As part of BoomTown’s duty as internal jobs board for Yahoo, here’s another departure: CIO Michael Kirwan (pictured here).

A terse email went out yesterday about Kirwan’s leaving.

According to his Yahoo bio, he had “global responsibility for Yahoo!’s Corporate Systems group, which includes the IT Infrastructure, Corporate Applications, CRM and Premium Services Infrastructure teams. These teams ensure Yahoo!’s internal systems and billing/anti-fraud services are available 24/7.”

In other words, the guy who keeps the lights on at the Silicon Valley icon!

Kirwan reported to David Dibble, EVP of Service Engineering & Operations at Yahoo.

Kirwan previously worked at VeriSign, as well as at Bank of America, Bank of California and Union Bank of California.

The move is primarily aimed at making it easier for international advertisers to purchase Facebook Ads, but it will also give Facebook users another option for buying Facebook Credits, which can then be used to purchase virtual wares in the site’s gift store.

“We want to give the people who use Facebook, as well as advertisers and developers, a fast and trusted way to pay across our service,” Dan Levy, director of payment operations at Facebook, said in a press release. “As our business has grown, offering local methods of payment has become increasingly important for advertisers who want to buy Facebook Ads. Teaming with PayPal, a global leader in online payments, makes this possible.”

Another thing it will make possible: Increased revenue. As J.P. Morgan analyst Imran Khan noted in a research bulletin issued after the announcement, “More than half of US internet users now use Facebook, and globally the site represents ~5% of all time spent online. Additionally, we think social games generated more than $500M in revenue in F’09, and the sales of virtual goods and premium services are a key part of the revenue model for such games–one which we think has been constrained by the shortage of straightforward payment options.”

Mr. Genachowski’s proposal suggests everything in the Internet pipe is covered by rules prohibiting discrimination against any legal Internet traffic, known as net neutrality, unless the agency says otherwise, according to FCC officials familiar with a draft circulating in the agency.

Internet providers could seek exemptions for so-called premium managed services, like private corporate data networks or pay-TV services, which require guaranteed levels of data speed.

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Instead, the New York-based company has just raised a $4.5 million Series B round that its CEO, 22-year-old David Karp, says will fund it for two and a half years. Union Square Ventures and Spark Capital, which led the company’s first $750,000 round a year ago, also led this financing. My educated guess is that its investors now value Tumblr at around $15 million.

Tumblr is a “microblog” platform that is supposed to let its users quickly create nice-looking posts with a minimum of effort; it sits somewhere between Twitter and full-fledged blogs like Blogger and TypePad. It is popular with a relatively small but prolific user base: Its 500,000 users have created pages that draw 15 million unique visitors and 61 million page views a month, Karp says.

Money? Nope. Tumblr is free–and has no ads cluttering up its hipster vibe.

Way back in 2007, those kinds of numbers would have been catnip for the likes of Google (GOOG) or Yahoo (YHOO). Now, though, even deep-pocketed buyers aren’t racing to snap up revenue-free start-ups. But Karp says raising money from his previous investors was easy: “These guys came to us with a deal that made us incredibly comfortable.”

Karp says he’s going to start generating money in early 2009. Not by selling ads on his members pages–Karp thinks the site will eventually incorporate ads in some way, but not yet–but by selling users “premium” services, most of which he’s not ready to describe. He does promise they will be “really sexy.”

More practically, Karp points out that other Web services, like the WordPress blogging platform and Yahoo’s Flickr photo service, have been able to upsell many of their users with goodies like extra storage. He figures many of his users will pay up, too.

The new money means he’ll have time to prove his thesis. Karp has just doubled his staff–which means there are now all of six people on payroll. One of them, hired in September, is John Maloney, Karp’s former boss at Urban Baby, where he started his Web career. Maloney is now in charge of business operations.

The money also means there are heightened expectations. Karp has done much more than people twice his age (and has the press clips to prove it). But the newest funding round means his investors think the company will be worth as much as $50 million by the time he sells it or raises more cash. In order to prove them right, he’s got a lot of work ahead of him.

[Image Credit: David's Log]