When the company posted its earnings press release early by mistake before markets had closed, word of the beat encouraged traders to rush in and buy. The shares rose by 7 percent initially, and went as high as $22.20 per share after opening at $20.19.

Telecom carriers are again spending to build out and improve their networks, and that makes Juniper the Little Engine That Could, writes ISI analyst Brian Marshall in a note to clients today. Investments in wireless LTE (Long Term Evolution) networks are bringing carriers “back to the trough,” he wrote. “Carriers are searching for ways to stabilize their capital expenditures, reduce network cost per bit and increase average revenue per user.”

And so they’re turning to Juniper, which makes about two-thirds of its revenue from service providers. Marshall writes that, in the quarter, Juniper accounted for about 10 percent of Verizon’s capital spending; up from about 5 percent last quarter. “Even in the face of ‘stable’ CapEx budgets, we believe Juniper can flourish over the next several quarters as carriers re-allocate priorities. Marshall rates Juniper a “buy,” with a target price of $30.

Update: And apparently the Little Engine is headed back down the hill. Juniper shares are falling, and are down almost 7 percent to $20.22 as of 10:30 am ET, which is right back where it started yesterday.

According to sources close to the situation, Yahoo has instituted a hiring freeze across the company and is considering a reduction in force in support units of the company.

While the details of any layoffs — which are expected to be small and selective for now — are still being worked out, sources said that the stricture not to fill hundreds of open positions is the first step toward significant cost-cutting initiatives across the Silicon Valley Internet giant, in the wake of what it expects to be another weak quarterly report next week and a looming proxy fight.

Yahoo reports its fourth quarter earnings Tuesday. While the company has managed to improve the results in the last part of the quarter, sources said they will still show continued weakness in its key businesses and consumer usage.

That’s as competitors such as Google and Facebook have been showing significant growth, especially in the display advertising market.

Thus, new Yahoo CEO Scott Thompson appears to be zeroing in on costs and managing for margins, said multiple sources, much as his predecessor Carol Bartz did at the start of her tenure.

But many think Yahoo needs even more drastic changes, including massive cuts in staff and also product arenas, to give the company new life.

That includes shifts in leadership at the top levels too. In a major move this week, co-founder Jerry Yang stepped down from the company’s board and all roles there. More directors are expected to leave soon, too.

That will likely come after negotiations to sell part of its lucrative stakes in both the Alibaba Group and Yahoo Japan are successfully completed.

While not a certainty, Yahoo’s board hopes that will happen sometime before activist shareholder Daniel Loeb initiates a proxy battle against the company in the coming month.

Sound complex?

It is, and also troubling to Yahoo’s long beleaguered rank and file, who have been worried about more layoffs.

The Yahoo troops have been under intense pressure and have suffered from ongoing attrition. Just yesterday, for example, Yahoo lost one of its top advertising execs, Seth Dallaire, to Amazon.

The company can ill afford such departures of key talent, even as it seeks to pare employee numbers in other parts of its business.

At the end of its last quarter, Yahoo reported that it had 13,700 staffers, down from 14,100 in the previous year.

Yahoo, of course, declined comment.

The company reported per share earnings of $3.28 on sales of $26.2 billion. Analysts had estimated sales to come in at $26.25 billion and per-share earnings of $3.22.

IBM raised its guidance on its outlook for earnings in the 2011 fiscal year to at least $13.35 from $13.25 previously. The company is working toward a publicly stated goal of delivering $20 per share in earnings by its fiscal year 2015.

IBM shares fell nearly 2 percent ahead of the report and closed at $186.94 during regular trading. The shares fell further in after-hours trading, dropping $8.53, or more than 4 percent, to 182.00 soon after closing. The shares are up nearly 30 percent since the start of the year.

The growth in revenue amounts to 8 percent, or 3 percent after adjusting for currency implications. Operating income grew by $4 billion or 9 percent. IBM’s operating margin was 46.8 percent, up 1.5 points.

Services revenue was up 8 percent, and IBM reported a services backlog of $137 billion, up $2.4 billion. Revenues from the software sales were $5.8 billion, an increase of 13 percent. Hardware sales totaled $4.5 billion for the quarter, up 4 percent. Financing revenues decreased 2 percent in the third quarter to $520 million. Perhaps this is why Big Blue made a big push on financing for small businesses last month.

On the brighter side, IBM did well in growth markets. They accounted for 23 percent of sales and contributed more than half of IBM’s sales growth on a constant currency basis so far this year. Forty of those countries all reported double-digit sales growth in the quarter.

Today, in an internal meeting of its VP-level execs, Yahoo’s interim CEO Tim Morse said of the Silicon Valley Internet giant’s strategic review that “we know time is a constraint and we are mindful we have to go quickly.”

