It was an odd pairing, the shameless blog-and-video fameball, with a contributor to the famed Eggers line of elaborately precious and self-consciously-old-fashioned written products. But then, judging from the Twitter account Allison, 28, set up for young Eggers, 26ish, there were mutual benefits to the relationship. Toph, reportedly developing a feature film, was determined to make Allison school him in the tricky art of internet self promotion:

Allison, meanwhile, got the high drama of a tantalizingly secret relationship with the mysterious "TK" to write up for her various revenue-generating "lifecasting" endeavors.

More surprising than the pairing was how it ended: At Allison's behest. We hear that Toph had an ex-girlfriend who wasn't ex- enough. With the breakup and its slow leak into public view, Allison is feeling "teary" and old and "the world would be a much better place if we were all more honest."

Hard to imagine this fairy tale romance went awry, given how sweetly it started:

Awwwwww.

(Top pics: NonSociety, Facebook)

Click any page to see it at full size.

Blame this altogether more sinister portrait of Decker as narcotized, philandering spy on her increasingly messy divorce, which involves a custody battle over her children. The accusations are mentioned in a September 29 letter we've obtained, sent to Decker's legal team from the San Francisco attorneys representing her husband (Click here to read the eight-page letter) .

Notice of the breakup first surfaced nearly two years ago. There didn't seem much reason to believe the parting was especially bitter. Though Decker led a series of power grabs at Yahoo, elevating herself from CFO to president and would-be CEO, her divorce generated little such noise. Divorcing couples tend to fight over money, but in April 2008 it emerged that Decker's husband Michael Dovey was not seeking alimony; he told people he was independently wealthy.

But an increasingly contentious court battle has nevertheless erupted, judging from the September 29 letter. The attorney for Dovey references hearings and letters attempting to resolve how to handle discovery, the early legal phase in which evidence is collected.

Dovey's legal team is using discovery, in part, to collect evidence concerning Decker's purported and unspecified "accusations about" her husband — including personal emails Decker may have sent referencing his conduct, "state of mind and/or mental or physical well being," according to the letter.

Some of this material may reside on old Yahoo computers, and Decker's legal team is trying to win the ability to selectively block the disclosure to Dovey's legal team of evidence as it emerges, according to the letter. Dovey's team wants much more: all potential evidence not protected by attorney-client privilege or "attorney work product protection," with particularly sensitive material handed over and protected by a confidentiality agreement.

Near the conclusion of the letter, Dovey's attorneys hint at what else they might be looking for in discovery — and what else Decker's attorneys might be trying to keep a lid on:

These sorts of allegations are relatively common in nasty divorces and custody battles and Decker, for many years a fixture of Yahoo's quarterly conference calls with stock analysts, knows how to mount a strong defense in the bright glare of the public spotlight. Still, a woman who quit Yahoo in January and just bought a waterfront home in the San Francisco Bay Area's quiet Marin County can't be happy to be caught in such a maelstrom of mudslinging. Nor, one would venture, can her former colleagues.

We've posted the full eight-page letter here.

Update: Richard Rados, who wrote the letter, declined to comment on the divorce because of "pending litigation" and added, "I don't want to contribute to ill will between" the parties involved. We left a message for Jennifer Wald, Decker's attorney, and will include any comment when/if she gets back to us.

(Top pic: Decker at an "All Hands" company meeting last year. From Yahoo Blog's Flickr account.)

After the Guardian Media Group announced it had bought Ali's company, ContentNext Media, for a reported $30 million last stummer, Ali became a hero to the ranks of bloggers hoping to turn their blathering into bucks. In announcing the sale, he thanked his wife, Najmia Manjoo-Ali, "who hardly ever saw me for the last four years."

But if anything, she's seen less of him since the acquisition, as he's traveled around the world trying to make the collection of media-business blogs pay off for his new owners. Far from clearing millions, Ali saw an initial payout from the deal that was in the six-figure range, we hear — and he has ambitious targets to meet to realize the full value of the acquisition.

Even over that reduced sum, there are rumors of financial shenanigans between the two. One tale had Manjoo-Ali clearing out the couple's joint bank account. But a source close to Manjoo-Ali says that she only took half of the money — and that was after Ali had moved to take her name off the account. Ali and Manjoo-Ali did not respond to emails requesting comment.

So much for the fairy tale of blogging for dollars: One doesn't start a blog, flip it, get the girl, and live happily ever after. At the end of the story, our hero has the blog. And the blog has him.

(Photo by Rafat Ali)

NonSociety, a group blog detailing Allison's, Rambin's, and Silicon Valley heiress Meghan Asha's daily misadventures, has always promised to be more than just a stream of the trio's daily trivia. "It's just the three of us... but not for long! We're bringing on other contributors," the site has promised since it launched last year. Only now, with Rambin's exit, is Allison looking seriously for more people. The site was never about the three of them, Allison now argues. Well, of course, it was never about anything at all.

To this day, every history of Flickr has an obligatory mention of the "husband-and-wife team" who started the photo site. Indeed, their relationship was a key part of the winsome story that made Flickr so appealing to reporters and consumers. But we've been hearing for some time that Butterfield and Fake are no longer husband and wife.

