there haven’t been any sales or liquidity events to suggest these investments will be a success. And back then blogging was a cakewalk. Most bloggers linked to each other constantly in a state of brotherly or sisterly love. No one was making any money or getting much attention, so for the most part people got along (with notable exceptions like engadget/gizmodo, who play to win).

Translation: The rain may never fall till after sundown./By eight, the morning fog must disappear./In short, there’s simply not/A more congenial spot/For happily-ever-aftering than here/In Camelot.

Arrington wrote: Those salad days are long gone. Writers suddenly want to be paid market wages, far above the $5 per post that they received two years ago. No, we’re talking a big salary, with benefits, and stock options. There went half your margins at least.

Translation: Wages?! Big salary!? Benefits!? Stock options!!!??? Half your margins!!? Who do these people think they are? The Web 2.0 shooting stars I write about incessantly in TechCrunch?

Arrington wrote: And writing good content is only half the battle. You have to figure out the complex, dynamic web of politics between bloggers and mainstream media before you post to know where to get support. And you’ll need support in the form of links from other prominent bloggers. An early push can take a post and make it a headline on TechMeme, which leads to page views and notice by sponsors. But since blogging is almost by definition a conversation between bloggers, fights tend to break out over emotional issues. Cliques develop. Can you count on them to support you down the road?

Translation: TechCrunch is from Mars, Valleywag is from Venus.

Arrington wrote: Personally, I’ve found that if a fight is necessary, fight clean and fight hard. Make it as bloody as possible and end it fast, with no loose ends dangling about. Leave no lingering emotional stone unturned. When everyone gets up and dusts themselves off, the issue should have been resolved one way or the other, and both sides should be happy to shake hands and tango another day, even if the handshaking is done privately. Those that aren’t capable of doing that tend to push themselves to the outskirts of the blogosphere, where their main job is to lob in attacks at random intervals, pursuing long-forgotten insults.

Translation: Bloody tango? Ouch. Ew. Yuk. And handshakes after that seems unhygienic. But let’s solider on. Aha! Another Broadway musical clue! The Jets are gonna have their day/Tonight/The Jets are gonna have their way/Tonight/The Puerto Ricans grumble/”Fair fight”/But if they start a rumble/We’ll rumble ‘em right.

Arrington wrote: So today, at best, I’d describe the blogosphere as a frontier town with no lawman (I mean, O’Reilly has a badge on, but no gun and no jail). You can do just about anything you want, but the politically savvy folks tend to arm themselves to the teeth and gang together to protect their property. Everyone else is in the middle of chaos, either fighting blindly for attention or politely asking (by linking early and linking often) if they can join the big Gang.

Translation: Wait, now the metaphor has shifted to the Old West? OK, we can keep up: Anything you can do, I can do better./I can do anything better than you./No, you can’t./Yes, I can./No, you can’t./Yes, I can./No, you can’t./Yes, I can, Yes, I can!

Arrington wrote: And now that the big guys in the Gang are being injected with capital, hiring tens of employees and expanding their businesses, they suddenly have a lot more to lose. Linking is never done just because. Rather, links are your political capital that must be expended appropriately. Don’t link at the right time and in two weeks when you’re pushing your own headline, you’ll wish you had. When you stop seeing other blogs as people you admire and want to discuss things with, and start to see them as your competitor, your brain shifts and you stop linking the way you had previously.

Translation: Hey, how did we get to Washington, D.C. and the inside of Sen. Hillary Clinton’s cerebral cortex in the midst of yet another compromised political calculation? It’s like we’re on “Fantastic Voyage”!

Arrington: Luckily, the newbie bloggers are there to fill in the links when they’re needed. That’s why, if you are a mid-level blogger, you are likely courted by the bigger blogs looking to get your support. If you know what’s going on and are willing to play the game, you can see your blog rise very, very quickly. Choose the wrong blog, though, and you may find yourself alone and lonely in your forgotten blog.

As an aside, when I see a young but promising blogger, I’ll start linking to him or her constantly to build them up (others, like Winer, Scoble, Jarvis and Rubel did that for me). The goal is to help move them up to a position of influence as quickly as possible. The more non-crazy influencers in the game, the easier it is to ignore the noise generators and the better the overall conversation becomes. Over the last year, for example, Silicon Alley Insider, CenterNetworks, LouisGray and Mathew Ingram I’ve been pushing hard. These guys rarely agree with me, but when they talk I listen because they’ve put some thought into what they are saying and how they are saying it. Those guys haven’t hit the big politics yet, and tend to link out a lot to everyone. They are a very important part of the ecosystem–pushing their link votes toward stories they find interesting and helping those other bloggers get headlines and maintain their place in the Gang.

Translation: Next stop, the stylings of Mr. Michael Corleone! There are many things my father taught me here in this room. He taught me: keep your friends close, but your enemies closer.

Arrington wrote: So what’s the point of this rant? Well, all this money flowing into the blogosphere is disrupting the complicated and emotional, but also stable way things are done. Bloggers with money and employees and health care programs and boards of directors and shareholders have to play politics with a whole new group of people, splitting them away from what they do best–Fighting the Blog War. Their behavior can become erratic as they have to decide to tone down their writing to get a certain type of sponsor on board, which in turn lets them make payroll. Investors want to see growth, so more and more blogs are launched, but perhaps without the right talent to grow it into a long-term business.