Morse, who is largely seen as a figurehead by Yahoo insiders and a proxy for the board after the recent firing of CEO Carol Bartz, held the confab this morning.

(Note to Tim: I don’t know why I am not just invited to these Yahoo gatherings, since it would make my life a lot easier.)

Back to the meeting action: Morse got a lot of questions from the execs, who were very concerned by the muddled swirl of rumors about the future of Yahoo, including a possible sale.

While saying he was open to all questions, Morse began with an explanation for the group that he could not answer “unwise” ones that he either did not have insight into or could not answer in a semi-public forum.

That included upcoming quarterly results, retention plans and, of course, sale offers.

Only wise questions, peeps! (And no wisenheimer stuff, either!)

Of course, no one paid attention to that request. They launched instead into multiple queries about the strategic plan the board is working on.

Morse told the group that there was interest in Yahoo and that its banking advisers were reaching out to those “we think we should be talking to.”

He added, noting that Yahoo had to focus on its ongoing business: “We know time is a constraint and we are mindful we have to go quickly” on the strategic review of what to do.

Previously, the board has said the process would take months, which is too glacial, considering.

There was also a question about the stock and the risks to their jobs in any deal. Cautioning that he could not say what would happen, Morse assured them that any party that buys the company would likely want to retain talent.

Someone else asked what a good buyer would look like. Morse replied that it would be someone who was good for employees, for shareholders and for customers.

But not good for the wretched media!

Morse took particular aim at us, noting that the press was writing stories “because they make money out of clicks.”

Actually, while we will take the clicks, AllThingsD is writing stories so Yahoos and everyone else can get a clearer picture of what is going on, as opposed to the incessant corporate confusion coming from Yahoo.

(By the way, just sayin’, but Yahoo also likes the clicks to its pages.)

One person asked if Yahoo was officially for sale. Morse said, “No, we are not trying to sell the company.” Then, he blamed the media again for misreading co-founder Jerry Yang’s recent memo about evaluating options as code for a sale.

Which it was — and you can take that click to the bankers.

A Yahoo spokeswoman, natch, declined to comment.

After a series of increasingly disappointing quarterly earnings announcements, Wall Street is hoping that Research in Motion will deliver better results today.

The Canadian phone maker — most famous for its iconic Blackberry devices — will be reporting its second-quarter earnings after the markets close later today.

Analysts are predicting earnings of 87 cents a share for the period, which is within RIM’s own guidance range of adjusted profit — between 75 cents and $1.05 per share.

Higher would be better, based on the hope that sales of its most recent smartphones with the Blackberry 7 operating system, and also its lackluster PlayBook tablet, will help its results after a downward slide that has been painful.

That’s been especially tough, since both Apple’s iOS and Google Android are surging ahead in the mobile market.

RIM hopes to also get a boost from the first phone using the QNX operating system it bought last year.

A sad little period was put on the even more pathetic story of Myspace yesterday by its former owner, News Corp., which said it had lost $254 million. The media giant announced the writedown during its quarterly earnings call.

The down-the-drain social networking site generated $230 million in operating losses over the last year.

The most recent quarter was an “improvement” on previous losses — but what a way to go.

After its once stratospheric valuation heights, Myspace was sold for just $35 million to a company that included singer/actor Justin Timberlake as an investor, which just adds that last little bit of cringe to the sorry situation.

Many had long predicted Myspace’s demise — the bloom was off the rose very soon after it was the most hyped company in Web 2.0 history. But it’s still a good question to ask: Is this a case that other hotsy-totsy start-ups need to look to as a cautionary tale? Or was it simply a digital belly flop?

Well, it’s both, of course. So here are the five key things the current crop of pretty start-ups might want to take away from the Myspace debacle:

1. Stay current: One of the big problems of Myspace, as has been much observed, was its inability to keep innovating its technology and improving its offerings. While this seems simple in retrospect, consistently trading up the experience and deliverables to users is something that many companies quickly lose sight of. But in a fast-changing digital world, it is very easy to get behind very quickly.

2. Stay focused: You certainly can go in a lot of directions in life and in your business, but most companies that succeed — Apple, Amazon, Facebook — tend to stick rather closely to their knitting and do not veer off into too many orthogonal directions. Myspace, riding on huge waves of attention and hype, seemed to have a new plan and scheme every five minutes. When it comes down to it, most companies are lucky to get one amazing and significant business.

3. Stay humble: Speaking of waves of attention and hype — they’ll sink any company fast if it spends too much time swimming in their deceptively lovely waters. As anyone at the top of a curve knows, the riptide downside will come soon enough (see: Airbnb). Thus it’s important to have the right amount of attention. While it goes against a lot of marketing strategies, underplaying can often be more powerful.

