Let’s be clear on the much-awaited Asian deal that Yahoo and its Asian partners have been working on: While it is certainly still moving forward, once signed, it will not actually officially close until next year.

Yes, that’s right — 2013!

Still, what everyone and his investor is waiting for is the splashy announcement of the agreement, which involves the Silicon Valley Internet giant, China’s Alibaba Group and SoftBank, a large shareholder in Yahoo Japan.

Yahoo leadership has been hoping that could happen before Feb. 24, an important date after which activist shareholder Daniel Loeb could begin to mount a proxy fight against the current board.

And while the definitive agreement — involving the sale of Yahoo’s 33 percent stake in Alibaba and 35 percent stake in Yahoo Japan — has been moving back and forth among the dealmakers, one source said its completion might take a little longer than that, perhaps even into mid-March.

“It is one of the most complicated cross-border transactions in a long time,” said one person close to the situation. “It’s three different languages, three time zones and three companies that have not always seen eye to eye.”

It’s not that the companies don’t have the top talent on the effort. For Yahoo, it is CFO Tim Morse (who most recently also warmed the CEO seat, until Scott Thompson’s recent appointment); for Alibaba, it’s CEO Jack Ma and CFO Joe Tsai; and, for SoftBank, it is top man Masa Son and his top man Ron Fisher.

To make things even more complex, at the same time as the negotiating is going on, the trio also has to pay mind to how the Internal Revenue Service in the U.S. is going to view the whole deal.

As you can see here from a Wall Street Journal chart, it’s a pretty complicated “cash-rich split-off” to avoid taxes.

While the IRS cannot take an application for a “private letter ruling” until it has an actual agreement in hand, and will not issue one on a hypothetical transaction, the agreement still must be crafted so it is most likely to pass muster.

And only then can anyone move on to the many billions of dollars that Yahoo will instruct Alibaba and SoftBank to pay or contribute in kind for the asset part of the arrangement.

As the Journal noted, in more clarity than I ever could: “A key part of satisfying tax-code requirements is that the company shedding its shares get assets, not just cash, in exchange for them. Cash can’t account for more than two-thirds of the transferred value, tax rules say. This restriction was adopted in 2005 to limit misuse of the provision.”

While Yahoo’s execs have met about the various possibilities, it is more considering now than anything else.

And although a lot of names have been bandied about — Weather Channel, WebMD, as well as Glam Media and even Digg — the more likely direction Yahoo will go in will be different, according to many sources.

First, said sources, the key criteria for the purchase will be to diversify revenue streams, a theme Thompson sounded in his first earnings report recently. That could mean more online commerce, perhaps, rather than advertising or media assets.

Second, said sources, international properties might be more valuable to Yahoo than owning more U.S.-based ones, which opens up a range of interesting possibilities.

This could even include some already held by Alibaba, for example, such as garnering a big stake in its publicly-traded Alibaba.com. Technically, via Alibaba, Yahoo already owns some of the e-commerce giant, but not directly. Another possibility is to get back the Yahoo China business, also now owned by Alibaba.

Third, U.S. companies that Yahoo might look at could be unusual and even bold. Two names brought up in recent internal meetings, for example, were Netflix (before its stock revived) and Yelp (which is prepping for an IPO, and which Yahoo once tried to buy already).

And if things were not already needlessly complex in fixing its Asia problem, expect a change in the Yahoo board composition, too, as early as this week.

As I previously reported, at least four directors are expected to move on. More to the point, there will also be replacements announced at the same time.

To stave off Loeb and even give him a perceptible win, sources said the company is considering announcing the changes sooner than later, with the hope that fresh new members will placate other shareholders.

Lastly, with Thompson starting to take the reins after a month there, I would also expect he’ll weigh in on some significant restructuring (his word, not mine!) at Yahoo soon enough, too.

Complicated? Sure is! Perplexing even? And how! But until Asian and board resolutions, the real work of fixing Yahoo can’t really begin.

Glam Media, a social content platform for sites primarily targeting women, said it’s buying Ning, the custom social-platform start-up co-founded by Marc Andreessen.

The purchase price wasn’t disclosed, but sources close to the deal said the sale price was $200 million, mostly in stock. Glam has been eyeing an initial public offering, so shares being part of the deal is not a surprise.

