Brad Garlinghouse’s appointment to a new job at AOL today as its new communications czar is yet another sign of an interesting trend for those keeping score of the comings and goings of top Internet execs.

Garlinghouse came to the Time Warner (TWX) online unit after a year-long break, preceded by six years at Yahoo (YHOO).

As anyone who watches the digital space knows by now, this kind of management musical chairs is common and never-ending.

In fact, borrowing a quote by IAC/InterActiveCorp (IACI) CEO and chairman Barry Diller from an onstage interview I did with him at the sixth D: All Things Digital conference and switching out Hollywood for Silicon Valley: “[It] is a community that’s so inbred, it’s a wonder the children have any teeth.”

But, given all the movement of late, this insider seat-switching seems more frantic than ever, as allegiances shift, competitors become friends and colleagues become rivals faster than you can tweet.

When he left Yahoo last summer, in fact, the digital chatter was that Garlinghouse would take a job either as a venture capitalist (he had been one once) or helming a start-up (that too, at Dialpad.com).

In fact, sources said, Garlinghouse had been considering two mobile gigs, but opted for helping to try to overhaul a troubled Web giant.

Fixing messes was the impetus of Owen Van Natta, who left a top job at social networking giant Facebook in early 2008 and by the end of the year, headed over to run Project Playlist, a controversial online music-sharing service.

But then he had hightailed it by spring to try his hand at reviving MySpace, as its CEO.

His boss, News Corp. (NWS) digital head Jon Miller, did the same, getting the hook (unfairly to my mind) at AOL several years ago and then creating an investment firm with former MySpace head Ross Levinsohn.

The pair considered being part of a bid to oust Yahoo management in 2008.

Miller’s freedom lasted only until he got an offer that he presumably could not refuse from News Corp. head Rupert Murdoch recently. (Full disclosure: News Corp. owns Dow Jones, which owns this site.)

The list goes on, chock full of ex-Yahoos, in fact.

Its one-time COO, Dan Rosensweig, left the company in 2006, for example, and joined the well-known private-equity firm, Quadrangle Group.

But, soon enough, he was scooped up by Activision Blizzard (ATVI) to run its Guitar Hero division.

Yahoo Network head Jeff Weiner also departed from the Internet giant, in mid-2008, for a stint at two VC firms.

He landed at LinkedIn, the business-networking service where he was named CEO in late June.

Greg Coleman ran Yahoo ad sales until mid-2007 before taking a job at AOL earlier this year, which he lost after it got new management soon after.

At Yahoo, Coleman sparked with former advertising sales head Wenda Harris Millard, whom he ousted. She went onto Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia (MSO) and left there this spring for the Media Link consultancy.

Presto! She is now helping MySpace’s Van Natta fix the social networking site’s ad business.

Current Yahoo U.S. advertising head Joanne Bradford actually came from Microsoft last summer, via her own short visit to the troubled ad start-up SpotRunner.

Former Yahoo search techie Qi Lu now runs digital for Microsoft (MSFT), along with a big gang of ex-Yahoo techies he has recruited.

And Scott Moore is even better at the switcheroo. He was at Microsoft running MSN U.S. content, switched to Yahoo as its media poobah, left last year to consider a start-up and then headed back to Microsoft as head of U.S. content this year.

But former Google (GOOG) execs have also been busy shuttling hither and yon, mostly to innovative start-ups.

Of course, many find refuge at Facebook (COO Sheryl Sandberg, PR major domo Elliot Schrage and many more) and Twitter (GC Alexander Macgillivray and COO Dick Costolo).

Recent departures–such as Sukhinder Singh Cassidy, who landed at Accel Partners for now–are also likely to find new homes soon enough.

And, of course, there’s always Garlinghouse’s new boss, former Google ad head Tim Armstrong, who took over at AOL earlier this year.

We’ll skip former Joost CEO and former Cisco (CSCO) exec Mike Volpi (who is now a VC); former Netscape Communications/short-term VC/ex-banker/current-for-now CBS (CBS) digital head Quincy Smith; and Joanna Shields, who has worked at Real Networks (RNWK), Google and Bebo (which was bought by AOL)–for now.

Because, around and around and around it always goes, as you can see in this funny video below, which I posted previously:

[Musical Chair designed by Jacob Mathew.]

The edging-ever-closer-to-consummation deal talks with Yahoo about an online advertising and search partnership and the aggressive marketing of its new Bing search service aren’t the only things going on for Microsoft’s online services business these days.

MSN, Microsoft’s online portal, is also preparing a major redo of what U.S. and, possibly, international consumers will see, as it doubles down on five key content verticals, while cutting back on others.

In a new focus that will start to be apparent in the next month, MSN will heavily add to its News, Sports, Finance, Lifestyle and Entertainment offerings, weaving more data from Bing into the mix.

“It’s a decision to make it so MSN does less better,” said one source close to the situation. “So there will be a focus of attention on a smaller number of categories in which we can be either #1 or #2 in, rather than #4 or #5.”

And despite big traffic, that has been the rank Microsoft (MSFT) has achieved for a lot of its vertical categories. It competes against the dominant Yahoo (YHOO) and also Time Warner (TWX) online unit AOL, as well as a range of independent sites.

