Co-CEO Wenda Millard is out at at Martha Stewart Living OmniMedia (MSO). The company will not replace her but will divvy up her responsibilities among its current execs, including Martha Stewart herself.

No word on what Millard, who is best known as the longtime leader of Yahoo’s (YHOO) sales force, plans to do next. Even while she has been running Stewart’s multimedia empire along with co-CEO Robin Marino, she’s remained highly visible in the online ad world, popping up frequently to decry the rise of advertising networks.

UPDATE: Millard will become president at Media Link, a media consultancy founded by Michael Kassan, who she says has been courting her some time. “This had nothing to do with leaving Martha Stewart. It had everything with going to Media Link,” she told me from San Francisco, where she had just received a lifetime achievement award at the ad:tech conference. “This is a very, very timely opportunity. People need a lot of help navigating in this environment, and this kind of strategic advice is exactly what companies need today.”

Millard’s departure from the company isn’t a shock because she has long been rumored to be unhappy at Martha Stewart. She and Marino took over the company last summer when Susan Lyne left the CEO post; Lyne later landed at e-commerce start-up Gilt Group. Last fall, Millard was reportedly feuding with Stewart and was supposedly heading to sell ads for Microsoft (MSFT), a story she denied when I asked her about it. Here’s the release:

Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia, Inc. today announced a reorganization of its Media business. The Company also announced that Wenda Harris Millard is stepping down from her post as President of Media and Co-CEO. The company has no plans to replace Ms. Millard or name a new co-CEO.

Martha Stewart, MSLO’s Founder, will oversee all editorial and creative functions. MSLO Chairman Charles Koppelman, who in addition to serving as the Company’s Principal Executive Officer, will now oversee MSLO’s Media businesses. Robin Marino will continue to oversee Merchandising, serving as the segment’s President and CEO, and to report to Mr. Koppelman. Ms. Marino is expected to be recommended to join MSLO’s Board of Directors.

Mr. Koppelman stated: “We are grateful to Wenda for all of her work on behalf of MSLO. Wenda has been a champion of Martha’s groundbreaking Omnimedia vision on which this company was built. She has been an effective leader of a very talented team as we’ve expanded our franchises and grown our cross-platform programs.”

“Robin will continue to work with me to identify new opportunities and create synergies across our Media and Merchandising businesses,” Mr. Koppelman added.

Ms. Millard stated: “I am very proud of the contributions I’ve made to MSLO over the past five years, first as a board member and most recently as President of Media and co-CEO. We’ve built an agile team and a strong foundation for future growth.”

UPDATE: Millard will become president at Media Link, a media consultancy founded by Michael Kassan, who she says has been courting her for some time (press release below).

Wenda Harris Millard Joins Media Link LLC as President

Sets Course to Further Grow Strategic Advisory Firm

NEW YORK (April 22, 2009) Media Link LLC, the preeminent media representation and strategic advisory firm to the marketing, media, entertainment and advertising industries, today announced that Wenda Harris Millard, an internet advertising pioneer and a widely-known and respected marketing and media executive, will join the firm as President, working with Chief Executive and Founder, Michael E. Kassan. Ms. Millard joins Media Link from Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia, Inc. where she has been Co-CEO and President, Media.

“I am enormously excited about contributing to the quality counsel and implementation services Media Link provides to its impressive roster of international clients,” says Ms Millard. “I am as passionate as I have ever been about the media, marketing and advertising businesses, and I cannot think of a more opportune time or a more well-positioned company than MediaLink with which to apply my skills and knowledge in helping major global companies plan and execute intelligent marketing strategies.”

“Media Link has experienced dramatic growth in both the volume and scope of its business during the last several years,” says Mr. Kassan, who founded the firm seven years ago. “I am very proud to have someone of Wenda’s industry stature joining Media Link as my partner. Wenda’s thirty years of multimedia, marketing and advertising experience and her laser-like focus on helping client companies and agencies navigate a radically altered and still-evolving landscape, make her an excellent fit to help both deepen and broaden what the world’s top advertisers and media companies can expect of Media Link.”