I had reported in August that Ning was on the block and had been talking to a number of companies, including Google and Groupon.

The sale price is well below previous loftier valuations for Ning, which topped $750 million several years ago. Its venture funders have put close to $120 million into the company since it was founded in 2004.

Among its key investors: Well-known entrepreneur and investor Andreessen, LinkedIn Chairman and Greylock Partners VC Reid Hoffman, Legg Mason, Allen & Company and Lightspeed Venture Partners.

Ning will operate as a new business unit within Glam Media. Jason Rosenthal, Ning’s CEO, will join Glam as EVP Social Media and general manager of a Ning unit. In addition, Andreessen will join Glam’s board.

The sale comes after a rocky history for Ning, which bills itself on its site as “The World’s Largest Platform for Creating Social Websites.”

The sales effort grew out of a parallel one to possibly raise more money for the start-up. At the time, sources said there had been some incoming interest, so talking to a larger pool of buyers was undertaken.

Ning has undergone a series of ups and downs over its history, including dramatic management and business plan shifts.

Its most recent plan has been to go all-premium, trying to find a way to turn the start-up into a profitable enterprise.

That has worked out well, the company has previously said, with strong growth. Since its business shift a year ago, Ning has said, it has had 400 percent year-on-year revenue growth, going from 17,000 to more than 100,000 subscribers and with 60 million monthly active users.

Ning’s shift has been under the leadership of Rosenthal, who had been COO of Ning until he replaced its founding CEO, Gina Bianchini, in early 2010.

Ning has also recently tried to get into the highly competitive mobile social communications arena, with a service called Mogwee. The traction for the product does not appear to have been significant and it is unclear if the service will continue.

“Ning is the clear leader for creating custom social Web sites and communities. Acquiring Ning adds a natural extension to our social media platform, new distribution channels and a talented Silicon Valley team, all of which support our aim to connect brands with engaged, passionate audiences,” said Samir Arora, chairman and CEO of Glam Media, in a statement about the Ning deal. “With the addition of Ning, Glam Media will truly become the first next generation media company in the post-social world.”

Here’s the official press release, as well as a blog post from Andreessen:

GLAM MEDIA TO ACQUIRE NING, THE LEADING PLATFORM FOR CREATING SOCIAL NETWORKS AND OWNED BRAND FAN WEBSITES

Silicon Valley Pioneer Marc Andreessen to Join Glam Media’s Board of Directors

Acquisition Will Create One of the Largest Social Media Content Companies with over 240 Million Users & 100,000 Publishers — Creating the First Paid, Owned & Earned Media Platforms for Brands

Silicon Valley, CA — Sept 20, 2011 – Glam Media, Inc. (www.GlamMedia.com), the number one vertical social content platform company with the largest online global reach for women, today announced that it is acquiring Ning (www.ning.com), the leading online platform for building social websites, including more than 100,000 custom branded fan sites.

“Ning is the clear leader for creating custom social websites and communities. Acquiring Ning adds a natural extension to our social media platform, new distribution channels and a talented Silicon Valley team, all of which support our aim to connect brands with engaged, passionate audiences,” said Samir Arora, Chairman and CEO of Glam Media. “With the
addition of Ning, Glam Media will truly become the first next generation media company in the post-social world.”

Since launching the first social blog community in 2005, Glam Media has experienced tremendous success, growing from just seven publishers and 12 authors to more than 2,500 publishers and 4,000 authors globally today. The company has trusted relationships with more than 1,000 leading brand advertisers and is a Top 10 web property with more than 85 million monthly unique visitors in the U.S. and more than 200 million globally.

Combining Ning’s world-class technology and deeply engaging social platforms with Glam Media’s super premium advertising solutions and reach will accelerate the company’s vision of bringing brand marketers online by helping them to engage with passionate social communities across all digital mediums.

Glam Media together with Ning will set the standard for the future of media by providing their clients with the reach of portals, the deep connections and interests of Facebook, and the influence of trusted conversations.