4. Stay customer-focused: Another obvious rule that Myspace repeatedly broke, with its rush to add all kinds of traffic-inducing elements to the site, rather than build it for quality and layer them in later. While people joked about the circus act that Myspace’s interface became, it actually was not very funny for those using it.

5. Stay independent: One wonders what might have happened if Myspace had not taken the money and run. While the pile of money from News Corp. was perhaps irresistible, it’s hard to find to anyone on any side of this deal who did not bemoan the pressures of being inside a big company, and its negative impact on Myspace.

Facebook — which CEO Mark Zuckerberg was allowed to carefully nurture before imposing a definite business plan — is often pointed to as proof of the importance of allowing delicate start-ups the space to thrive. But there are also instances of hot entrepreneurs doing fine within a larger entity — YouTube at Google, or Zappos at Amazon, leap quickly to mind.

In the end, of course, none of this might have helped Myspace, which may have simply been one of the Web’s shooting stars. That is to say, remarkable to watch — but, in the end, also a lot more common than you might think.

Today and tomorrow, Yahoo’s directors are gathering here in Silicon Valley for one of their regular meetings that take place over the course of the year.

While board meetings in general are usually pretty dull affairs–and Yahoo’s, in particular, are typically glacial ones–there is a lot on the plates of those with purview over the machinations of the long-struggling Silicon Valley Internet giant.

Here’s a primer of what might (and might not) be happening, according to sources, of course, as Yahoo continues on its quest to reinvigorate itself–a journey that is beginning to make Siddhartha’s transformation into Buddha enlightenment look speedy.

A Yahoo spokeswoman declined to comment on anything below, although I did run it all by them.

The U-Shaped Turnaround

At Yahoo’s recent sales meeting in San Antonio, CEO Carol Bartz went all Sesame Street on the troops, using the letter “U” as an illustration to indicate where in the cycle the company was in its turnaround.

Apparently, just on the other side of the very bottom of the letter, heading inevitably upward.

Her argument was that the company has finally cleaned up its platform mess and its confusing corporate structure, and that its display and search advertising business is now recovering nicely.

All true, except there are some other key issues, such as the slowness of the search and online advertising partnership with Microsoft to make some serious hay.

In fact, although its display business will show a definite strong recovery in Yahoo’s quarterly results next week, its search business–both in market share and revenue per search (RPS)–has, as one person close to the situation put it succintly, “fallen off the cliff.”

That’s due, in part, to getting the new system with Microsoft delivering better results, which is not happening yet (if ever!).

In this quarter, Microsoft has honored its contractual guarantees and will make up the difference–which will result in masking the magnitude of the RPS loss. It’s a worrisome trend to watch.

The Asia Situation

Yahoo and its Asian partners are still mulling over various options regarding the company’s large ownership stakes there.

What is happening with its share in China’s Alibaba Group, according to sources, is precisely nothing right now, as has been made clear in recent comments by its CEO and co-founder Jack Ma.

“If you cannot make the business cool, you have no right to be angry with me,” said Ma in an article in Forbes published this week, referring to Yahoo. “I just don’t trust them…I’ve been working with them for years, and I’m disappointed.”

Relations between Ma and Bartz, sources said, remain as bad as ever, and even the normally close one between Ma and Yahoo co-founder Jerry Yang is strained.

Plus, Ma told Forbes, as he has said before, Alibaba is not taking its auction site, Taobao, public–leaving Yahoo in possession of an appreciating but decidedly private asset.

Japan is a different story, with the disposition of Yahoo’s stake in Yahoo! Japan the subject of long and continuing negotiations for a while now.

While the earthquake and tsunami crisis there did slow discussions down, there is still active recent movement about a variety of cashing-out scenarios, all of which have massive tax and regulatory issues.

Without boring you with the specifics, one option is to create a tracking stock, another a spin-off of the asset and still another some sort of stock trade.

But no matter what happens, Yahoo will have to pay some sort of taxes on its 35 percent stake in Yahoo! Japan, now worth $8 billion.

But if its CFO Tim Morse–the key figure working on the deal–can pull it off, what will Yahoo do with all that money?

Acquisition Guns Blazing? Or Sputtering?

In a recent forum in Silicon Valley, one of its M&A minions said Yahoo had its “guns blazing” with regard to acquisition activity in 2011, as deliciously reported in The Wall Street Journal, despite the company’s lackluster acquisition record.

Sources said the exec had his ears soundly boxed by his managers for the dopey remarks, since Yahoo has had such a lackluster record in the arena–especially compared to others.

And, oh yes, Yahoo’s M&A head just decamped to gaming phenom Zynga.

That aside, Yahoo should be deep in the market for hot start-ups to help revive its innovative spirit, but it remains hindered by a continued reluctance by new start-ups to join it and by its reputation for being a place where entrepreneurs go to die.