The refurbishment is being led by Scott Moore, the former Yahoo media exec who came back to Microsoft earlier this year to help juice its prospects.

That does not mean Microsoft is abandoning noncompetitive arenas, such as tech, though. Instead, its offerings in those verticals will be more automated, less original, using content from many partners, and also will rely on mixing in shopping and data from Bing.

“It is not rip and replace,” said another source. “It is putting a lot of scale where we can compete best and using technology tools to help elsewhere.”

In fact, the idea of linking content properties to search in a push-and-pull manner is a strategy that both AOL and Yahoo have also been honing, especially since their own highly trafficked sites are the prime ways they have grown search, and vice versa, on content.

Bing has taken a very interesting niche approach to search, aiming to provide a richer experience in key verticals, like entertainment and travel, in order to differentiate its offering from search behemoth Google (GOOG).

In an interview with paidContent last month, MSN Corporate VP Erik Jorgensen signaled some of the changes now coming, discussing the cleaning up of its homepage, more tightly integrating Bing and MSN, making it easier to share on social networking sites, focusing content and allowing users to even customize it.

The bad news for Microsoft: For most people, Google is already working just fine.

Details from JP Morgan’s (JPM) Imran Khan, who commissioned a survey of search users a month after Bing’s launch: 59.1 percent of respondents have heard of Microsoft’s (MSFT) new search engine and 24.9 percent of them have tried it. And people who tried it, liked it, just like Mikey (if that doesn’t mean anything to you, see video below, from ye olden days).

But Khan says these are samplers, not switchers: Only four in 10 Bing users turned to the search engine more than five times in the last month.

The problem here is that for most people, there’s no problem with Google (GOOG), and no reason to make a permanent switch.

Khan:

We think the biggest impediment to Bing’s attempt to gain market share is that the majority of people are perfectly happy with their current search experience. 62.6% of participants claimed that there were no factors that they would improve on their current search experience. As such, we think it will be more difficult for Microsoft to disrupt current user habits.

At best, Khan figures, Bing may help Microsoft claw its way to a two percent search share gain, but that would likely come at the expense of IAC’s (IACI) Ask and Time Warner’s (TWX) AOL.

The only way for Redmond to really move the needle would be even more expensive than the $100 million marketing outlay it has already committed: Building up its content business (that’d be you, Scott Moore), or ponying up for another distribution deal–which my employers at News Corp. (NWS) hope means them.

In order to gain meaningful market share, we believe Microsoft has to 1) create a markedly better product, 2) significantly expand its distribution (it will cost them higher TAC), or 3) invest heavily in content development to build out O&O properties. We believe that time spent on MSN O&O properties could lead to better search market share. While we expect competition in the search market to increase, we think it will be difficult to shift search behavior if people are completely satisfied with their current search engine. Of the above approaches, we think it is most likely that Microsoft will search for distribution deals to support this product launch.

Here’s a very funny video, called “Digital Media Musical Chairs,” from a Wall Street type who goes by the codename L. McDuff.

(He also did “Mad Avenue Blues” and two years of “Wall Street Meltdown,” which is also embedded below.)

It’s about the many switcheroos in recent years among the execs at the big Web outfits like Google (GOOG), Time Warner (TWX) unit AOL, Yahoo (YHOO) and Microsoft (MSFT).

And when you look at it from a “Hollywood Squares” point of view–oh, how I desperately miss Paul Lynde–it’s kind of is amazing to realize that there are only about a dozen Internet execs moving in and out of the various jobs.

Some of the faces in the video include Greg Coleman (Yahoo/AOL), Sheryl Sandberg (Google/Facebook), Tim Armstrong (Google/AOL) and Joanne Bradford (Microsoft/Yahoo). It’s a wonder the video leaves out Scott Moore (Microsoft/Yahoo/Microsoft).

Here are the videos:

Digital Media Musical Chairs:

Mad Avenue Blues:

Wall Street Meltdown:

Wall Street Meltdown–Redux:

Last year, Yahoo EVP Hilary Schneider and then-Media Group head Scott Moore had a summery seaside dinner with Demand Media co-founder and CEO Richard Rosenblatt (pictured here) in Santa Monica, Calif., right around the corner from the online publishing company’s HQ.

While many speculated that Yahoo (YHOO) could be doing some friendly kibitzing to get a sense of where the eclectic network of general- and special-interest sites was headed, for a possible acquisition, nothing came of it.

That’s because at the time, Rosenblatt insisted that he was aiming to eventually take his company public and Yahoo was in the midst of ongoing corporate turmoil.

“There is a lot of potential here and I want to build a big company for the long-term,” said Rosenblatt in an interview with BoomTown last July (see video below).

But, as my post noted: “Still, at some point when Yahoo is not in the free fall it is currently in, Demand might make a great purchase for Yahoo.”

And now, a year later, as new Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz works to stop that slide, several sources close to the company tell me another look-see at Demand is likelier than ever.

That’s underscored with recent indications that a major strategy will finally follow through on making Yahoo’s massive but disparate service more social, especially its content offerings.

But would Bartz go as far as making a big buy now or would she be more likely to strike a massive partnership with Demand, from which Yahoo could learn a lot?