“Social media is transforming the way brands are reaching their audiences. The Ning platform and its Network Creators, combined with the power of Glam’s advertising solutions, will ignite the delivery of our Brands+Social integrated programs at significant scale,” said Fernando Ruarte, CTO & EVP Platform & Products at Glam Media. “Together, Glam and Ning will address
important challenges that currently exist for marketers by enabling social media-activated brand campaigns to run in contextual environments that go beyond the few large social networking sites that exist today.”

Ning

Founded in 2004, Ning is the world’s largest custom platform for social communities and networks. The company has experienced explosive growth since it successfully moved to a subscription-based business model led by CEO Jason Rosenthal. Since 2010, Ning has increased the number of paying customers from 17,000 to more than 100,000 and grown its revenue by over 500 percent. Today, Ning has more than 100 million registered user social profiles and reaches more than 60 million monthly unique visitors. The company’s customers are the most active champions of brands, causes and organizations seeking to make an impact in the world using social media.

Ning makes it easy for brands of all sizes to build custom and powerful social brand fan pages and web sites as diverse as Linkin Park’s fan social network, Martha Stewart’s mentorship community, Scott Brown’s virtual campaign office and the collaborative hub for the Peace Corps. More than 50 percent of Ning sites are integrated with social applications such as Facebook, Twitter and Google+, which helps to amplify messages across each member’s social graph.

Ning will operate as a new business unit within Glam Media. Jason Rosenthal, Ning’s CEO, will join Glam as EVP Social Media & General Manager of Ning, and will be a member of the Glam Media executive team.

“Our passion at Ning has always been to make social and mobile core to every web experience, and to leverage the power of community to change the world
and drive value for customers,” said Jason Rosenthal, CEO of Ning. “Connecting our customers with super premium brand advertisers has been a core part of our vision from the earliest days of the company and joining
with Glam Media — which shares our roots and belief in the power of social — delivers on that promise.”

Additionally, Marc Andreessen will join Glam Media’s board of directors, joining the top venture firm investors in Glam — Accel’s Thereisa Ranzetta and DFJ’s Tim Draper — as well as Co-Founder of Glam Media Fernando Ruarte, Dr. Marcel Reichart from print media leader Hubert Burda Media, and Glam Media Founder & Chairman Samir Arora. Marc is a Silicon Valley pioneer who created Mosaic, the first web-browser and was the co-founder of Netscape Communications. In 2009, Marc created the venture capital firm, Andreessen Horowitz, with Ben Horowitz that invests in leading edge technology companies. He currently serves on the boards of Facebook, HP, eBay and other leading technology companies.

“Glam Media is one of the most dynamic companies in the digital media space, and I am excited to help guide their further expansion,” said Marc
Andreessen. “With the fusion of Ning’s leadership and social networking technology, and Glam’s solid stake in the world of digital advertising, publishing and content creation, there’s no limit to where we can take the company.”

Platforms and Products for Brands and Publishers

Ning joins Glam Media’s suite of next-generation advertising, social, and content platforms, which include:

GlamAdapt — super premium ad serving platform
GlamMobile — full-scale mobile advertising, content and social platform
GlamCreate — content creation management platform
GlamEnable — content platform to enable mobile sites and applications
GlamConnect — first social networking platform for professional authors and bloggers

The acquisition of Ning will allow Glam Media to provide its 2,500 publishers and 4,000 authors with even more innovative ways to connect, create and broadcast authentic content across multiple mediums and social streams — all in one place. Glam publishers will be able to leverage new services that enable them to grow their audiences on desktop, mobile and video and increase frequency, leading to higher levels of engagement.

Additionally, Ning Creators running active online communities will have new opportunities on desktop and mobile devices to monetize their sites and grow successful businesses.

Merging Glam and Ning

Today, my company Ning, where I serve as chairman and cofounder, is announcing that it has agreed to merge into Glam Media. In this post, I’d like to briefly explain the whats and whys, and to thank a lot of people who have worked very hard to get us to this point.

Ning is my third company, founded several years ago by Gina Bianchini and myself, and run for the last couple years by my close friend and colleague Jason Rosenthal. Over the last two years, Jason and his team have brilliantly executed a dramatic transformation of the company and today Ning hosts over 100,000 social networks covering every conceivable topic and interest, from 50 Cent to Sarah Palin and beyond. Ning’s mission has always been “your own social network for anything” and the team at Ning has worked hard to achieve this.