That certainly could change at any time with the right execs in place, but Yahoo is competing with a plethora of more exciting companies and also a seemingly endless venture capital gusher of cash of late.

While it is the board’s job to approve acquisitions and not source them, perhaps it is its job to pressure Bartz and other execs to get off the stick and hit at least one of the targets Yahoo aims at.

Targets are plentiful in advertising, content and even social, with many start-ups playing right into a lot of arenas Yahoo needs some help.

And help it does need as talent keeps walking out the door daily, mostly to hotter prospects such as Zynga and social buying sites Groupon and LivingSocial.

There is no question it is hard for any large company to hold onto top staff when there are so many enticing bonbons out there as options, but it can be done.

One good thing: Its newish head of product Blake Irving and head of U.S. media and advertising Ross Levinsohn seem to be playing well together and are setting a tone of stability that is much needed.

Enter the Kenny

That said, there remains endless swirl, especially with key investors, about the performance of its CEO.

While she started off as a publicly in-your-face exec, Bartz has definitely stepped out of the limelight of late, as her pugnacious manner started to irritate Wall Street and others.

It was a good idea, since it has taken the focus off the lack of stock and revenue progress she had loudly promised.

Still, Yahoo shares have continued to stay locked in the mid-teens, as investors wait for some sign that Bartz’s turnaround has worked.

The entrance of its spanking new director, Akamai President David Kenny, has further increased speculation about management and board changes at Yahoo.

This is Kenny’s first board meeting, but this well-connected newbie is someone who is clearly going to rise quickly to the top of decision-making at Yahoo.

That’s because the smooth and well-liked Kenny, who also has deep advertising experience as founder of the Digitas agency, has a long relationship with Yahoo and also with Yang.

He also now has much more tech cred as a leader of one of the Internet’s most important infrastructure companies, with a ton of regular contacts with media giants, ad networks and video providers that are Akamai’s clients.

In other words, Kenny (pictured here) is the full package of ad and tech experience that would make him an obvious Yahoo CEO candidate when Bartz’s contract is up in early 2013, if not before.

He’s also the person most likely to take over for longtime BoomTown punching bag Roy Bostock as chairman of the board at some point.

None of this is happening soon, but it is clearly an interesting development.

There are other machinations, of course, from continued interest from private equity players in Yahoo, as well as a variety of takeover scenarios, each more complex than the next.

While often derided as yesterday’s news by the elite of Silicon Valley as on an inevitable downward path, those plots are there because Yahoo remains a stellar brand with consumers worldwide and an Internet property with huge traffic and a big ad business.

In other words, it’s a U that someday maybe could be a V.

In another significant search announcement yesterday, Google said it was revising its algorithm to target makers of low-quality content.

The search giant has been criticized by many of late for the presence of too much spam in its results, which degrades the consumer experience on the powerful site.

Thus, “pretty big algorithmic improvement to our ranking–a change that noticeably impacts 11.8% of our queries,” said Google in a blog post.

The company continued:

“This update is designed to reduce rankings for low-quality site–sites which are low-value add for users, copy content from other websites or sites that are just not very useful. At the same time, it will provide better rankings for high-quality sites—sites with original content and information such as research, in-depth reports, thoughtful analysis and so on.”

Who Google is aiming at is unclear–some point to Demand Media, whose top exec recently said the content company welcomed any improvements to the search results in its recent quarterly call.

“We consider ourself very white hat,” declared CEO Richard Rosenblatt, who has often touted the Demand’s good relations with Google, to a question from a Wall Street analyst about the series of recent declarations by Google to clean up its search results.

That was further underscored yesterday.

Interestingly, the Google post about the changes, titled “Finding More High-Quality Sites,” was authored by Google’s Amit Singhal and Matt Cutts–who have cut a high profile of late in the search arena.

Both Singhal and Cutts were quite vocal recently in loopy accusations about Microsoft’s Bing lifting Google’s search results.

And Cutts has been a frequent visitor to Washington, D.C. of late, to defend Google over its controversial acquisition of the ITA Software flight information company, as well as its search ranking process.

At a January 13 meeting, in an email obtained by BoomTown, Cutts was the draw:

Please join us!

You’re invited to learn

How Google’s Search Engine Works

Myth-busting and Q&A for House/Senate staff members

with

Matt Cutts

Principal Search Engineer, Google

Thursday, January 13, 2011

2:30 – 3:30 PM

House Visitor Center Room 201

How does Google’s search engine really work? Can websites pay Google to improve their ranking in Google results? What’s the difference between the “natural” results and the ads on the right hand side? And why does a particular website rank #1 or #3 when you do a Google search for your boss’ name? You’re invited to join Matt Cutts, one of Google’s top search engine engineers and the company’s ambassador to webmasters for a session on Capitol Hill where Matt will explain how Google ranks websites, address common myths about Google’s search results, and answer your questions. Please join us!