Such an acquisition could cost anywhere from $1.5 billion to–as was floated last year in better times–$3 billion. In addition, if Demand was to engage in more serious talks with Yahoo, there would likely be other suitors.

As costly as that is, some sort of link-up with Demand is an interesting idea, especially since Yahoo could use a bold and definitive move to signal social goals that play to its strengths and are not a copycat of more powerful social-networking sites now in place.

At a Morgan Stanley (MS) conference last month, Bartz said, for example, that “I do not believe we can invent the next Facebook,” while noting Yahoo still needed to be more social throughout the service, especially in its content.

And, just yesterday, a Reuters article about that focus was titled: “Yahoo’s Plan: Create Community from Isolated Sites.”

Said the article: “If [Yahoo co-founder David] Filo and new CEO Carol Bartz have their way, the kinds of social networking features available on Facebook will become part of many Yahoo websites and allow their users to network with each other without using Facebook. The company hopes the strategy will help link its disparate properties, bringing more advertising dollars and growth.”

And that’s just at the heart of Demand Media, which dubs itself the “leader in social media.”

Demand was founded in 2006 by Rosenblatt and Shawn Colo, who raised a giant pool of funding–$355 million–from gold-plated investors like Goldman Sachs (GS), Oak Investment Partners and even a private investment from major Yahoo investor Gordon Crawford.

Getting that kind of backing was due to Rosenblatt’s entrepreneurial track record.

As founder, chairman and CEO, he sold iMALL to Excite@Home for $425 million in a 1999 stock swap.

And, perhaps most famously, as CEO of Intermix Media, Rosenblatt sold it with the company’s crown jewel, MySpace, to News Corp. (NWS) for $580 million in cash.

Then, Rosenblatt started Demand, which takes user-generated content of all kinds and on all kinds of topics–especially via video–from an army of freelancers and leverages it into massive traffic that it monetizes.

Demand is also the one of the bigger suppliers of video to YouTube, which it also monetizes.

And, through the acquisition of Pluck, the company also laces social-networking tools throughout the sites, as well as for many well-known third parties.

All this has given Demand upward of 70 million unique visitors per month, at sites like eHow and GolfLink.com, with about $150 million in annual revenue.

And–drum roll please–it is reportedly profitable, although how much is not clear.

While he has long maintained a public offering was on the horizon, despite the weak economy, Rosenblatt has also been interested in the idea of how to revive major players like Yahoo and Time Warner (TWX) online unit AOL.

Both have been struggling, but still have massive traffic and brand recognition, along with large advertising businesses.

And in many ways, the energetic Rosenblatt is just the kind of product-centric and visionary exec Yahoo lacks, despite Bartz’s clear ability to get the company’s management ducks in order.

What could be even more interesting, said one source, would be to marry Yahoo and Demand with a lot of what is going on with the publishing of niche sites at AOL’s MediaGlow content unit, in a giant publishing network.

Ironically, AOL was another acquisition target of Yahoo, in yet another deal that did not pan out last year.

Here’s the interview with Rosenblatt at Demand Media HQ last year:

Last week, I went to the 15th Stanford Accel Symposium, hosted by Stanford University’s MediaX and the VC firm Accel Partners.

With the honking big title of “The Delta Conference: The Impact of 2008 Dramatic Events on the World of Digital Media and Technology,” it was not quite that dramatic.

But there were a few nuggets to be found at the event, including a panel on online media with a stellar gang, all talking about microblogging, content and where it is all going in this horrible econalypse.

It was kind of like “The View,” except all guys in khakis and oxford shirts. You know, a typical Silicon Valley gathering.

BoomTown did video interviews with all the panelists about their takeaways from the chat: CBS (CBS) Interactive top terrier Quincy Smith, former Yahoo (YHOO) and now LinkedIn bigwig Jeff Weiner, former Yahoo and now Microsoft (MSFT) bigwig Scott Moore, former exec at Time Warner (TWX) online unit AOL and now entrepreneur Jim Bankoff, and Federated Media head John Battelle.

Here’s the video:

Will Yahoo’s media properties fall flat with sweeping new changes that are afoot that will drastically change the way the company bakes its content offerings?

Or will the ability to have a single, highly scaleable, centrally developed architecture make the media programming Yahoo delivers more responsive and flexible in the era of fast-twitch bloggers (all while cutting costs)?

According to many sources inside and outside the company, product development for Yahoo’s heavily trafficked media operations–including its powerful News, Finance and Sports sites–is set to be moved under Ash Patel, who is EVP of the company’s Audience Product Division.

The move has been supported by U.S. Audience head Jeff Dossett, who came to Yahoo (YHOO) from Microsoft (MSFT). He replaced former media head Scott Moore, who is about to take over content efforts at Microsoft.

The centralization of product development for the media properties was much resisted by Moore and by many managers within Yahoo’s media group, who are worried and unhappy about the upcoming change.

Sources told BoomTown that it is one of many changes coming to the unit, which is likely to soon get a dramatic management restructuring too.

Under the new configuration, which sources said had been approved by CEO Carol Bartz, media products–but not editorial programming–will be developed “globally” at Yahoo’s Sunnyvale HQ in Northern California.