Glam is a company founded by longtime entrepreneur and innovator Samir Arora. I first met Samir almost 15 years ago in his role as founder and CEO of NetObjects, one of the first, and best, web and e-commerce development systems, later bought by IBM. Before that, Samir was a longtime senior contributor at Apple, where his work led to Apple’s famous “Knowledge Navigator” vision video and then later, through a long and winding road, to the Apple iPad.

In Glam, Samir and his outstanding team have built one of the leading premium content networks on the web. Glam’s high-end content has amazing reach: 200 million users and 2.6 billion page views across 2,500 publishers, with advertising participation by 1,000 premium brands. Combining Ning’s social technology, user base, and 100,000+ networks will immediately boost Glam’s reach to 240 million users and 3.1 billion page views, add recurring subscription revenue to Glam’s business model, and most importantly, set up the combined company to be the leading social media content company on the web.

As consumer behavior broadly moves from old media to the web — as software eats content — the opportunity for high-end online content is gigantic and our combined company will be in the pole position in this huge market.

To that end, I am also delighted to announce that I will be joining the board of directors of Glam after the completion of the merger, which we expect to occur in the fourth quarter of 2011. I’m thrilled to be able to work with Samir and his team at Glam, as well as Jason and his team from Ning, to build an amazing combined company.

Now, I owe some people huge thank you’s.

To Jason, the management team, and all of the wonderful current and former team members at Ning who have worked so hard to get us here, as well as our extremely supportive investors along the way, thank you so much. Working with you over these last several years has been one of the highlights of my life, and I look forward to working with you for years to come.

To Samir and the Glam team, thank you for building Glam into such a great company. I’m excited to pursue the huge combined opportunity with you.

Finally, a very special thank you to Gina, my cofounder and longtime friend and colleague, for all of your insight, innovation, hard work, and commitment going back all the way to the beginning.

Answer: Yes.

Confused? Sure you are. But this is one of those brain-teasers that’s easier to understand once you step back a bit: Google is just as important as it ever has ever been–and in some cases more so–in driving traffic to many Web sites.

But for certain kinds of sites, its influence, while still enormous, has diminished a bit.

To put a fine point on it: The reason that Web sites that write stories about other Web sites are writing about Google’s stall and Facebook’s rise is because it seems to be true–for some media sites. But not for most of the Web.

Citigroup’s Mark Mahaney breaks it down in his newest report, which relies on comScore’s data that shows referring traffic for big Web sites. Conclusion: Google ranks as the top traffic source for 74 percent of the top properties he surveyed. And between January 2010 and January 2011, Google’s referral share increased for 69 percent of the sites Mahaney looked at.

But the two categories where Google’s influence seems to be flagging are health and media sites–particularly media sites. Note the summary chart below, which shows that for 80 percent of the top media sites, Google’s influence has diminished in the last year.

But even that drop, which seems clear-cut, is a bit fuzzy if you dig into the numbers. While Mahaney finds examples of many media properties that have seen referrals from Google decline while Facebook’s increased, the only one where he’s confident drawing a connection between the two is the Glam Media network. Glam saw Google’s share of referrals drop from 17 percent to 13 percent, and Facebook’s jumped from 5 percent to 9 percent.

But Facebook isn’t the only one gaining share in Mahaney’s analysis. Sometimes his data shows Microsoft and Yahoo inching up as well. That’s certainly counterintuitive, but then again these are usually small moves–a percentage point here and there–which makes it hard to string together a cohesive narrative.

Which won’t stop Web sites that write about other Web sites–just like this one!–from trying.

HubPages CEO Paul Edmondson (pictured) said he was highly concerned about and disappointed by the Google algorithm changes, because so far ranking increases and decreases have not correlated with his own perceptions of high-quality HubPages content. But he said he’s waiting for the changes to stabilize, as they commonly do after such shifts.

(See our previous stories on reactions to the Google changes from Associated Content and Demand Media.)

Meanwhile, this week HubPages made a significant upgrade to its payments, bringing on ad networks including Tribal Fusion, AOL’s Advertising.com, Microsoft pubCenter, ValueClick and Glam Media. Previously the site had used Google AdSense and Amazon and eBay affiliate links. The company is also hiring its own ad sales team.