In another invite, low-quality content was the topic:

Matt Cutts is one of Google’s top search engineers who heads up the team ensuring that spam and low-quality sites don’t game search results. He is going to be here in DC to talk with folks around town about some of the recent calls for government to police or regulate the “fairness” of search results. Matt is a bit of a rock star in the search world and spends a lot of time speaking and blogging about these issues. Basically he’ll talk about how Google goes about ranking websites, how his team fights webspam, and he’ll provide a closer look at sites like Foundem and MyTriggers (who have filed antitrust actions against Google).

Finally, he’ll talk about the recent calls by some for Google’s search results to be regulated.

Perhaps I’m being cynical, but the noisy search algorithm changes, while welcome to those using Google, also have a pretty clear goal to burnish the Silicon Valley company’s image.

Please see this disclosure related to me and Google.

Here’s a blog post that Demand Media put up in response to Google’s announcement last night that it would prune low-quality content from its search results.

In a blog post titled “Finding More High-Quality Sites,” Google said:

“This update is designed to reduce rankings for low-quality site–sites which are low-value add for users, copy content from other websites or sites that are just not very useful. At the same time, it will provide better rankings for high-quality sites—sites with original content and information such as research, in-depth reports, thoughtful analysis and so on.”

Some think Google was aiming at Demand, whose top exec recently said the content company welcomed any improvements to the search results in its recent quarterly call.

“We consider ourself very white hat,” declared CEO Richard Rosenblatt, to a question from a Wall Street analyst about the series of recent declarations by Google to clean up its search results.

Demand went further in a blog posted last night, which is here in its entirety:

A Statement About Search Engine Algorithm Changes

How our content reaches the consumer–whether it’s through direct visits, social media referrals, apps or search–has always been important to and monitored closely by us. We also recognize that major search engines like Google have and will continue to make frequent changes. We have built our business by focusing on creating the useful and original content that meets the specific needs of today’s consumer. So naturally we applaud changes search engines make to improve the consumer experience–it’s both the right thing to do and our focus as well.

Today, Google announced an algorithm change to nearly 12% of their U.S. query results. As might be expected, a content library as diverse as ours saw some content go up and some go down in Google search results.This is consistent with what Google discussed on their blog post. It’s impossible to speculate how these or any changes made by Google impact any online business in the long term–but at this point in time, we haven’t seen a material net impact on our Content & Media business.

Coming out of the IPO quiet period this week, we knew the topic of Google’s search engine changes was top of mind for many people–so we discussed it on the earnings call, in a couple of follow up interviews and are now issuing this statement. However, we generally don’t comment or speculate on changes by major search engines. They make changes nearly daily in a quest to give consumers the best possible experience, as do we.

Finally, in our Q4 earnings call on Tuesday we talked at length about the nature of our content and the consumer experiences we are delivering. Beyond our success helping consumers discovering our content via search, we also shared metrics around direct visits, repeat visits and social visits. We believe these metrics are leading indicators that our properties are developing into recognizable consumer brands that are delivering real value to an increasingly loyal community.

We believe these kinds of indicators are a result of our firm commitment to the interests of consumers, and that is where we continue to focus our efforts.

Larry Fitzgibbon is Demand Media’s EVP of Media and Operations, and manages the company’s rapidly growing network of consumer properties.

BoomTown always enjoys the maiden voyage of a newly public company, so liveblogging Demand Media’s first quarterly earnings seems like a must-do.

It’s also the first public outing for CEO Richard Rosenblatt, who has sold off his previous entrepreneurial efforts.

And it seems like a good start, as the Santa Monica, Calif.-based online content company, which had its IPO in late January, finally out to rest some controversy about how much is actually earns by posting $1 million in net income in the last three months of 2010.

Okay, that is a weensy amount, to be sure, but it beat expectations, as well as for revenue, with sales of $73.6 million for the fourth quarter.

Of course, Demand wants Wall Street to look at “Adjusted OIBDA” results, which was up 88 percent, and which it is a much prettier $20.1 million in earnings.

Also on deck, as MediaMemo’s Peter Kakfa noted today:

“Expect to hear at least one riff on whether or not the company feels threatened by Google and changes the search engine is making to push “content farms” out of its results. CEO Richard Rosenblatt insists that his company is not a content farm, and that Google is just fine with his stuff, but I have a feeling the issue won’t go away just yet.”

We’ll see–here we go:

2:05 pm PT: It took me a bit to get into this conference call, since I could not get the live broadcast from the Web site at all and the teleconference operators were snoozing.

And I tuned in just as Rosenblatt (pictured here) was talking about how Demand was helping people get information about how to ripen avocados.

No, really.

(Memo to self: Curb the snotty journalist tone, especially since I love me a good, ripe avocado.)