Until now, such development has been mostly done by individual media properties, many of which are located down south, in Santa Monica.

But a move to global product and platform development has been steady at Yahoo for a while. The move to change how media are made was initially championed by former President Sue Decker, but has continued to move forward after she announced in January that she planned to leave the company.

As with most things, there are pros and cons to the new approach.

The pro argument posits that centralizing the product development of a Yahoo media offering drives efficiencies, saves money, eliminates redundancies and accelerates growth across the world.

Said one on-the-bandwagon exec to me in an email: “This is a good and smart plan to achieve better balance between the benefits of a globally scalable product development and the need for regions to be very close to and responsive to local user and advertiser needs…there is huge upside (in user engagement and monetization) that will come from a deeper focus on editorial, content (original and licensed) and programming within the properties and most importantly across the network.”

Those who do not like the idea think it is wrong to separate the development of a product from the programming because the two are intricately dependent and need to be tweaked delicately.

In addition, they argue, it makes Yahoo media offerings, which have been largely successful, less unique and more dull.

“It’s like separating the cook from the recipe and ingredients,” said one person who thinks that it’s very hard to separate product from the content online. “You could end up with a really bad cake.”

Translation: I don’t think that I can take it/’Cause it took so long to bake it/And I’ll never have that recipe again.

Whatever the case for Yahoo’s media properties, I think we can all completely agree that this Donna Summers rendition of “MacArthur Park” remains as fresh and delicious as ever (plus it’s a karaoke video version, so feel free to sing along):

It seems that since Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz is playing it coy about whether she wants to do a massive search deal with Microsoft or not, the software giant is just going to keep hiring her search tech team out from under her.

Today, Microsoft (MSFT) said it had hired Larry Heck, VP of search & advertising sciences at Yahoo Labs, who will work in its online unit.

It’s like the rapture, except geekier.

Said a Microsoft spokeswoman: “We are happy to confirm that Larry Heck has accepted a job at Microsoft. He will be working for Satya Nadella, SVP, research and development, online services division, and he will start in a few weeks time. We look forward to welcoming him to the team.”

[UPDATE: Yahoo sources said Heck was laid off in December, so it is not quite the daring raid that it seems.]

Nonetheless, it is the third big hire from Yahoo’s search tech team by Microsoft. The first was Sean Suchter, followed by Qi Lu, who now heads Microsoft online services team.

Lu is a big draw for search engineers and was close to Heck, and sources said there are several other Yahoo tech execs likely to move too.

The boatloads of money Microsoft has been spending in the arena to catch leader Google is certainly a draw. Microsoft is No. 3 behind both Google (GOOG) and Yahoo (YHOO).

In addition, MSN recently nabbed Yahoo media head Scott Moore to run its U.S. programming, along with Yahoo marketing exec Eric Hadley.

Just after he got the job 10 days ago, BoomTown got the chance to chitty-chat a bit with Scott Moore (pictured here), the former Yahoo media chief, who is returning to Microsoft, where he will lead online content efforts in the U.S for its MSN online service.

Apparently, you can go home again!

It’s a touché tale because it feels like Moore was pretty much rehired by MSN exec Greg Nelson (also in on the conversation with Moore) to give Yahoo a wallop where it really will hurt–its powerful content business, one of Yahoo’s few bright spots.

And to add another layer of irony, Moore replaced Jeff Dossett, who replaced Moore at Yahoo (YHOO) after Moore suddenly left the troubled online company late last year.

In our conversation, Nelson began talking first about the continued commitment of Microsoft (MSFT) to compete in the online media business despite its lackluster record over the years.

“We are making a big bet with Scott because he understands the key themes for us, which is that this is a scale business,” said Nelson (pictured here). “We all have a conviction that Microsoft has what it takes to compete in that arena.”

Moore agreed, noting that “very few companies have the scale that Microsoft has and you look at the size of the audience and the tools and great assets we can weave in and you realize the possibilities as the market is changing.”

But that scale has not helped Microsoft so far, although Moore argued that it still has a chance as the online content landscape changes.

By change, Moore posits that the Internet is now shifting from being a place to get news and information to becoming a primary entertainment medium.

“You can see that phenomena is somewhat in social media, the idea that it is not only about entertainment, but about making all kinds of choices through the Internet,” he said.

Because of Microsoft’s large audience, which still lags behind Yahoo and Time Warner (TWX) online service AOL, Moore thinks it has the opportunity to leverage the distribution strength with a variety of entertainment partners.

But he said he is not ruling out more original content from Microsoft.

“Most of it is still aggregated content, but MSN also has to think about having stuff no one else has,” Moore said. “You can make it, license it or partner.”

Both Moore and Nelson said it is important that the small amount of premium content is special, such as Microsoft’s deal with NBC during the Olympics.

“It’s a pyramid with the original and premium content on top,” said Nelson.

That does not mean going too far afield though. “I think we have to choose a spot where we already have a large audience and then program to keep them coming back,” said Moore. “It’s not doing something out of whole cloth–that’s not the idea.”

That’s presumably the exact idea behind MSN’s launch of Wonderwall last week, a slick, standalone celebrity Web site (pictured here), designed to compete with AOL and Yahoo offerings.