Ms Millard had joined MSLO in July 2007 after three years as a member of its Board of Directors. She oversaw MSLO’s media businesses, which include publishing, internet and broadcasting. She is credited with elevating the company to its #1 position in percent of revenue derived from digital advertising among all other “traditional” media companies, She led MSLO’s investments in Wedding Wire and Pingg and was the company’s driving force behind creating cross-platform programs for marketers in TV, digital, magazines and radio.

Before MSLO, Ms Millard was Chief Sales Officer at Yahoo! and prior to that was Chief Internet Officer at Ziff Davis Media and President of Ziff Davis Internet. Previously, Ms Millard was a founding member of the executive team at DoubleClick, where she served as Executive Vice President responsible for establishing the DoubleClick brand and overseeing the operations of DoubleClick Media. She also served as President and Group Publisher of SRDS, Senior Vice President and Publisher of Family Circle and Executive Vice President/Group Publisher of Adweek, Mediaweek and Brandweek magazines.

Ms Millard has received numerous industry awards. She is currently Chairman of the Interactive Advertising Bureau.

Media Link, LLC (http://medialinkllc.com) is the preeminent media representation and strategic advisory firm, founded by former President/Chief Operating Officer and Vice-Chairman of Initiative Media Worldwide Michael Kassan. Media Link’s Representation division conceptualizes and brokers media, sponsorship, integration, and alliance deals at the highest levels between media, entertainment, marketing and advertising firms. The Company represents traditional media players and digital, out-of-home and branded entertainment companies, including more than a dozen of the top Hollywood content producers and distributors. Media Link’s Strategic Advisory division provides consulting services to consumer brands in their corporate and cross-company marketing, media, and advertising strategies and implementations. Media Link draws on the knowledge and relationships of an elite, handpicked group of in-house Subject Matter Experts (former media buyers, agency heads, and senior executives at brand advertisers and integrated media conglomerates). In addition to his role as Chief Executive, Kassan is extremely active in all aspects of client servicing, including when Media Link is called upon to act as advisor to senior executives of major consumer advertisers and integrated media companies. Media Link clients have included: Microsoft, AT&T, Unilever, Home Depot, Colgate-Palmolive, Vodafone, Revlon, Major League Soccer, The Walt Disney Company, Viacom, Comcast, Bain & Co., General Atlantic, FremantleMedia and Sony.

George Simpson
George H. Simpson Communications
203.521.0352
george@georgesimpson.com

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.

Early this morning, Bloomberg reported that regulators are looking into Apple’s disclosures about the health–or lack thereof–of its iconic CEO Steve Jobs.

According to the story, the Securities and Exchange Commission is conducting a review of Apple (AAPL) “to ensure investors weren’t misled, a person familiar with the matter said. The Securities and Exchange Commission’s review doesn’t mean investigators have seen evidence of wrongdoing, the person said, declining to be identified because the inquiry isn’t public.”

And while BoomTown has railed against the creepy obsession the media have had with Jobs’s health and the publishing of rumors and innuendos about it as fact without a whole lot of reporting, I hope it is true.

It is also entirely appropriate that the government agency charged with keeping an eye on public companies does investigate–at the very least, to get the story right.

Because if the press and blogosphere and Apple aren’t going to do it, I vote for the one with subpoena power to sort it all out and make some levelheaded determinations about the rules of the road.

(And, frankly, it is good to see the SEC more vigorous after its stunningly moribund record of late–Hello, Bernie Madoff!)

Apple’s COO and acting CEO Tim Cook, by the way, will likely be questioned about the SEC look-see, Steve Jobs’s health and more at its first-quarter conference call at 2 p.m. PST today.

Of course, the health of its business is the most important thing–sales of iPods and iPhones, new products and what Apple will do with its $25 billion cash horde.

But the focus will surely be on Jobs and now, this government inquiry.

What will be most interesting is exactly how much companies do have to reveal about the health of their leadership and whether the relative fame and brand-critical nature of that exec matters more.

For example, do leaders like Jobs or, say, Martha Stewart, have more need to discuss their health than some lesser known CEO who might have a similar problem?

And since it has been well known that Jobs suffered from a bout with pancreatic cancer and recovered, does he have to disclose it all, given that even his curable version of the illness has complications that are well documented?