Rosenblatt, who seems only a little nervous, pressed on by talking about its massive eHow site, as well as Cracked.com and other major branded sites Demand has.

The latest is TypeF women’s health and beauty site, which is guided by supermodel Tyra Banks.

Rosenblatt then linked it all to advertisers and how much they want to spend on sites like this.

“We are not limited to just a few key verticals,” he said, touting its sales staff, including Rosenblatt’s daring raid of Chief Revenue Officer Joanne Bradford from Yahoo.

“The company is well positioned to capture an increasing share of brand revenue,” said Rosenblatt.

2:18 pm: Rosenblatt then zeroed in on the juicy issues, which center around the quality of the content Demand churns out.

Or, as critics have argued, lack of quality.

“The level of specificity is arcane to some,” noted Rosenblatt, using the example of flying paper lanterns and how to make a roof rake as examples of the kind of niche content Demand produces.

Arcane is right, but it takes all kinds!

Plus, insisted Rosenblatt, it’s good! Accurate! Edited! Useful!

He took the gloves off here, which made me want a Demand piece about taking care of leather gloves (linseed oil?).

“We’re just getting started,” said Rosenblatt, about the company and not the glove care tips.

2:24 pm: The CEO turned it over to the CFO, Charles Hilliard, which meant I was off on my critical Web search about taking care of my gloves.

That’s because he immediately said: “Adjusted OIBDA.”

Which-let’s be honest–sounds like a communicable disease.

Essentially, said Hilliard, it’s up, up, up for Demand, in terms of revenue, earnings, page views and more.

You can read all these gory financial details in the press release here.

For some reason, Hilliard is using the retail term, “same store sales,” as a comparison. I covered retails for years, so it is a surprise for this to be the metaphor, but Demand obviously sees itself as a content store.

2:39 pm: Q&A time and the Google-fights-spam question came first!

Rosenblatt said he welcomed it and appeared unconcerned. His avocado-ripening, roof-rake-making, flying-lantern company needed to make no excuses!

The next question is about expansion, including internationally. Sure, Western Europe.

Then, a sneaky follow-up on content farms.

“We consider ourself very white hat,” declared Rosenblatt.

I wonder what the best way to clean a white hat is?

Voila! It’s right here on eHow:

“1. Wash your white hat in the washing machine if it is made of cotton or polyester. Just add laundry detergent and one cup of bleach. Wash the hat using the hot water setting. Do not put the hat in the dryer. The hat will shrink and then it won’t fit your head.”

Call the Pulitzer Prize committee!

(Wait, snotty again! I also love clean, white hats.)

I was so riveted by the white-hat thing, I completely missed the next question, but tuned in again to one about revenue momentum.

Essentially, Bradford–who looks great in a white hat, I might add–is on the case.

Then some internal technical questions and about guidance for Q1. CFO Hilliard said that the company was guiding for growth, despite more public company expenses.

(Needless to say, you can find out about how to run a public company here on eHow.)

The last question was about how much branded advertising will make up total revenue. Between five and 10 percent of 2010, said Hilliard, but it is the fastest category of growth.

And also one about curation of content and use of social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter for feedback.

Rosenblatt said that feedback can even become content, which will be part of new eHow redesign to come.

Want some tips on that? Of course, Demand Media has the answer, at least to this easy question.

Yahoo announced today that it was restructuring its advertising sales force, after being without a head of its key U.S. unit since mid-March.

Big news: No new top ad sales exec.

Instead, several North American sales execs with larger portfolios will report directly to Hilary Schneider, who is in charge of the Americas for Yahoo (YHOO).

“This elevates the strong talent and brings a broader set of voices one step higher in the organization,” said Schneider in an interview today. “The marketplace is changing rapidly and bringing complete solutions is really the mantra of where the market is going.”

This move is a shift from the direction Yahoo had been heading in since Joanne Bradford stepped down as head of U.S. revenue and market development for Yahoo in mid-March.

Schneider had been leading the search for an external replacement for Bradford, using star headhunter Jim Citrin of Spencer Stuart.

The company apparently was unable to land the kind of prominent name Yahoo had been seeking for the job, after trying to attract several well-known candidates and rejecting others.

“Our leadership in sales is the strongest to date,” said Schneider, explaining the new structure for its ad sales force. “I have kissed a lot of frogs over the years, but it turned out the Prince Charmings we always needed were back at the ranch.”

(Frogs? Prince Charmings? On a ranch? Block that metaphor, although BoomTown will go along anyway!)

“Each of our leaders has strong relationships with advertisers and they know and trust each other,” said Schneider. “I will be consolidating the operational hub and directly managing it this time.”

Among the changes:

Mitch Spolan, the 11-year Yahoo veteran who is in charge of North American field sales, will also pick up responsibility for agency development and relationships.