Moore, who was involved with the creation of Yahoo’s top-ranked omg! pop culture site, was not part of the Wonderwall effort and he did try to tamp down the idea of going head-to-head with former colleagues at Yahoo.

“I have a lot of friends and a lot of great memories there, but it is also great to go back to my roots,” said Moore.

Nonetheless, he still managed to add that he wanted to get MSN sites to top status as soon as possible. “When I got to Yahoo it was not No. 1,” he said.

Nelson said Microsoft was committed to content, even after a history of less-than-stellar results.

“Ideas are free, and so it is all about execution,” said Nelson. “What is our level of conviction? How committed is Microsoft? Very committed, because it’s the future of the company.”

BoomTown provided continuing coverage of the Yahoo (YHOO) merry-go-round. This time, PR head Jill Nash announced her departure. As the company’s chief communications officer, she’s had a challenging two-year run. New CEO Carol Bartz definitely has some PR ideas of her own, including offering cash prizes to employees who provide info on their colleagues who leak information to the press. Not a huge deterrent yet, apparently–it didn’t take long for BoomTown to get info on both Nash’s farewell memo and Bartz’s bounty system. Next, New Networks, the publisher behind BarelyPolitical and its hugely viral Obama Girl videos, has widened its purview to include the tech sector with BarelyDigital, which the online network has envisioned to include regular shows, tech news remixes and the like. It’s rumored that Obama Girl will be making a cameo appearance or two. If the first two features are any indication, the future looks pretty funny. In another round of executive musical chairs, Time Warner’s (TWX) AOL ad head Lynda Clarizio will be leaving the online service, to be replaced by former Yahoo ad exec Greg Coleman. Microsoft (MSFT) is launching a slick new celebrity site on MSN called Wonderwall, created, designed and produced by BermanBraun Interactive, a Hollywood company run by former Yahoo media chief Lloyd Braun. And speaking of musical chairs, MSN is clearly upping its content ante–earlier this week, it hired Yahoo’s recent media head Scott Moore, who used to work at Microsoft.

MediaMemo asked: What happens when one of the world’s richest men lets loose a swarm (a small swarm) of mosquitoes at a high-end conference? Nothing too exciting, really, but when you consider that the stunt was the publicity-generating part of Bill Gates’s talk at TED, which was a discussion of malaria and some of the problems the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is facing head-on, it gets pretty compelling. Kindle 2.0, the new generation of the device dubbed the “iPod of the book world” will be unveiled Monday at a New York press event, but how many of the devices have been sold thus far? Amazon’s (AMZN) not telling, but Citigroup analyst Mark Mahaney estimates the number at 500,000–and believes that the Kindle will be a $1.2 billion business next year. Obviously, a lot will depend on Monday and the new device’s reception. MediaMemo also took some time out this week to wish Facebook a happy fifth birthday, and to stack its track record next to Google’s at the same age, with interesting results. Even the pros are getting hit hard these days–in its quarterly earnings report this week, News Corp. (NWS) missed its estimates, recorded an $8.4 billion write-off and lowered its guidance. CEO Rupert Murdoch admitted that the downturn is worse than he thought. He also admitted that he spent $2.8 billion too much for Dow Jones. (News Corp. is the owner of Dow Jones and this Web site.)

Digital Daily followed the trial of four Google executives this week on criminal charges of defamation and breach of privacy after a much-publicized two-year investigation. Google (GOOG) insists the charges are unwarranted and “akin to prosecuting mail service employees for hate speech letters sent in the post.” Clearly, the ultimate outcome will have a huge impact on the future of a free, open Internet. MySpace said this week that it has identified and ousted 90,000 registered sex offenders–and those are just the ones brilliant enough to use their real names. There’s no way of knowing how many are actually using the service or how to prevent them from re-registering once they’re deleted. A free an open Internet, indeed. DD also pondered the future (or lack thereof) of the Motorola (MOT) handset division. Co-CEO Sanjay Jha says the company is committed to making the business work, but its products are looking boring and outdated, and a turnaround would be prohibitively expensive to execute. In the words of one analyst, the company’s problems are “gruesome.” On the other end of the spectrum, Microsoft continues to vehemently deny reports that it’ll be producing its own smartphone. In a report this week, analysts from Broadpoint.AmTech speculated that the device could be uncrated later this month at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. Meanwhile, it’s been up in the air for two years whether or not iPhones will ever be uncrated in historic Georgetown. Apple (AAPL) has been around the table a few times now with preservationists wary of the architectural impact of an Apple store, no matter how much the business traffic is needed in the neighborhood. Looks like perseverance may have finally paid off, though–Georgetown’s Apple store could open later this year.

In Personal Technology this week, Walt Mossberg took a look at a program called Foxmarks, which sets out to synchronize bookmarks among all of your browsers and all of your machines. Sound a little too handy to actually work well? Walt found it does a pretty good job, with a few caveats. In Mossberg’s Mailbox, Walt responds to readers who want to know more about doing “techie” maintenance on their PCs to keep them running well, whether or not to buy a 15-inch MacBook Pro, and options for email within Windows 7, which won’t ship with a built-in email program. In the Mossberg Solution, Katherine Boehret tests Google Latitude, an opt-in program that lets users track one another’s movements on their smartphones using GPS, Wi-Fi, and cell towers. Kind of like Gawker Stalker, only with permission and without Lindsay Lohan (unless you happen to be Lindsay Lohan).

