Yahoo is on a bit of a hiring spree, picking up longtime Internet exec Robertson Barrett (pictured here), to run its critical and powerful Yahoo News and Finance sites.

Barrett has held top positions at Tribune Interactive, Time Inc., ABC News, Primedia’s Channel One Interactive and The Feedroom.

Barrett worked most recently as chief strategy officer of Perfect Market, a Comcast-backed start-up.

Last week, Yahoo announced that Jai Singh will join the company as editor in chief. Before that Ken Fuchs was tapped as VP of Sports, Games and Entertainment.

For the huge Yahoo News job, Barrett replaces Mark Walker, who left for Disney a month ago. Steve Schultz left the top Yahoo Finance job last fall.

Here is Yahoo’s official press release, which confirms it and the particulars:

Yahoo! Names Robertson Barrett Vice President of News and Finance

Media Industry Vet to Oversee Company’s Category-Leading Properties

Yahoo! today announced that Robertson Barrett will join the company as Vice President of News and Finance. Based in Santa Monica, Calif., Barrett starts May 16, and will report to Mickie Rosen, senior vice president of the Yahoo! Media Network.

A media industry veteran, Barrett brings more than 20 years experience leading online ventures and as a reporter, including senior positions at Tribune Interactive, Time Inc., ABC News, Primedia’s Channel One Interactive, and The Feedroom. His appointment is the latest addition to the Yahoo! Media Network leadership team, which recently announced that Jai Singh will join the company as Editor-in-Chief, and Ken Fuchs as Vice President of Sports, Games and Entertainment.

Barrett will oversee Yahoo! News and Yahoo! Finance in the U.S., two of the company’s most renowned properties. In the U.S., the Yahoo! News Network is No. 1 in the general news category, attracting 86.6 million unique users in March 2011 and Yahoo! Finance has been the top finance destination for 39 straight months, attracting 42.6 million users in March 2011–more than twice as many unique visitors as the No. 2 destination Dow Jones & Company (comScore).

“Rob’s addition to our leadership team comes at a pivotal time for Yahoo! News and Yahoo! Finance, especially in light of the global and economic events driving massive consumer interest and engagement,’ said Rosen. “We have ambitious plans for these properties, and Rob will play a critical role in leading these businesses and deepening Yahoo!’s position as the premier digital media company.”

Barrett’s appointment comes on the heels of the largest traffic week in the history of Yahoo! News. Following the death of Osama bin Laden, Yahoo! News has experienced its heaviest-trafficked week, including 3 of its top 10 most visited days ever. Since the news broke, Yahoo! News has served more than 865 million pageviews, attracting more than 20.4 million unique users on Monday, May 2 and 17.6 million unique users on Tuesday, May 3 in the U.S. Yahoo! reaches more than 680 million users globally each month.

Barrett most recently served as Chief Strategy Officer of Perfect Market, a Comcast-backed venture, where he was responsible for building relationships with major news brands for the organization. Previously, he was EVP of Tribune Interactive, where he managed the operations and strategic development of online properties in 40 U.S. markets, including latimes.com, chicagotribute.com, baltimoresun.com, and all Tribune news, entertainment and TV sites. He also was previously VP and GM of The FeedRoom Inc., an Internet news venture backed by NBC, where he oversaw the development of video-on-demand for NBC, Tribune Company, CBS and local station groups. He was also co-founder and operating lead at online ventures for Time Inc., ABC News and Primedia’s Channel One Interactive. He holds a BA from Duke University and a Masters from Harvard University.

Investors hoping Yahoo might benefit from the same surge in online display advertising spending that drove Google to its recent big quarter are in luck–except for the big-quarter part.

Posting fourth-quarter earnings today after sacking one percent of its staff, the company reported net income of 24 cents per share on revenue of $1.21 billion. The Street doesn’t seem convinced, though. Yahoo shares are down 3.5 percent as I write this.

Analysts had been expecting earnings of 22 cents per share on $1.19 billion in net revenue–a big jump from the 11 cents per share the company reported in the same period last year, but a troubling decline from the $1.26 billion in net revenue that accompanied it. That said, display advertising did grow. For the current quarter, the company sees revenue in a range of $1.02 billion to $1.08 billion; analysts had been looking for $1.13 billion.

“We just completed a very encouraging quarter and year for Yahoo!, where we saw our plans to turn around the company gain momentum,” CEO Carol Bartz said in a canned statement. “For the year, operating income, margins, EPS, and return on invested capital doubled. Display advertising grew 17 percent. We completed the important North America Search transition to Microsoft on schedule and with high quality. We introduced new and updated products at a faster pace. And our content properties–like Yahoo! Sports and Yahoo! Finance–continued to innovate and extend their massive lead.”

Look for more coverage of the earnings call at BoomTown later this afternoon. Meanwhile, here’s the press release in full:

YHOO_Q410PressRelease_Final

(Also, you can see a slide deck of the financials here.)

[Image Credit: Byzantin3]

Yahoo is debuting a new offering for its hundreds of million of users, which takes the Demand Media model and notches up the volume by presumably allowing a thousand flowers to bloom.