And, most of all, how specific do Apple and Jobs have to be, and how frequently do they have to update, especially since a diagnosis is always a moving target?

More to the point, given that the bordering-on-crazed attention given to Jobs–who engenders so much passionate emotion–has also been off-putting and, worse, all over the map in terms of accurate information, what clarity can regulators provide?

Apple has been under increasing pressure, since Jobs revealed he had a “hormonal imbalance,” soon after which he announced that he was taking a five-month medical leave from his duties because his health problems were “more complex.”

I am less strident than others on this turn of events since having accurate health information about yourself is not quite the same as, say, details of a merger and who knew what when.

Plus it has been clear for a long time that all has not been well with Jobs, something any investor had to be aware of.

I have no inside information; nor have I talked to anyone who has treated him, but anyone who has not been on Mars for the past year could see that Jobs was not looking great, especially from his woefully haggard appearance.

As I have written:

Apple investors who have not figured Jobs’s precarious health–after a round with any kind of cancer–into their investment strategies about Apple going forward need some serious reality medication themselves.

Guess what? Jobs has been really sick and it means he is going to have a harder time with any kind of infection or complication for the rest of his life, and he will likely be more delicate than someone who has not had cancer.”

Who knows if the government will find out more, but it would be good if some of the smoke could be cleared away to see if there is some actual fire or not.

And if not, Jobs can get the peace he is seeking to try to recover his health.

As he said to Bloomberg last week: “Why don’t you guys leave me alone–why is this important?”

It would be nice to be get that answer and then, hopefully, let Jobs get on with getting well.

Wenda Harris Millard sat down for an entertaining question-and-answer at paidContent’s “EconWomen” conference today.

And while the co-CEO of Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia (MSO) insisted that her relationship with founder Martha Stewart was just fine, I wanted to be clear: Was there any truth to a recent New York Post report that said she was feuding with Martha, and would end up running Microsoft’s online unit?

So I asked her.

“There’s nothing to it. I’m not going to Microsoft or anywhere else,” she told me.

Fair enough. Anybody want to take issue with that?

If you’re willing to use your real name, you can leave a comment below. If you want to be more discreet, you can email me: peter@allthingsd.com.

Meanwhile, a question still left unanswered: Who is going to run digital for Microsoft (MSFT), anyway?

At its EconCeleb conference in Hollywood today, ContentNext released its list of the most influential and innovative online celebrities today.

It is an interesting and varied list that includes everyone from powerhouse Oprah (pictured here, of course!) to the bisexual sprite, Tila Tequila.

The list, in ascending order:

10. Martha Stewart (she is actually a closet geek)

9. Tila Tequila (vile, but in a good way)

8. Peter Gabriel (a longtime Web pioneer in the digital music space)

7. Radiohead (innovative band pushing Web distribution boundaries)

6. Stephen Colbert (funny online and off)

5. 50 Cent (the urban rap artist as nerd)

4. Oprah Winfrey (um, she’s runs the real world and could run the Internet if she felt like it)

3. Ashton Kutcher (not just a pretty face, but one who gets the power of viral marketing)

2. Will.i.am (for that Barack Obama mashup video alone)

1. Will Ferrell, Chris Henchy & Adam McKay (FunnyOrDie.com might not make money, but it is very funny)

Project Granola?

Apparently, that’s the jokey nickname that’s been given by some in the company to Microsoft’s (MSFT) new online strategy, in the wake of its failed efforts to acquire Yahoo (YHOO) that ended in a big heap of mess this past weekend.

Now, sources tell BoomTown, it is all about “organic”–hence the image of a healthy handful of granola (except for the fact that, in my experience, nobody really likes granola after eating it as much as they think will before).

In any case, it is a word Microsoft folks have been slipping into the conversations with BoomTown over the past few days, so much so that I have started to feel like I was talking to execs from Whole Foods.

Now Microsoft’s greenness has gone public.

Case in point: Brian Hall, Windows Live General Manager, who trotted out the organic word in front of Merrill Lynch analysts yesterday, as reported by CNET’s Ina Fried, saying: “We’ve withdrawn the offer and moved on, and now are focused on how we grow as fast as possible organically.”