Last but not least, Silicon Valley lost one of its own this week. The widely admired and much loved Mike Homer, whose rare, severe illness was a rallying point for many over the past months, passed away last weekend and was laid to rest on Thursday.

More next week.

In an interesting and innovative move compared to what has typically been less-than-hip online programming over the years, Microsoft’s MSN service is debuting a slick new celebrity site called Wonderwall today–created, designed and produced by a Hollywood company run by former Yahoo media chief and well-known television exec Lloyd Braun.

Using an unusual horizontal design with a scrolling “wall,” a plethora of pictures and a deeply visual sensibility, it’s definitely a laudable risk for Microsoft as the company seeks to continue to push itself into the online content business, despite a lackluster record.

The site, by BermanBraun Interactive, which is being launched right before the Grammy Awards, will aggregate content from a variety of partners, but also use a small staff of editors to differentiate it and give it “voice.” BermanBraun will operate Wonderwall for MSN.

Last week, in yet another sign that it is upping the content ante at MSN, Microsoft hired Yahoo’s most recent media head Scott Moore, who used to work at Microsoft (MSFT).

“We are investing more than ever in content,” said MSN GM Rob Bennett. “With Wonderwall, we are creating an offering to attract and retain new audiences, using content that is already at the core of MSN.”

But unlike other MSN sites, there is more subtle MSN branding on Wonderwall, although Microsoft’s search will be an important part of the site. MSN will promote Wonderwall across the service and will also give it an external marketing push.

To make money, Microsoft and BermanBraun are jointly selling the advertising for Wonderwall, which also has a partnership with MediaVest, to bring major brands to the site.

One obstacle is the huge amount of competition in the Internet space, from AOL-backed TMZ to Perez Hilton to omg! from Yahoo (YHOO), which is currently the most-trafficked celebrity site (and, ironically, was pushed through Yahoo by Braun and Moore).

But the interest in this pop culture category is obvious–celeb-focused online programming has grown strongly.

Celeb news-obsessed BoomTown accounts for much of that traffic (How much do we love following the hijinks of Britney? Much!).

So, I hightailed it to the Santa Monica offices of BermanBraun yesterday to have a look-see at Wonderwall and do some video interviews.

Overall, I was struck by the site’s arresting visual design, particularly the easily interactive wall, which has what I can only call an “iPhone” feel combined with a flipping-through-a-magazine tone (see above; click on image to make it larger).

With more touchscreen technology moving to personal computers, you can easily see Wonderwall being manipulated by hand.

And it makes great use of linking out, another plus, without excessively pointing to only Microsoft sites.

One problem: No true ability for users to interact on Wonderwall, via comments or other social-networking tools, which Braun said are coming soon, along with videos being able to be played in the main wall.

But overall, it raises the stakes in the celeb market and gives users a new interface without straying too far.

Here’s my video interview with Braun, along with another below it with his partner, former Fox and Paramount exec Gail Berman, and also Wonderwall’s top creators–all talking about Wonderwall.

(And, as an added bonus at the bottom, Oasis singing their hit, “Wonderwall.”)

Lloyd Braun:

Gail Berman and Wonderwall Staff:

Oasis:

The game of executive musical chairs among Web companies keeps on going, with sources telling BoomTown that AOL ad head Lynda Clarizio will be departing the online service and replaced by former high-ranking Yahoo ad exec Greg Coleman (pictured here).

Last week, this column first reported on former Yahoo media head Scott Moore taking a similar content job at Microsoft (MSFT), which had been vacated by Jeff Dossett, who took Moore’s job at Yahoo.

The less confusing move at AOL, with Coleman taking over for Clarizio and which has been in the works for only a week, could be announced as early as today, although I have been hearing rumors of such a development since late last week.

Clarizio has been head of Platform-A, the overall name for AOL’s advertising business, which includes a lot of various online ad companies AOL has bought in recent years.

She had been running AOL’s Advertising.com in Baltimore before being tapped to integrate them better over the last year, after a series of ad execs shuffled in and out of AOL.

But, said several sources, as a former AOL lawyer and dealmaker, Clarizio (pictured here) is not regarded by top execs the kind of nitty-gritty sales exec that AOL needs now, as it seeks to revive its fortunes.

AOL’s ad business has lagged badly of late, with owner Time Warner (TWX) pre-announcing that the online service’s results would be particularly weak this quarter. Time Warner reports quarterly earnings tomorrow.

Since a much-chewed-over possible merger with Yahoo (YHOO) has been put on ice, with the recent arrival of new CEO Carol Bartz, Time Warner and AOL execs have decided to focus on strengthening the online service and making much needed changes.

AOL recently announced a 10 percent layoff of its staff of 7,000, part of the rightsizing that has been going on.

And its valuation was also recently written down by Google (GOOG), to $5.5 billion from $20 billion several years ago.

