Another high-ranking Yahoo exec is leaving–this time, Jim Schinella, the company’s SVP for corporate partnerships.

Schinella announced the move internally last week, telling staff he would stay on until the end of the year.

Located in New York, he has been focused on strategic deals with big Yahoo partners.

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BoomTown is certainly going to be one of the many-so-many who will immediately fork over whatever it takes to get my mitts on the upcoming tablet device from Apple.

And that’s why, according to a new report from Piper Jaffray Senior Research Analyst Gene Munster–who is monk-like in his devotion to writing down every scrap he can about whatever Apple HQ in Cupertino, Calif., deigns to release–it’s going to be raining money down on the company, just like manna from heaven.

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Was it more than a month ago that the Google was rumored to be in “late-stage negotiations to acquire Twitter”?

Not so much late-stage, I guess. So, I guess it should come as no surprise that it was time to fob yet another rumor that yet another moneybags of a company–this time, Apple–is in “late-stage negotiations to buy Twitter.”

But despite very serious interest in the hot microblogging service by every company that can afford considering such a thing, including Apple, getting across that late-stage line would require major investors in the hot start-up to be very involved, and they are not as yet.

So, rather than be on the edge of your seat about all these endless, alleged late-stage high jinks, here is a five-step list to cut out and keep when the questionable rumors of “late-stage negotiations” with Microsoft, News Corp., Verizon, Cisco and more inevitably show up.

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In this digital era’s version of “Spy Vs. Spy,” Microsoft and Google find themselves in yet another sharp-elbowed battle to be the one to strike some sort of commercial search deal or product partnership with Twitter, many sources with knowledge of the situation said, as they also jockey for position to evaluate the potential of the much-hyped microblogging start-up.

After last week’s explosive rumor that Google was in “late-stage” talks to acquire Twitter, which BoomTown reported was wildly premature, I set out to try to sort out exactly what was going on.

As I found out, there was a lot–mostly much talking related to possible product and distribution partnerships, centered around Google or Microsoft, as both struggle to gauge the importance of Twitter.

It’s a familiar roundelay for the two most powerful companies on the Web.

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BoomTown loves a good memo and here’s one that two of Microsoft’s top online execs, Yusuf Mehdi and Satya Nadella, sent out about the deal the tech giant signed with Dell and Verizon to distribute its search and other products.

Microsoft is opening its fat wallet to do such deal and try to best archrival Google.

Here’s the memo.

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About three weeks ago, Facebook and Twitter ended several weeks of serious talks, in which Facebook was offering to acquire Twitter for $500 million of its stock, which also included a cash component. While rumors of Facebook’s interest were brought up in an interview with Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg at the Web 2.0 Summit a few weeks ago, some shot down the idea as silly. Quite incorrectly, as it turns out, since top execs at both Facebook and Twitter were right then at the tail end of discussions, which were initiated by the privately held Facebook in mid-October, about bringing the two together. Those talks, sources on both sides said, are now over. So why did the deal break down?

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Well, for sure, Microsoft execs were not doing high-fives after Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang said he was stepping down yesterday, as Yahoo execs reportedly did after the software giant abandoned its takeover bid for the Internet giant earlier this year.

Well, maybe some small and discreet ones.

And while Microsoft will not be making a renewed offer for the company now that Yang will be going, execs for the software giant were burning up the phone wires down to Silicon Valley yesterday trying to make sure it is well positioned to make the deal it does want: A sweeping search partnership with Yahoo to help battle Google.

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Today, Yahoo shares plummeted almost nine percent to close at $10.34, off $1.01, in yet another freefall that has all sorts of disturbing implications for the troubled Internet company.

Yahoo’s market cap is off another billion dollars to $14.3 billion right now, and that has a big impact on everything from its talks to merge with AOL to the morale of its employees to an ability to pull up before it’s too late.

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AOL is turning into the Oprah Winfrey of the digital world, it seems, opening up Time Warner’s (TWX) checkbook to as many start-ups as it can.

Last month, it was $850 million in cash for social-networking site Bebo.
And, today, it’s a much smaller slug for Sphere, which started as a blog search engine and morphed into [...]

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What to think of the announcement yesterday that Verizon will open itself up to consumers who want to use non-Verizon-sold phones for their wireless service?
Was it a bold way to thwart new rivals, like Google and Apple, who are promising–but have yet to deliver–a world without the fascist rule of the “Soviet ministries,” as Walt [...]

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Sure, John’s daughter is adorable, but we have to draw the line at child labor here at AllThingsD.com!
In other words, more cute kids!
Today, John gives a roundup, for the last time in 25 whole minutes, about the iPhone launch, which actually arrived today like clockwork at 6 p.m. The video can be found here or [...]

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Yesterday, it was his talented eyebrows, and today, John Paczkowski’s very lustrous hair gets a workout in his Digital Daily video.
Using Selsun Blue, John washes away all pretense that Lonelygirl15 is anything more than a marketing shill with a recent deal with Neutrogena. Here is a direct link to today’s video, which is also [...]

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