Or, more to the point, blab.

The Internet giant is “inviting people to contribute to many of its most popular sites with the launch of the Yahoo Contributor Network, a new platform for people to publish their creative content on Yahoo!.”

This all comes out of its recent acquisition of Associated Content.

It’s an interesting gambit, since everyone is already yammering away like mad on Facebook.

But Yahoo is trying to put a spin on it by using its copious content assets as inspiration for consumers, and which the Silicon Valley social networking giant does not have.

Yet!

(By the way, Mao Tse-Tung’s whole phrase in his famous speech was: “Let a thousand flowers bloom, a hundred schools of thought contend.” After that happened all over the place, a brutal crackdown was then initiated.)

Let’s hope Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz does not do that, but here is the company’s official press release:

Yahoo! Adds the Voice of the People With the Launch of the Yahoo! Contributor Network

Yahoo! Invites You to Reach Millions of People by Contributing to Its Popular Content Sites, Including the Yahoo! Homepage

SUNNYVALE, Calif., November 15, 2010– Yahoo! (NASDAQ:YHOO) today is inviting people to contribute to many of its most popular sites with the launch of the Yahoo! Contributor Network, a new platform for people to publish their creative content on Yahoo!. The Yahoo! Contributor Network is an evolution of the Associated Content platform and will bring contributions from more than 400,000 writers, photographers, and videographers to the Internet’s largest media destinations, including Yahoo! News, Yahoo! Finance, Yahoo! Sports, and even the Yahoo! homepage, among many others.

“The launch of the Yahoo! Contributor Network is a great example of how Yahoo! is executing against its content strategy. In less than six months since the acquisition of Associated Content, we’ve completely retooled the platform in order to bring the people’s voice to Yahoo!,” said Carol Bartz, CEO, Yahoo!. “Bringing this authentic perspective to Yahoo!’s most popular sites will deepen our engagement with the millions of people who visit us every day and provide new opportunities for creative contributors who participate in the Yahoo! experience.”

The Yahoo! Contributor Network extends Yahoo!’s position as the leading provider of high-quality, personally relevant content by bringing the diverse perspectives of more than 400,000 contributors to Yahoo!’s existing media portfolio. The new platform invites all Yahoo! users to become a part of the Yahoo! experience by sharing their perspectives and expertise, and also lets Yahoo! editors quickly and efficiently assign and select crowdsourced contributions for all of Yahoo!’s media properties. These contributions–which span topics from niche to mainstream–complement the programming already provided by Yahoo!’s award-winning editorial team and content partners.

“With the launch of the Yahoo! Contributor Network, our contributors now have an unprecedented opportunity for exposure and distribution across Yahoo!’s portfolio,” said Luke Beatty, vice president and general manager, Yahoo!. “Associated Content has been known for maintaining the industry’s largest contributor base, and with the launch of the Yahoo! Contributor Network, we’ve added scale and reach that sets us apart from any other crowdsourced media platform.”

The Yahoo! Contributor Network is the culmination of a months-long effort to merge the strengths of Associated Content and Yahoo!, following the announcement of Yahoo!’s acquisition of Associated Content in May 2010. The Associated Content From Yahoo! library will continue to serve as the official digital library for all content generated by the Yahoo! Contributor Network. It remains one of the world’s largest sources of community-created content, with over two million contributions spanning text, images, video, and audio.

The Yahoo! Contributor Network also sets performance payment guidelines for content featured on Yahoo! sites, and has a dashboard that provides full transparency into how each contributor’s content performs. For more information, visit: http://contributor.yahoo.com.

Another significant departure from Yahoo: Steve Schultz (pictured here), who was GM of its important and powerful Yahoo Finance unit, has left the company to become COO of Pageonce, an online personal-finance “assistant.”

Yesterday, the editor-in-chief of Yahoo’s Shine women’s site, Brandon Holley, left Yahoo to run Lucky magazine for Condé Nast.

Also recently gone from Yahoo (YHOO): Social platforms head Neal Sample to eBay (EBAY) and Jason Titus, who ran its communications products unit and whose next job is unknown.

Schultz, though, is landing at a Palo Alto, Calif., start-up that has raised $8 million in venture funding. Pageonce collects online financial information and displays it on a unified and personalized page.

Schultz, who has been at Yahoo five years, was, according to his company bio, “responsible for business and content strategy and oversees business development, partnerships, marketing and sales. Prior to this role, Steve led product efforts in Yahoo!’s personalization products group, where he launched Yahoo!’s unified user profiling platform and managed personalization strategy and implementation efforts for Yahoo.com and My Yahoo!”

In the interests of fairness, BoomTown lobbed an email into PR at Yahoo tonight for the name of the person taking over for Schultz and also a list of major execs the Silicon Valley Internet giant is hiring.

Yahoo said no one has been named yet to replace Schultz.