AOL had already been in the midst of renovating its communications and social-networking assets under a new division called People Networks, which is run by former Bebo head Joanna Shields.

Its content arm has also gotten a different blog-centered direction and name–MediaGlow–under Bill Wilson.

Now, it’s apparently time for the ad leg of AOL’s three-pronged new strategy its future business is resting on to be fixed.

The hiring of Coleman came suddenly, said several sources. He had been considering a top job at another well-known online company and also was planning to move to a start-up he has been running to the Silicon Valley area.

He was hired by AOL CEO Randy Falco, whom Coleman has known for a long time, only last week, after Falco heard that Coleman was considering other positions.

Sources at Yahoo said the hiring had to be cleared by the company and Bartz, at Time Warner CEO Jeff Bewkes’s request, due to competitive issues.

Coleman is indeed an experienced online ad exec, who was at Yahoo for seven years, responsible for all advertising revenues worldwide. He came to Yahoo from Reader’s Digest.

But Coleman ran into Yahoo’s management buzzsaw after trouble hit the company in 2007. He was one of the first in a long line of execs to leave the troubled company, departing in one of its many controversial reorganizations.

But Yahoo’s ad business did grow strongly under him and former Yahoo ad exec Wenda Millard. She was also pushed out of Yahoo and now is Co-CEO of Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia.

Since then, Coleman has been running a Los Angeles-based start-up called NetSeer, which focuses on ad targeting.

Given his media background, Coleman is likely to be key to expanding premium branded advertising display sales across AOL’s advertising and programming networks.

He will move to New York and report to AOL President and COO Ron Grant, said sources, although Platform-A has key offices in Baltimore and San Francisco too.

In an unusual homecoming and odd job switcheroo between two Internet execs, former Yahoo media head Scott Moore is returning to Microsoft to lead its U.S. content efforts, according to many sources both inside and outside the company.

Moore (pictured here) will become U.S. executive producer, responsible for leading the content and programming strategy for the MSN online service. He will return to Microsoft’s Seattle area HQ in mid-March and report to Greg Nelson, GM of the MSN Global Media Group.

Microsoft (MSFT) declined comment about Moore’s new job, but sources said news of the appointment will be officially announced Monday.

But a memo about Moore’s new gig went out internally to some of the MSN staff earlier today, sources said. In fact, the return of Moore had been widely rumored inside Microsoft, even though there were several other internal and external candidates considered–including another former Yahoo, one source said–for the job.

Moore left Yahoo (YHOO), which was first reported here, last November due to unhappiness over the turmoil at the company and also to pursue a start-up idea he had about a local news site.

Moore even talked about the idea on the record with BoomTown (see video below), just as he was leaving Yahoo’s Santa Monica-based Media Group. Since he left Yahoo for good in December, Moore has been working on his start-up plans and took time off to go on a safari trip to Africa.

(Here’s a link to Moore’s Africa photos, in fact, which are quite good.)

But with the economic downturn making it harder for new start-ups to get funded on good terms, a desire to be back in the Seattle area, where his children live, and a new effort by MSN to compete better in the content business with top-ranked Yahoo, sources said Moore felt the powerful job at Microsoft would be a terrific challenge.

In what is a case of Web exec musical chairs, Moore had previously been replaced at Yahoo–in a rushed appointment–by Jeff Dossett. Dossett came to Yahoo from, wait for it, Microsoft, where he had held the job Moore is now taking.

In that move, also first reported here, Dossett was given a different title at Yahoo than Moore, as SVP of the U.S. Audience Group (Moore was SVP of the Media Group at Yahoo).

When he first started talking to Yahoo, Dossett (pictured here) was actually up for a job to run business development for Yahoo. But Moore’s sudden decision to leave had his boss, Yahoo’s EVP of U.S., Hilary Schneider, scrambling to fill the post. Dossett’s experience at MSN made him the obvious choice.

Now Moore’s appointment puts the pair in head-to-head competitive positions in the online content business, a clash that has been consistently won by Moore, when he had Dossett’s job at Yahoo and Dossett had Moore’s job at MSN.

Moore should also be comfortable at Microsoft and move into his job more easily. Previous to coming to Yahoo in mid-2005, he was president of MSNBC.com and publisher of Slate.com. He had worked at Microsoft for a decade.

Moore will oversee Microsoft’s involvement in the MSNBC.com joint venture again, along with all of Microsoft’s domestic content programming, which makes up a bulk of its efforts in the area.

And with Moore back on board, how MSN will better compete with the content juggernaut Yahoo is–due to Moore’s efforts, in part, and one of the troubled company’s stronger units–will be interesting.

That’s because Yahoo’s news, finance, sports and other properties typically rank as No. 1 online by far.

Time Warner (TWX) online unit AOL has also tried recently to improve its content offerings and has gotten some traction. It recently upped the ante with its new MediaGlow online studio effort of niche blog sites.

At the very back of this pack, Microsoft has made innumerable efforts in the content space over the years, mostly unsuccessful–Underwire!, Mungo Park!–and has settled more into the aggregation model.

But it still has a lot of interesting original content efforts under way, such as an unnamed celebrity-focused site property it is reportedly launching within the next week with former Yahoo media exec–and Moore’s former boss–Lloyd Braun.