But what does organic mean exactly?

Two things, it seems.

First, stepping up spending on marketing, technology and research to try to find ways to differentiate from Google (GOOG) and get into the No. 2 spot now held by Yahoo.

Of course, that plan has not worked out so well as yet for the software giant, with Microsoft spending billions of dollars with no profits and little gain in online search or ad market share, while its archrival Google keeps growing stronger.

Even so, while in Korea today, Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates backed Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer’s do-it-yourself path and his move to walk away from Yahoo.

“The key decisions on that will be made by Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer, who took a look at Yahoo and decided that, on our own, he likes the stuff that we’re doing,” said Gates.

Gates also added what amounts to the second option for Microsoft. “I wouldn’t rule out some partnerships, but we don’t have anything imminent there,” he said.

While a return to Yahoo is a possibility, in fact, buying up Web 2.0 stars is likely to be a bigger focus of the company.

“Yahoo can twist,” said one source. “Microsoft has lots and lots of other options.”

According to sources close to the company, for example, Microsoft’s bankers had been putting out subtle signals to Facebook to see if it would be open to a full buyout.

Microsoft already invested $240 million in the hot social-networking site, an investment that gave Facebook its kooky $15 billion valuation.

And its execs have long told Facebook execs they wouldn’t mind a bigger bite–um, like all of it.

“We just wanted to gauge their interest, more than any real effort,” said another source, who expects Facebook to stick to its longish path to an eventual IPO.

But, as is no secret, Microsoft has selections all over Silicon Valley to help it improve its Internet chances.

Those would include buying bigger vertical sites in strong categories like autos or jobs or finance, and also scooping up smaller but fast-growing socially oriented sites like Digg, Meebo, Yelp or focusing on ad plays like Spot Runner (which just got another big dollop of funding).

There might even be some sense in spinning some of these and all Microsoft Web units off into a separate Internet company, which would be another way of integrating even bigger deals for properties like Time Warner’s (TWX) AOL or News Corp.’s (NWS) MySpace (which are longer shots, I think).

In a post I did in February right after Yahoo rebuffed Microsoft for the first time, I suggested such a course for the company.

As I wrote:

Here’s a list: LinkedIn. Digg. Flixster. Slide or RockYou. Veoh. WordPress. Sphere. Sugar. Some international stuff. And more.

Then, some noted, Microsoft would have to give massive financial incentives to those entrepreneurs to stay and thrive. Most importantly, it would have to keep its Redmond hands from interfering.

Now that would send shivers up the spine of Larry and Sergey.”

And that, most of all, would be more like icing on the cake for Microsoft and be much more tasty than a bowl full of granola.

And, as Martha Stewart says: It’s a good thing.

I am now at the DLD conference in Munich, which is put on by Hubert Burda Media, a gathering that has become one of Europe’s most interesting in recent years.

The three-day DLD–which stands for Digital, Life, Design–focuses on digital innovation, science and culture and has the most cosmopolitan audience of any conference out there.

It is chaired by publisher Hubert Burda and serial Israeli investor Joseph Vardi and hosted by Stephanie Czerny and Marcel Reichart.

It is interesting to be here to garner a lot of different viewpoints from outside the U.S., and I will be visiting a lot of German Web start-ups over the next week.

There is also a lot of Olympic-level schmoozing, of course, since there are precious few such events in Europe compared to the conference-crazy U.S.

There are also, of course, a lot of the usual suspects from the States and especially Silicon Valley.

So far this morning, I have run into folks like former Microsoftie Linda Stone, Yahoo’s Bradley Horowitz, writer and entrepreneur Esther Dyson, Facebook’s Matt Cohler and, yes, Martha Stewart (who needs no introduction).

I am also here to interview onstage for DLD today Kenneth Roth (pictured here), longtime executive director of Human Rights Watch, which investigates, reports on and seeks to curb human-rights abuses in some 70 countries.

To say I am out of my league in interviewing such a serious and substantive figure is an understatement, especially given that I spend all my time contemplating the monetization of widgets (to be more specific, the non-monetization), the fate of content on the Web and the exact date the hype of social networking will end.