Here is the press release on his new job:

Pageonce Names Steve Schultz New Chief Operating Officer

Company Strengthens Executive Team with Recognized Leader in Consumer Finance

Palo Alto, Calif.–September 9, 2010–Pageonce, the award-winning personal finance assistant, today announced that the company has named Steve Schultz, as its new chief operating officer. Schultz is a demonstrated leader in the consumer finance category, and brings a wealth of experience in product development, strategic partnerships, and business strategy.

In this role, Schultz will lead Pageonce’s business and sales strategy, distribution partnerships, business development and help guide the company’s strategic development into mobile personal finance. Schultz joins Pageonce from Yahoo! where he was the head of Yahoo! Finance, the #1 financial news website, and Yahoo! Real Estate businesses.

“Steve’s leadership and experience will be an invaluable asset to Pageonce as we continue to develop products and increase market share within the personal finance category,” said Guy Goldstein, Pageonce CEO and Founder.

During his tenure at Yahoo!, Yahoo! Finance doubled its market share attracting more than 40 million unique visitors according to Comscore. He led its business and content strategy, business development and strategic partnerships which included relationships with Intuit, Fidelity Investments, Dow Jones, ScottTrade, Bankrate and Bloomberg.com. He was also responsible for Yahoo! Finance’s original content strategy, oversaw the site’s push into mobile applications, and entered partnerships with dozens of new content providers. With Yahoo! Real Estate, Schultz helped lead the site from the #10 to the #2 real estate destination on the Web, was named one of the 100 most influential leaders in the real estate industry by Inman News in 2009, and architected a strategic partnership with Zillow.com in 2010.

“Pageonce shares my focus on developing and delivering forward-thinking personal finance products that fit the needs of today’s on-the-go consumers. Today that means focusing first on mobile,” said Schultz. “We have a very promising future and I’m looking forward to being a part of it.”

Longtime Yahoo tech leader Ash Patel is taking some time off until early 2010.

Yahoo (YHOO) confirmed the break to BoomTown.

In recent days, many inside the company had mistakenly thought the 44-year-old EVP for Product Architecture & Strategy was departing the company for good.

Actually, it’s more of a sabbatical for Patel (pictured here). But it could turn out Patel will not come back from it at all.

For now, Yahoo is saying he will.

“Ash will be taking some well-deserved time off to spend time with his family,” said Yahoo in a statement to me. “He will be returning to Yahoo! in early 2010.”

In his latest of many jobs at Yahoo, where he has been employed since 1996, Patel works with its products organization, run by CTO and EVP of Products Ari Balogh, “to drive the development of a comprehensive product strategy, as well as potential strategic deals, helping to evolve and evaluate its audience product and technology strategy.”

It’s one of many leadership positions Patel has had at Yahoo, as the company has reorganized many times over the years, including as EVP of its Audience Products Division, EVP of Platforms and Infrastructure, SVP of Platform Engineering and chief product officer.

He also played a key role as architect of several major Yahoo products, such as MyYahoo!, Yahoo! Finance, Yahoo! Messenger, Yahoo! Chat and many others.

In fact, Patel ended up in a major exec role in a reorg that former Yahoo CEO and co-founder Jerry Yang did in the summer of 2008.

But the appointment of Patel to head the new Global Products group was greeted with some internal dissent, since many were pushing for faster change and new management at the Silicon Valley icon.

Yang was said to have insisted that Patel remain on as planned. He reported directly to President Sue Decker.

Patel stayed on after new CEO Carol Bartz got the top job in January, which was the subject of much interest among longtime Yahoo staff, since he has been one of the few true Yahoo veterans left in a high-ranking role.

In another reorg in late February, this time by Bartz, Patel got his latest title and was placed under Balogh.

Here is a video interview I did with Patel last December about the launch of some open and social networking initiatives at Yahoo (SVP Tapan Bhat, who had once reported to Patel, is also in the video):

It seems that morbid interest in the stock market’s decline is driving up Yahoo (YHOO) video streams, as well. The much diminished Internet major claimed 265 million video streams in September, a 56 percent increase over the 169 million it claimed in August. And that puts it in the No. 2 spot on Nielsen Online’s monthly VideoCensus. Impressive, no? Presumably, October will be even better, given the upcoming presidential election.

That said, as in search, Google (GOOG) is the one to beat in Web video. The company’s YouTube property served up an astonishing 5.3 billion streams.

PREVIOUSLY:

• Yahoo Search Market Share Apparently Inversely Related to Yahoo Share Price

It seems that morbid interest in the stock market’s decline is driving up Yahoo (YHOO) video streams, as well. The much diminished Internet major claimed 265 million video streams in September, a 56 percent increase over the 169 million it claimed in August. And that puts it in the No. 2 spot on Nielsen Online’s monthly VideoCensus. Impressive, no? Presumably, October will be even better, given the upcoming presidential election.

That said, as in search, Google (GOOG) is the one to beat in Web video. The company’s YouTube property served up an astonishing 5.3 billion streams.

PREVIOUSLY:

• Yahoo Search Market Share Apparently Inversely Related to Yahoo Share Price