Ironically, Moore launched a Yahoo celebrity site, omg!, initially pushed by Braun when he was at Yahoo, which has been successful.

Here is the video interview I did with Moore at his Yahoo going-away party about his future plans. Below that is another one I did when he was czar of Yahoo content, in which he talked extensively about the future of content on the Web.

As BoomTown reported earlier today in detail, Yahoo will announce its layoffs on Wednesday, as planned, of at least 1,500 employees.

But many staff have also been leaving Yahoo on their own, including one recent high-profile departure–now former Yahoo Media Group SVP Scott Moore.

Moore’s been replaced by former Microsoft exec Jeff Dossett, whose title is now as U.S. audience head.

Moore–who came to Yahoo in 2005, after leading a lot of content efforts at Microsoft (MSFT)–does not have firm plans, although he has been working on a stealth start-up idea.

(With former Yahoo tech exec Qi Lu headed to Microsoft, it was revealed here last week, talk about revolving doors between the two companies!)

While he would not comment on the turmoil at Yahoo, Moore did have a lot to say in an interview I did with him on the night of his Yahoo going-away party in Santa Monica last week.

In it, Moore talks about where online content is going–and also where he is headed (first of all, he is going on a trip to Africa).

(See an earlier video I did with Moore, back in July, about similar topics below.)

Here’s the new video and the older one below it:

Here’s my favorite quote from former Microsoft exec Jeff Dossett from a phone interview he gave to BoomTown this afternoon, after his appointment as Yahoo’s new U.S. Audience head:

“Where others see risk, I see opportunity,” said the man who has climbed Mount Everest twice. “We have this great Web asset … and, from here on out, it is all about execution.”

(Speaking of which, the photo above of Dossett is on the summit of Everest, taken by one of his TEAM INSPIRED climbing partners, David Morton, on May 22, 2008.)

You can tell from the gumption in this ain’t-no-mountain-high-enough sentiment that Dossett just got to Yahoo (YHOO) and sees a challenge at the troubled Internet giant where others see, well, a long-running quagmire.

I like him already!

“If you take a look at it, Yahoo has so many incredible assets,” said Dossett, who is replacing Yahoo Media Group SVP Scott Moore, whose departure from Yahoo was reported here first today. “There is an unparalleled level of audience to build on.”

You won’t get an argument from me on that obvious fact, because amazing content and communications assets have always been Yahoo’s crown jewels.

It’s the management–or lack thereof–of its products and staff by Yahoo’s leadership and board that’s been the problem.

So it is probably a good idea that Yahoo has brought in new blood to shake things up more. Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang has been looking outside the company of late to recruit outside talent.

Dossett was one of these execs, as I had written a month ago in a post titled “The Secret Microsoft Invasion of Yahoo Continues: MSN GM Headed There Soon?”

With its stock in the perpetual doldrums, the graphical advertising business outlook glum and a lucrative search ad deal with Google (GOOG) trapped in a Justice Department lockbox, the company could use someone to rattle its cages.

In the interview, Dossett (pictured here) acknowledged that he had been speaking to Yahoo U.S. head Hilary Schneider about a range of jobs related to business development. But when Moore told Schneider he was leaving, “We both thought I might be able to play a larger role.”

Dossett said that he hoped to be able to continue to keep Yahoo the No.1 or No. 2 content destination over a range of categories and also push forward more integration with Yahoo technology offerings such as email, calendar and others popular consumer tools the company has.

“There is a tremendous need to integrate … to create the largest and most engaged online audience,” he said. “It all still needs to be stitched together.”

Well, it has not exactly been a very successful quilting bee as yet. Yahoo has continued to struggle to make a more seamless offering to meet the changing needs of consumers, many of whom have been moving more toward more integrated social-networking experiences like those offered by Facebook.

“There is so much more we can do,” said Dossett. “We have only really scratched the surface to combine what we have.”

Dossett, who said his departure from Microsoft (MSFT) was cordial, would not comment on what a combination of Yahoo with the assets of Time Warner (TWX) online unit AOL would look like though.

Yahoo and AOL have been engaged in long-running talks about a merger, a new company in which Dossett would now play a large role, if a deal was ever to be struck.

It will be a big challenge that will surely test Dossett, a longtime and experienced mountain climber, who has spent much of his career at Microsoft.

That includes during the period over the last year in which the software giant was trying to take over Yahoo without being too polite about it.

In his job at MSN, Dossett was the lead for audience, content and programming strategy and execution in the U.S.

He had worked at Microsoft since 1991, in a variety of sales and marketing jobs in Canada, and later worked on strategy and business development for MSN.

Dossett was also CEO of Carpoint, now MSN Autos, and was GM of its real estate arm.

At Yahoo, he joins another former Microsoft big shot and close colleague, Joanne Bradford, who started her job as Yahoo’s top U.S. ad sales exec last month.

Dossett also took two years off from Microsoft in 2002 to climb the highest mountains on each of the seven continents, finally reaching the summit of Everest in May of 2004.

Dossett reached the summit again for a second time this past May.

Somehow, I think he will find the air at Yahoo just as thin.