HubPages is treating its whole site as a publication with 46 million uniques, and sharing the higher revenue with its writers.

That means an effective average CPM of $2 to $3, up from CPCs usually in the cents, Edmondson said. In early tests, HubPages authors are reportedly making 60 percent more than their previous average daily earnings.

Historically, HubPages has had a more writer-friendly setup than competitors, giving contributors 60 percent of revenues, letting them choose their topics and even delete stories, and offering content management and optimization tools to maintain their topics on an ongoing basis.

The premium ad program is in invite-only beta for now, but Edmondson said he wanted to roll it out site-wide by June. With more writers and topics involved, Edmondson said he expected CPMs to be between $1 and $12.

HubPages, which has raised about $8 million in funding, last year grew traffic 120 percent to 46 million uniques and brought in revenues of $10 million. It has more than 1.2 million articles from 220,000 writers.

The Internet communications company says it will raise up to $100 million in the offering. The investment group that bought the company for more than $1.9 billion last year includes Silver Lake, Andreessen Horowitz and the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board.

UPDATE: Someone who wants to remain anonymous suggests that the $100 million “Proposed Maximum Aggregate Offering Price” that Skype’s owners have filed with the SEC is merely a placeholder. Which means the company may ultimately seek to raise much more. (And of course they could simply sell the whole thing to a single buyer without ever going public). But until we hear otherwise, we’ve got to go with what they’re telling the government.

Unlike Demand Media, Skype is profitable–in the first six months of this year, it netted $13 million on revenues of $406 million. But like Demand, Skype would like investors to look at different “non-GAAP” metrics that portray it as a very, very profitable company. If you accept “adjusted EBITDA”–and much of Wall Street will–Skype generated profits of $115.8 million during that same time frame.

And as with Demand, Goldman Sachs (GS) is leading this one too. Other underwriters include J.P. Morgan (JPM) and Morgan Stanley (MS).

For those who asked: Most of Skype’s users don’t pay the company a penny, but some pay for extra services, such as the ability to connect to a landline or wireless line. Skype says it has 560 million registered users, and 124 million who use it at least once a month. Of those, 8.1 million are paying an average of $96 a year.

One last interesting tidbit: As a result of a complicated settlement with Skype founders Niklas Zennström and Janus Friis, Skype has ended up in the digital music business. It has put $6 million into Rdio, the new streaming music service the duo founded.

Meanwhile, if you’re looking for the next big-name, big-dollar tech IPO, a good candidate would be Glam Media, which has been laying track for an offering for some time.

The purchase price, I’m told, is something in the $12 million to $15 million range, including earnouts provisions.

Sportgenic claims it reaches 35 million uniques, and Glam, which is primarily geared toward women and advertisers who want to reach them, is interested in some of that business. But the real driver in the deal is AdPortal, an ad management platform for publishers that Sportgenic created and spun out into a separate unit.

Glam’s plan, as described in the release below, is to merge AdPortal into its “GlamAdapt Platform,” which it launched earlier this summer and which is supposed to be a rival to Google’s (GOOG) DoubleClick display advertising unit. If you follow ad tech, you’ll understand what the following means: Glam already had its version of DoubleClick for Advertisers; now it has its own version of DoubleClick for Publishers, too.

Sportgenic raised at least $10 million over its five-year lifespan, so the deal, paid out in cash and stock, isn’t a great one for its investors, who include GreyCroft and SoftTechVC. But Glam is moving toward an IPO–that’s why it brought on Microsoft (MSFT) deal guy Bruce Jaffe as CFO in May– and if that comes to fruition, it’s possible that equity in the company could become a nice thing to own.

