Since BoomTown constantly called the $15 billion valuation of Facebook “insane” when Microsoft forked over $240 million in 2007, and gave Slide’s Max Levchin a very hard time when his widget company got a $550 million valuation a year ago, it’s only fair that I say something equally appropriate about Twitter.

The hot microblogging service just got its very own $250 million valuation, but without a dime of revenue in sight. (I know, Bijan, it’s coming, it’s coming!)

After all, Facebook and Slide got their funding in boom times and here we are hurtling toward a possible Depression: The Sequel.

But I am torn.

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The game of executive musical chairs among Web companies keeps on going, with sources telling BoomTown that AOL ad head Lynda Clarizio will be departing the online service and be replaced by former high-ranking Yahoo advertising exec Greg Coleman.

The move at AOL, which has been in the works for only a week, could be announced as early as today, although I have been hearing rumors of such a development since late last week.

Both AOL’s content and communications units have been getting an overhaul of late, and now it seems it is time for its lackluster ad business.

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It was exactly one year ago today that Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer called Yahoo co-founder and then-CEO Jerry Yang and told him he was going to make an unwelcome public bid to buy Yahoo for $44.6 billion, or $31 a share, in order to turbocharge Microsoft’s Internet business.

Today, Yahoo shares are hovering at about $12 a share, with the company’s valuation at about $16.3 billion–and Microsoft is still in need of a jump.

I think that just about sums it up!

But if not, here are 10 BoomTown posts over the last year about the pair’s epic failure, oops, fight, you can peruse to take a trip down memory lane.

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Twitter–the non-money-making start-up that lets a user update status in a pithy manner–had a banner day last week with the inauguration of President Barack Obama, which followed all the tweets about the successful airline crash in the Hudson River in Manhattan, which came after…well, you get the point.

That kind of frenetic news cycle has kept Twitter growing quickly, and apparently is setting the stage for raising a big new round of funding.

But before the valuation becomes so rich as to make Twitter completely impossible to buy by anyone, the company might want to reconsider what it considered and abandoned late last year, which was an acquisition of Twitter by Facebook.

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Another day, another article about how social-networking advertising has a steep uphill ride to get to any kind of decent pinnacle of profitability. This time, it’s the New York Times’s Digital Domain columnist Randall Stross weighing in on the allegedly troubled experiments going on between Facebook and the world’s largest advertiser, Procter & Gamble. But the article represents the high-water mark of the Facebook-Is-Dead theme, which was, of course, preceded by the Facebook-Is-Immortal story. BoomTown did not buy the latter, but I certainly don’t accept the former either.

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Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang will step down from his job as CEO, said sources close to the company, as soon as the board finds a replacement for him, in what sources close to the situation call a joint decision by him and the directors.

Yahoo will announce the move later today. [UPDATED: Yahoo has since confirmed the move.]

Yahoo has hired Heidrick & Struggles, the well-known executive search firm, to vet candidates, both internally and externally, to take over the top spot at the troubled Internet giant.

Sources said it is unlikely current Yahoo President Sue Decker will get the job, which is more likely to go to an outsider.

Some BoomTown choices: News Corp. COO Peter Chernin, former eBay CEO Meg Whitman or former Yahoo COO Dan Rosensweig.

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Who let the dogs in at Yahoo?

It wasn’t BoomTown, for sure.

But it was another bad day for the troubled Internet company’s stock. By the day’s end, Yahoo’s shares had dropped to $11.75, down 90 cents or just over 7 percent.

Which means Yahoo has officially dropped down a rabbit hole and is headed to parts unknown.

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Just as there is a tendency to inanely cheerlead the tech sector valuations on the way up, there is inevitably the equally ridiculous overreaction to the downward slide going on right now for digital companies.

Thus, while by no means the weakest sector of the economy, a range of tech stocks got hammered today in the markets, getting dragged down with the market at large as investors continued to fret about a sustained worldwide recession that government bailouts could not prevent.

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Back in November, I did a video interview with LinkedIn CEO Dan Nye about the fast-growing, in-play business social network.

We talked about the future of LinkedIn and what it all means.

As BoomTown noted then, LinkedIn was the “‘professional’ social network, the serious cousin to the party-hearty twins of MySpace and Facebook.”

But that more dour productivity image certainly did not prevent it from getting a very happy $1 billion valuation yesterday and $53 million in new funding.

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In a much-expected financing, LinkedIn has joined the big funding club (Slide, Spot Runner) of late, by raising $53 million at a startling $1 billion valuation.

Why go public when you can just pretend?

Actually, unlike a lot of Web 2.0 start-ups, the professional-networking site has been profitable since 2006.

The new slug of cash comes from new investor Bain Capital Ventures, along with existing investors Sequoia Capital, Greylock Partners and Bessemer Ventures.

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This is an amazingly hip and funny video from the Sermon Series on Families at North Point Church of Springfield, Mo., posted on GodTube.

GodTube, which describes itself as a Christian video-driven social-networking site, “where users find inspiration, interact, chat, share and upload” Christian video, has about 2 million users per month.
GodTube also lets churches stream [...]

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It’s Bubble Time!
As BoomTown broke the news in its post earlier today, Slide grabbed a big pile of cash from new investors–$50 million from Fidelity and T. Rowe Price–which puts the value of the company at $550 million.
In our post, we said the San Francisco start-up, whose widgets are among the most popular on Facebook [...]

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As inevitable as air, Silicon Valley likes to build them up and then tear them down.
Thus, the bell now tolls for Facebook Founder Mark Zuckerberg.
We at BoomTown have been consistent and persistent in voicing our various worries about the young entrepreneur, from one of our very first posts, questioning (we think fairly) the [...]

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What can we say about investor Peter Thiel, when it is much better to listen to him talk?

Here’s a longish video I made at Thiel’s office on San Francisco’s Presidio (no Sand Hill Road mundanity for Peter!) yesterday with the man who has become Silicon Valley’s most interesting venture capitalist and all-around great character of [...]

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Well, we’re glad it’s done, our conflict of interest shoved aside by the hey-big-spenders at Microsoft and we can again resume our incredulous analysis of the insane $15 billion valuation of Facebook.

No matter who would have gotten to make nice with founder Mark Zuckerberg in the hefty ad-investment deal–Google or Microsoft–we will be sticking to our guns on this ridiculous roundelay of hype and circumstance.

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