Seth Dallaire, who has been running mid-market sales, will now be in charge of channel sales, reseller relationships and new and emerging formats, such as video, local, social and mobile.

Frank Weishaupt, who has been in charge of marketplaces, will add sales operations and training and sales development to his portfolio.

Lastly, Jim Stothard, who has been in charge of account management, will be leaving Yahoo for personal reasons, but will be working with Schneider to find his replacement.

Schneider said the new sales structure will eliminate a layer of management to better focus on improving advertising sales

That’s important, due to Yahoo’s recent quarterly earnings report, in which it posted flat revenue compared to last year, despite a recovery of the display advertising market.

Display is an area in which Yahoo (YHOO) has long dominated, although Google (GOOG) and others have stepped up competitive efforts aggressively.

So, the slowness in filling the company’s key sales position has had a lot of people inside Yahoo a little jumpy, because of the importance of firm leadership in the premium display online ad business in which the Internet giant needs to keep excelling.

Microsoft (MSFT) recently hired one of the people Yahoo had considered–former MTV Networks ad exec Carolyn Everson–for its head of sales.

With Everson and others not panning out, one hope was that Patrick Keane, CEO of Associated Content, which Yahoo just acquired, would take the job. But sources said he declined the offer.

Yahoo also had eyeballed internal candidates, but it seems to have decided to simply kiss, oops, elevate almost all of them.

Said Yahoo in its official statement about the changes:

“Yahoo! is committed to maintaining and strengthening partnerships with advertisers and agencies, and has a long history of sales leadership in the industry. The North American sales organization will now report directly to Hilary Schneider, EVP of the Americas. This organizational change will elevate the strong executive talent at Yahoo! and accelerate our momentum in the marketplace.”

Reporting fourth-quarter earnings this morning, the satellite-radio provider, which was teetering on the edge of bankruptcy last year, posted a profit of $14.2 million–less than a penny a share–compared with a year-earlier loss of $245.8 million, or eight cents. Revenue for the quarter rose 8.7 percent to $676.2 million.

An impressive showing, considering analysts polled by Thomson Reuters had expected a two-cent loss on revenue of $664 million.

Sirius (SIRI) added 257,028 subscribers during the quarter, bringing its total to 18.8 million. The company expects to add another 500,000 in 2010.

Microsoft CFO Chris Liddell (pictured here) is leaving the software giant at the end of the year and will be replaced by longtime Microsoft finance exec Peter Klein.

A Microsoft (MSFT) spokesman said Liddell wants to pursue jobs beyond his finance role outside the company.

Liddell, 51, arrived at Microsoft in 2005 and many of his years at the company have been tough ones financially due to the weak economy. It was up to Liddell to deliver the bad news at quarterly earnings calls.

Still, BoomTown always enjoyed his adorkable New Zealand accent, even when he was talking econalypse 24/7, as well as about layoffs and cost cutting.

One post from last spring, for example, was titled: “Glum Chris at the Recessiondome.”

Klein (pictured here), 47, has been at Microsoft since early 2002 and currently serves as CFO of its Business Division, which is one of the company’s largest units.

Here is the official press release:

For Release 2 p.m. PST

Nov. 24, 2009

Microsoft Announces Chief Financial Officer Transition

Chris Liddell to leave Microsoft Dec. 31; Peter Klein assuming CFO role.

REDMOND, Wash.–Nov. 24, 2009–Microsoft Corp. today announced that Chris Liddell will be leaving the company at the end of 2009, and named Peter Klein as the company’s new chief financial officer.

“Chris and his finance team have accomplished a great deal over the past four and a half years. The team is deep and strong, and has an excellent record of building value for our shareholders,” said Steve Ballmer, Microsoft chief executive officer. “Peter brings great finance and operations expertise and a deep understanding of the company, and I am looking forward to a smooth transition that continues our commitment to cost containment and finance excellence.”

In the past fiscal year, Microsoft reduced costs by $3 billion compared with its original plan, and returned $14 billion to shareholders through dividends and stock buy-back.

Klein, 47, joined Microsoft in February 2002 and currently serves as CFO of Microsoft’s Business Division, overseeing all financial strategy, management and reporting for the $18.9 billion business with 7,800 full-time employees. Previously, Klein served three years as CFO of Microsoft’s Server and Tools Business.

“My time at Microsoft has been an outstanding experience, and I am delighted to be leaving the company in such great shape,” Liddell said. “We have built a world-class finance team and established strong internal accountability. Microsoft is coming out of the economic downturn with not only great product momentum but also strong discipline around costs and a focus on driving shareholder value.”

Liddell, 51, joined Microsoft in May 2005 after serving as CFO at International Paper Co., and chief executive officer of Carter Holt Harvey Ltd., then New Zealand’s second-largest listed company. He said he is looking at a number of opportunities that will expand his career beyond being a CFO.