Still, I will give it my best effort and perhaps focus on the use of digital tools to get information and stories of heinous injustices out worldwide. After all, the Web has to be more than SuperPoking and dumb online videos on cats skateboarding.

Our session is aptly named: “Inconvenient Stories.”

My favorite kind.

Video, of course, to follow.

While Stewart is known for her focus on home-making skills, some might not know that she is also a bit of a geek, who has been a fixture at many tech events over the years.

For example, she has been an active audience member at our D: All Things Digital conference over the last two years (here she is at D4, grilling Sony CEO Howard Stringer about why there had to be so many wires with her devices).

In this interview with WSJ Online, she talks about her company, Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia, including its many forays into the Internet area.

That will soon mean a new site she has dubbed “Marthapedia,” or–as BoomTown likes to call it–”All Things Martha.”

The early top Microsoft exec, who more recently founded Intentional Software, boldly went where few had gone before, by taking a ride into space. As one of the first space tourists, he spent 11 days on board the International Space Station earlier this year.

Oh, also, good friend Martha Stewart was there to see him off (and also watched him at the conference).

By way of background, D: All Things Digital, the annual tech and media conference Walt Mossberg and I host, has been sold out with a long wait list every year we have put it on.

That has meant only a few hundred people can see the interviews and also demos we do live onstage with some of the tech and media industry’s most interesting and important players and products.

The lineups have included Microsoft’s Bill Gates and Apple’s Steve Jobs, as well as Eric Schmidt of Google, IAC’s Barry Diller, Meg Whitman of eBay, Cisco’s John Chambers and many others.

And we’ve demoed stuff like the Treo when it first came out, as well as digital toilets, Wi-Fi phones and much more.

We usually post the photos and videos of the interviews and demos six or more months after they take place on a separate conference site. This year, our Digital Daily’s John Paczkowski live-blogged D5, and we also posted video highlights from all of the sessions immediately on our newly launched site here.

Now, we are posting videos of every session of the 2007 conference here, in full, and we have made all our photo galleries, hosted by SmugMug and mostly shot by our fabulous Asa Mathat, public too. You can also access our videos via the site’s master player here.

Every day, I have been highlighting a different interview or demo from the conference and this is the final one, although all are still here for good for your perusal and enjoyment.

Here’s Simonyi:

And we like her 25% more now, after seeing the new pictures she took for Wired’s latest issue, as well as a particularly sassy interview she did with the magazine.

The homemaking empress is on the cover of Wired, pictured here making a Wii-shaped cake. It looks delicious, but apparently is not from these recipe instructions that leave out the baking soda for architectural reasons.

And another picture here by Jill Greenberg has her pruning a robot hedge, along with this interview with Mark Frauenfelder on her gadget-freak status.

That’s been easy to see for many years. I ran into her first more than a decade ago at a Microsoft party at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, and she has shown up at a variety of Silicon Valley events from time to time.

In addition, Stewart has attended the D conference for the past two years, first accompanying Martha Stewart Omnimedia CEO Susan Lyne, who appeared onstage at D4. But I was surprised to observe that she has actually been one of the few attendees who has sat through all of the sessions from start to finish.

She even managed to fire off a very funny but pointed series of questions at D4 to Sony CEO Sir Howard Stringer about the nest of wires current gadgets require to operate. Here she is pictured grilling Stringer and also showing one of D‘s teen panelists how to properly fold a T-shirt.

In the current interview with Wired, Stewart makes some other salient points, especially about quality. “Whether you’re a programmer or a seamstress, it’s all about new techniques, simplifying old techniques and consolidating steps,” she said. “Making things go faster–but not worse. Better.”

She also jokingly blames the end of her marriage on the Walkman, which she calls the “Rudeman,” and decries using email over talking, although she seems pretty addicted to her BlackBerry from what I have seen (to be fair, so am I).

And Stewart is also apparently working on “Marthapedia,” which is her take on the user-contributed Wikipedia project. Of course, it being Martha, she will be editing user content.

“It won’t be as freewheeling as Wikipedia,” she said. “Because a lot of this–you have to really monitor it.”

And that is a good thing.