Sportgenic CEO Robert Tas told me he would call me back earlier this morning but I’m still waiting on the call. In the meantime, we can assume that he was talking about the deal when he sent out the following tweet three days ago:

Release:

GLAM MEDIA TO ACQUIRE ADPORTAL—INNOVATIVE SILICON VALLEY
MEDIA TECHNOLOGY STARTUP

Launches “GlamAdapt for Publishers” Offering a Fully-Automated Publisher-Side Platform For Premium Brand-Ad Inventory

Used By Major Internet Publishers Such as Time, Inc. and CBS, AdPortal Web-Enables the Packaging of Premium Advertising Solutions to Manage Advertising Sales to Agencies, Demand-Side Platforms, Direct, and Self-Serve for Local Ads

Silicon Valley, California and New York, New York—July 23, 2010—Glam Media, Inc. (www.GlamMedia.com), the number one vertical media company for women online and one of the top display global media web properties, today announced that it is going to acquire AdPortal (www.Adportal.net), a leading publisher advertising-technology startup based in San Francisco and New York, and also announced the launch of “GlamAdapt for Publishers,” a fully automated publisher-side platform for seamlessly packaging digital advertising solutions across multiple ad sales channels–Agencies, Demand-Side Platforms, Direct, and Self-Serve for Local Advertisers and Resellers– designed for super premium brand advertising.

“Glam Media’s heart and soul is about publishers and professional social media content,” said Samir Arora, chairman and CEO of Glam Media. “With the acquisition of AdPortal, we are launching ‘GlamAdapt for Publishers,’ a one-stop solution to web- enable all digital inventory for existing and emerging demand sales channels. AdPortal will bring one of the most advanced technology products to the recently announced next generation GlamAdapt Platform designed for Brand Advertising.”

GlamAdapt for Publishers (GFP) helps publishers sell more of their valuable premium inventory through the creation, marketing, and measuring of high impact sales packages across multiple demand channels. Publishers can take advantage of GlamAdapt’s creative, targeting, network management, and measurement services to deliver comprehensive brand solutions for advertisers. Leveraging GlamAdapt’s open “Advertising Apps Platform,” GFP comes with built-in support for leading third-party data, measurement, and creative providers. Publishers also gain access to sales management and efficiency tools that can create client-ready media plans in a matter of minutes. This combination provides greater access to brand dollars—enabling publishers to drive higher value deals with more efficient sales forces.

“Our goal with AdPortal has always been to empower publishers to make the most use of their premium inventory, while making it easy for advertisers to get their message in front of the people they want to target,” said Robert Tas, CEO and Founder of AdPortal, a former SVP of Media & Technology at 24/7 and one of the founders of Tacoda. “We
are thrilled to be a part of Glam Media and integrate AdPortal into GlamAdapt, now a full alternative ad-tech platform for premium brand advertising.”

Tas will be joining Glam Media as Vice President of GlamAdapt Platform. “Linden Lab has had success with AdPortal, allowing us to drive greater value for our premium inventory,” said Robin Ducot, VP of Web Development at Linden Lab. “We are pleased that AdPortal is becoming part of GlamAdapt, and look forward to working with Glam Media to drive innovation around audience packages, brand-focused analytics, and advanced ad formats.”

Glam is also announcing today GlamAdapt is now running at scale delivering 100% of Glam’s premium business, with over 1,500 publishers and 500 brand advertisers running over 1,000 campaigns since launch worldwide.

AdPortal is a Silicon Valley venture-funded spinoff of Sportgenic, with investors including top-tier VC firms SoftTechVC and Greycroft Partners, key Silicon Valley startup investors and a list of premium publishers. AdPortal’s San Francisco-based employees will join the Glam Media ad products team in Silicon Valley.

The Web publishing heavyweight has already been on the shortlist of tech/media companies in line for an IPO, though the company won’t comment on anything connected to a possible offering. But you can connect the dots here: If you are going out to the public markets, it helps to have a guy with doctorate from Redmond.

Then again, you could have said the same thing about Stephen E. Recht, Glam’s current CFO, who helped bring Shutterfly public way, way back in 2006, and joinged Glam in 2007. Recht will stay on with Glam through the summer, the company says.

Glam’s new hire put in more than a dozen years at Microsoft, including a stint as CFO at its MSN unit. Most recently, Jaffe ran its corporate development group. Glam points out his experience with the $6 billion aQuantive deal in 2007 as a highlight, but there are plenty of Web folks I talk to who argue that Redmond blew billions on that one.

Jaffe left Microsoft (MSFT) in early 2008. Since then he’s been running his own consultancy, working with clients including… Glam. Jaffe’s name did pop up as a possible Yahoo (YHOO) hire after Carol Bartz reshuffled the ranks last year.