Liddell will continue at Microsoft working closely with Klein through Dec. 31, to ensure a smooth transition.

Before joining Microsoft, Klein spent 13 years in corporate finance, primarily in the communications and technology sectors: McCaw Cellular Communications; Orca Bay Capital, a private equity firm; and several startups, including HomeGrocer.com, where as vice president and treasurer he helped lead an IPO and subsequent acquisition by Webvan.

“I’m honored to take on the role of Microsoft CFO. I’ve learned a lot working with Chris, and I’m excited about the opportunities ahead for Microsoft,” said Klein. “We have an incredible pipeline of products, we have strong financial and operational accountability, and we are well-positioned for growth as the economy recovers.”

Klein holds a bachelor’s degree from Yale University and an MBA from the University of Washington. Outside of work, he is an avid sports fan and serves on the board of NPower Seattle, a nonprofit organization dedicated to enhancing the effectiveness of nonprofit service providers through technology. He and his wife have two sons.

Oh. And don’t bother counting your home in that total. FT Wealth is for people of real means. The kind who are still “liquid,” as Gordon Gekko put it.

In other words, the kind of people who might want to read about “whisky as an alternative investment, Muslim philanthropy, how the downturn is affecting the lifestyle of America’s rich kids and expensive sports.” All of which are on tap for the supplement’s October issue, which will reach 100,000 of the newspaper’s U.S. subscribers.

If you’re a down-on-your-heels skeptic with no imagination, you could note that the kinds of advertisers that are supposed to keep a supplement like that afloat have had a rough go of it in the recent past. So have high-end financial magazines (Portfolio, RIP).

Big-thinking optimist? Then you’ll note that Fortune magazine launched in the Great Depression, and that ended up working out pretty well for the company that’s now Time Warner (TWX).

Earnings were $2.32 per share, up from $1.97 per share in the same period last year, and well above the $2.02 per share the Street was looking for. Sales were $23.25 billion, lower than the $23.59 billion predicted by analysts, but second-quarter net income was $3.1 billion, up 12 percent year-over-year.

IBM, it seems, is generally weathering the econalypse pretty well (investor presentation). Indeed, the company raised EPS guidance for the full year, saying it now expects to earn at least $9.70 per share this year, compared to its previous forecast of $9.20. (Click on Highlights summary below to enlarge.)

“As a result of our strategic transformation, we have a very strong business model that is delivering superior earnings, cash, and client value,” said IBM CEO Sam Palmisano in a statement. “We are optimistic about how IBM is positioned to make the most of current growth opportunities as well as those that emerge as the economy recovers.”

I guess IBM’s practice of sacking U.S. employees and shifting their jobs to lower-cost countries is serving it quite well in this souring economy.

IBM (IBM) shares, which are already up more than a quarter this year, rose another 2.1 percent to $112.93 on the news.

Amazing when you think about it, really. On the promise of the Pre and the company’s new WebOS operating system alone, Palm (PALM) has added more than $1.5 billion to its market cap. A quick and impressive recovery, and one that analysts say is likely to continue now that the device has had a successful launch.

In an investment note today, RBC analyst Mark Abramsky esimates that Palm has sold 150,000 Pre handsets to date and predicts it will sell 4.1 million in fiscal 2010 and 6.5 million in fiscal 2011.

Over at Credit Suisse (CS), analyst Deepak Sitaramaneven is even more optimistic. He sees Palm selling 7.7 million Pres in 2010. “The successful launch of the Pre at Sprint Nextel (S) has raised carrier interest given Palm now offers a credible alternative to Apple (AAPL),” Sitaramaneven wrote. “We believe this will drive top-line growth of 144% in calendar 2010, and our estimate is predicated on 7.7 million units in calendar 2010.”

That seems a rather…buoyant prediction for a company still grappling with Pre supply issues. That said, if Palm is able to score distribution deals with Verizon (VZ), AT&T (T), Vodafone (VOD) and others by the beginning of next year, the prediction may be within the realm of possibility. Something to think about as the company prepares to report quarterly earnings tomorrow.

What a wonderful curative the Palm Pre has proven to be for Palm. Especially considering that the device has yet to ship. In early January of this year, the company’s shares were trading below $3, having been dragged deep into the mud by a string of nasty quarterly losses. Five months later, after the Pre’s announcement at the Consumer Electronics Show, they’re trading at over $10.

And Jon Rubinstein and Roger McNamee are largely responsible for that. Rubinstein is an Apple (AAPL) veteran who’s now Palm’s (PALM) executive chairman. And McNamee, managing director of Elevation Partners, is the guy who recruited him for that position. Together, they’re remaking Palm in a bet-the-company move to recover its long-lost glory. Should be an interesting session.

Session Highlights