If a VC hands you a check, their intention is not to hang around for 20 years while you build a nice lifestyle business for yourself. What they want to see is an exit, preferably a 10x or higher exit, within 3 to 4 years. But something tells me that few of these networks are going to be able to grow quite as easily as they think and reach those liquidity events. The talent is, increasingly, locked up. Even when new talent is discovered or trained, every niche has serious heavyweights already there with page views and advertising dollars to back them up for a long fight.

Translation: Finally, the point! Which is: Assimilate or Die!

Arrington wrote: At some point it’s going to become painfully obvious that the only way to get to a massive valuation is for the top talent to band together in a company where they each have an equity stake and therefore a reason to work all night on that next great story. They’ll each have their own space to stretch their legs and let their personality run around a little. Someone needs to pony up a big round of financing around an existing blog, or perhaps a new entity, and then start rolling them up into a big fat CNET-crushing $200 million/year in revenue business.

Translation: This is my sneaky but clever way of floating a trial balloon of an effort I am already trying to organize. The existing blog? Mine! The new entity? Run by me! The $200 million a year? Mine, again! Now, enough about me–what do you think of me?

Arrington wrote: It can happen. In fact it’s almost certainly going to happen. But if you bloggers go out there and raise $3 million to $5 million on say a $10 million valuation, you’ve just priced yourself out of the roll-up. That option will be closed to you, and you’ll be stuck out in the cold, taking life-support payments from Federated Media or another ad network, and having a generally awful time running your business.

Translation: Luca Brasi sleeps with the fishes.

Arrington wrote: What I’d like to see, and even be a part of, is the blogger equivalent to the 1992 U.S. Men’s Basketball Dream Team. That team could take CNET apart in a year, hire the best of the survivors there, and then move on to bigger prey.

Translation: After we are done bloody-tangoing with Neil Ashe at CNET (CNET), Owen Thomas and his evil overlord Nick Denton better sleep with one eye open.

Arrington wrote: Just the thought of being a part of something like that has held us back from raising any outside capital at all. I believe we have the beginning of a team that can play a role in this new Dream Team.

So think twice before taking that venture money, guys. You may be shutting more doors of opportunity than you realize.

Translation: By saying we have held back from raising any outside capital at all, what I really mean to say is that I am going to do it.

Resistance is futile.

Back in July, I actually wrote a post about the head of News Corp. (owner of Dow Jones and this site) in which the first sentence was: “MySpace and Yahoo should merge.”

I was referencing a very interesting comment that Murdoch (pictured here) made in an interview in June of 2007 with Time’s Eric Pooley.

In it, he floated the idea of trading a 25% stake of Yahoo for MySpace.

As the Time article noted:

MySpace’s much smaller archrival, Facebook, is surging: what started as a narrower college site is broadening and accelerating. … But as MySpace showed signs of reaching saturation, Murdoch began very preliminary, exploratory talks about trading the site for 25% or more of Yahoo. ‘Terry Semel was enthusiastic about it,’ he says of the then Yahoo CEO. ‘We were looking to see if it was a good idea. I wasn’t sure.’ Now Semel is gone, and Murdoch needs to see what Yahoo will become under its new boss, co-founder Jerry Yang.”

And as I noted in my post:

In one fell swoop, Murdoch had confirmed the talks, but made it seem as if it was Yahoo’s execs who were desperate to do a deal (and you know Semel and Yang would never talk about how they felt about it), while also giving MySpace an instant valuation of $8 billion at today’s nearly $32 billion Yahoo valuation…

It is no small leap to imagine the sly Murdoch calculating that he should be thinking right about now about getting while the getting is good and the hype is at an all-time high.”

Well, nothing much seems to have changed with the news yesterday that News Corp. was interested in grabbing just under 20% stake in Yahoo in exchange for MySpace and News Corp.’s other online properties in its Fox Interactive Media group.

(The discussions were first reported on the blogs Silicon Alley Insider and TechCrunch.)

This is an unusual switcheroo, since, on Feb. 4, Murdoch had publicly said it was unlikely News Corp. would vie for Yahoo. “We are definitely not going to make a bid on Yahoo,” said Murdoch on a conference call with analysts.

It depends on your definition of “definitely” and “a bid for Yahoo,” I guess. Classic rope-a-dope that even Muhammad Ali would admire!

This time the idea is reportedly to value MySpace at $10 billion (which is actually $5 billion less than the $15 billion that Microsoft’s recent $240 million investment gave smaller MySpace rival Facebook).

Of course, such a Yahoo mash-up with News Corp. would likely be a hopelessly complex deal, especially compared to the cleaner and simpler giant-pile-of-cash-and-stock that Microsoft is offering that big shareholders are likely to prefer.

“The only one who would understand such a complicated News Corp./Yahoo tie-up is Murdoch,” said one large Yahoo investor. “It is too much to figure out and not enough clarity compared to Microsoft’s bid.”

In any case, according to The Wall Street Journal, Yahoo CEO Yang supped with Murdoch and News Corp.’s President Peter Chernin last week to talk about the idea.

Presumably, the thinking is the same as I noted more than six months ago:

To merge his massively popular social network with Yahoo’s still-powerful-despite-struggles ad and search empire would create a powerful media and technology giant that would have a lot of key elements for the next generation of Web interaction.

For Yahoo, which is in need of a dramatic move, this would deliver a smack to Google (which still has reportedly not completely closed its $900 million ad deal with MySpace), solve its inability to enter the social-networking space and boost its distribution network dramatically.

For MySpace, Murdoch gets to unload a service that is increasingly going to need a major dose of technology expertise and own a big chunk of what could be a drastically undervalued property.”

The more things change…

Please see this disclosure related to me and Google.