Research firm eMarketer reported that U.S. online advertising dropped by 4.6 percent in 2009, the first decrease since 2002.

However, recent news coming from three Internet start-ups shows not everyone dependent on advertising shed tears on their financial statements.

This week alone, local online advertising provider Yodle Inc. announced a $10 million funding round on the back of a 135 percent revenue climb in 2009; female-focused ad network Glam Media Inc. said it grew revenue by 35 percent and raised a whopping $50 million Series E; and online video ad network BrightRoll Inc. declared it doubled revenue and raised $10 million.

Read the rest of this post on the original site

In one week, Yahoo will report its third-quarter earnings, after the market closes.

And so far, its stock is showing signs that investors are hoping for better days ahead for the Internet giant.

Shares are up 8.5 percent for the month, almost 13 percent for the last three months and almost 39 percent since the beginning of the year.

While that’s not the rocket ship Google (GOOG) has been on–the search giant’s stock is up 70 percent since January, which includes a big boost recently on expectations of a strong earnings report tomorrow–it’s clear investors are hoping an improvement in the online advertising market will boost Yahoo’s fortunes.

Wall Street is expecting $1.12 billion in net revenue and seven cents in earnings per share from Yahoo (YHOO)–and a better performance than that could boost the stock.

In fact, a pair of bullish analyst reports that came out today predicted just that.

Broadpoint AmTech analyst Benjamin Schachter raised his price target to $21 a share, noting that after the search and online advertising partnership deal closes, Yahoo “should be meaningfully smaller and leaner, but should also be a significantly more profitable company.”

And Benchmark Co. analyst Clayton Moran moved Yahoo from hold to buy, with a price target of $20.

But a string of recent exec departures in Yahoo’s advertising units are making some within the company’s ranks slightly worried.

The departures include Jim Schinella, the company’s SVP for corporate partnerships, in September.

And yesterday, Glam Media announced that it had nabbed Josh Jacobs as SVP of Brand Advertising Products & Marketing. At Yahoo, Jacobs was a key exec in its display ad platform unit.

Many inside the company expect more departures in the ad and engineering arena at Yahoo, pointing out that many big stock packages given to hold onto talent are about to vest.

In addition, once Yahoo’s search and online advertising partnership with Microsoft (MSFT) is approved, as it is likely to be by the end of the year, hundreds of Yahoo engineers will get the choice of moving to Microsoft.

Some will, of course, but some simply do not want to go and many Silicon Valley companies and start-ups BoomTown spoke to report seeing more resumes recently from Yahoo staff.

There is little Microsoft can do to stop possible leakage of tech talent from Yahoo until the deal is approved, since the companies cannot do any integration until it is.

Perhaps worst of all, there seems to be nothing Yahoo can do to stifle its proclivity to yodel, which I begged Yahoo execs to forgo in its recent $100 million “It’s Y!ou” marketing push.

No such luck!

Yesterday, Yahoo launched its online Yodel Studio (no, I am not kidding), where you can record your own yodel in various music genres, like, um, rap.

Yahoo held a kickoff event in New York’s Time Square yesterday–however did I manage to miss it, since I was in Manhattan?–with a passel of celebrity yodelers like Jewel, as well as one in London’s Covent Garden.

Today, there is a yodel event in Mumbai, India. Bollywood yodeling anyone?

Here is a link to the famous Yahoo yodel, by the way, if you are so inclined.

And here is a video of the Times Square event, and also the very memorable Yahoo commercial of Taylor Ware, after she won the Yahoo National Yodel Challenge contest in 2003.

Some things never change (even if they should!).

Here is the chart of direct reports to Bartz with the unfilled-as-yet spaces at Yahoo (YHOO) in it (click on the chart to make it larger):

So, who should get the nod for each?

There are many likely candidates for the CFO role, of course, especially given that the person who gets the nod does not have to be an Internet exec and also that there are lots and lots of high-ranking financial folks more available then ever these days.

But Yahoo will probably opt for a CFO who can both weigh in judiciously on how to focus spending going forward at Yahoo (as one person close to the situation said to me: “Yahoo cannot just cut itself to greatness”), as well as be able to make deals.

One of the many names that have popped up as an interesting idea from a source is former Microsoft (MSFT) dealmaker Bruce Jaffe. The former VP of corporate development left the software giant in January of 2008, right before it made its failed bid for Yahoo, and has since worked as an adviser to Glam Media.

As for international, there are lots of potential candidates for that job too, such as London-based Joost CEO Mike Volpi (who is actually always on a lot of Web company job short lists) to the plethora of internationally-focused execs all over the map, so to speak.

But BoomTown is altogether perplexed at who would be good at the customer advocacy job, which sounds kind of squishy and unclear. Is it like a newspaper ombudsman or like the fine folks over at Consumer Reports?

Or is it meant to me someone who looks over all products and services at Yahoo to make sure those creating and tweaking them always have the consumer in mind?

Because, if that’s the case, it seems to me that is Job #1 for Bartz, as well as everyone working at Yahoo.

That said, my personal candidate: Martha Stewart–a closet geek and someone who can tell you when it’s a good thing.

Or not.

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 sermons and other events live on its “Godcaster” subscription service.

Also, its motto is “Broadcast Him,” but GodTube also calls itself “Jesus 2.0.” Get it?

Perhaps more in the holy-grail territory, GodTube just nabbed $30 million this week in funding from GLG Partners (GLG), which is also an investor in the less-holy Glam Media site, according to paidContent.

That gives the Dallas-based GodTube a $150 million valuation, putting it right up there with other miraculous start-up valuations like yesterday’s $500 million valuation for the online ad agency Spot Runner.

Praise the VC (and, for GodTube fans, JC too)!

Here’s the North Point Church video on GodTube:

As BoomTown argued yesterday in a piece on the landscape of Yahoo if Microsoft completes its purchase of the Internet portal, Yahoo (YHOO) certainly knows how to make online content.

As we wrote: “For all its history, right down to today, even with all these dumb widgets competing for users’ attention, Yahoo continues to natively understand how to to entertain, inform and serve up their own and others content to consumers.”

Case in point, an attractive new site it launched today called Shine, which is aimed at women from their mid-20s to their mid-50s.

As you can see from the image below, it is a very well-done site, incorporating a lot of the good stuff in the same genre from around the Web.

Does it look a bit like the sassy properties of Sugar Inc.? Is it light and frothy like Glam Media? Does it feel a bit like DailyCandy, in its focus on the shopping as a sport? And, is it as helpful as iVillage (and does it even “borrow” a wiggly “i”)?

Yes indeedy to all!

Imitation is a form of flattery, I suppose, although Yahoo’s site feels fresher than any out there and it has an aspirational and hip feel that women will like, I think.

I’d call it an Eat-Pray-Love mood, with a lot of Oprah mixed in.

More importantly, it is clearly a good market for Yahoo’s advertisers, who all aim to reach this high-spending but underserved demographic online.

Yahoo is trying to reinvigorate its lackluster efforts here, as well as making plans to further drill down into related topics like parenting, sex, food and wellness that are present on the Shine site now.

While it looks a lot like a blog plus, Shine obviously has social written all over it and a wide range of communications tools will be easy to layer over the service.

It also is smart in its partnering with lots of media companies like Hearst and in pointing across the Web to give users a more comprehensive offering.

But can Yahoo compete in a very crowded field with such a late entrant? Probably. It recently put up a celebrity site called OMG, which has grabbed significant traffic quickly.

And while we honestly could care less if men look bad in skinny jeans (um, yes!), there is probably something on the very-full page of interest to everyone.

The Shine site has Brandon Holley as its editor-in-chief, but the effort in the arena is being helmed by Amy Iorio, who is the VP/GM of Yahoo’s Lifestyles unit. It all rolls up under Yahoo Media SVP Scott Moore.

While Yahoo PR will probably blah-blah too much about “starting points,” which is the latest buzz word from top brass, related to Shine, it should just hush up and realize Yahoo’s many owned-and-operated media conglomerations just need decent support and promotion to stay as strong as they are and to keep them as one of the bright spots at the company.

Here’s a screen shot of the site (click on the image once to make it appear on another page and then again to make it larger):