They have not worked together in years. After they sold Flickr to Yahoo in 2005 for a reported $35 million, Fake almost immediately took an executive role developing new products, while Butterfield stayed at Flickr as the site's often-diffident manager. They did manage one joint launch: the birth of their daughter Sonnet in 2007. Both left Yahoo last year.

Hunch, which we're told is going to be some sort of question-and-answer search engine, could be launching any day. Fake seems to have thrown herself into working at the New York-based as a chief product officer, a demanding job with a bicoastal commute. One of Fake's cofounders recently told an investor not to be concerned with Fake's availability to work, saying she was divorced. If they are, it's not clear if the couple has actually completed the process; a search of public records did not show a divorce agreement, and Fake and Butterfield did not respond to email inquiries. But their friends agree they are no longer together.

Last July, when she announced on her blog that she'd be joining the startup, she noted:

Will you be working with Stewart? No, he's currently weighing various metallurgical opportunities.

And there is this: Fake has posted only one photo to Flickr since last July: a screenshot of the original Flickr homepage. A wave of nostalgia, as she moves on to the new? Butterfield, meanwhile, seems to have no trouble making friends.

(Photo via caterina)

Allison, in a drunken moment at the South By Southwest Interactive conference in Austin, Texas, admitted to Rambin's impending departure from the lifestreaming venture, in which Allison, Rambin, and Silicon Valley heiress Meghan Asha Parikh posted constant blog entries, photos, and videos from their empty lives.

Rambin was the least prolific blogger of the three. And yet she contributed so much to NonSociety in contributing so little. True, her "speach" often lacked "coherance" (two actual recent typos). But there's nothing as entertaining as watching a rich girl who recently spent a month on a yacht opine about what it takes to make money. (Which, apparently, she needs.)

Here's Rambin's ramble about the future of Web video:

Here's my answer: I think the key to web video is creating all different formats that can exist together. Create a show with a relatively high production value with approachable characters or personas. Have these people or actors make their own unedited videos so the audience gets to know and love them. Concurrently, short, edited videos should be shot with experts and celebs to show a different perspective in an entertaining way. Approach major brands with sponsorship packages that supplement their current traditional campaign (so they don't get their panties in a bunch). Pitch brand awareness and your distribution channels (which should be any website that will have you). License the show to a major network to increase your eyeballs and the show's value and revenue.

She seems to be talking about TMIweekly, a Web-video show which recently got picked up by NBC's most obscure TV channel. Rambin, Allison said, is sticking with the show even as she's dropping NonSociety. Can you blame her? It's the only part of Allison's laughable startup which is showing even a glimmer of commercial promise. It almost makes you feel sorry for Rambin, when her best prospect for making money consists of unwatchable video on a channel no one watches.

Forman broke up with ubiquitous yet pointless media presence Julia Allison last summer, right around the time he raised a round of $1.5 million. Digg founder Kevin rose also briefly dated Allison last year, and then raised a ton of money. The conclusion: Severing ties with Allison is the most sure-fire way for a tech boy to get rich! This is good news for Eater editor and fellow Allison ex Ben Leventhal, who is surely due for more funding.

(Photo by Nick McGlynn)

Iglesias — whose private-performance fee is estimated at $1 million — was only the start of the bills for the wedding, held last weekend at the Marquis Cabo San Lucas hotel.

Kordestani's ex, Bita Daryabari, and her groom, vascular surgeon Reza Malek (pictured above, at a charity event in San Francisco), stayed in a $4,000/night presidential suite. Colin Cowie, the celebrity wedding planner who's seen Tom Cruise, John Travolta, Jennifer Lopez, and others to the altar, organized the nuptials. Some of the guests took chartered planes Daryabari and Malek paid for. A tequila party on the beach ended with fireworks; the last fusillade took the form of a heart. A chef was flown in from New York to cater the affair. Paparazzi, in town to lens Jennifer Aniston, stumbled across the event — which, in a way, only added to its gaudy glamour.

It is hard to imagine a worse time to throw an extravagant wedding. But Daryabari surely had other things on her mind.

What turned Daryabari, a telecom executive turned philanthropist, into a towering Bridezilla? Her husband, Kordestani, was Google's 12th employee and its first salesman. He struck a search-licensing deal with the now-forgotten Netscape, then an Internet powerhouse where he previously worked, that made Google viable. Google's IPO made Kordestani wealthy, and as Google's shares soared, his fortune grew into the billions of dollars.

But then Kordestani fell in love with a coworker, Gisel Hiscock (right, and yes, that's really her name, poor dear). A rumored reconciliation after the revelation of his affair never happened. The couple moved to London last summer. Somewhere along the line, Daryabari and Kordestani finalized their divorce.

Which, naturally, gave her a big chunk of Kordestani's Google fortune. And what better way to rub her ex-husband's face in her happiness than by spending his money, a million dollars at a time, on the most extravagant event imaginable? If it weren't a supremely arrogant Googler, the self-crowned king of the new advertising world, getting his comeuppance, we might say her wedding was in poor taste. But is there a sweeter taste than revenge?

(Photo by Drew Altizer via SFLuxe)

Do the geographical math. Until Justine threw him out this summer, the couple lived in a Bel Air mansion with their five children. Los Angeles is clearly a better locale for Justine to pursue her writing career. Tesla is based in the Bay Area. Word swept the Tesla office of a pending divorce after Elon showed up to the opening of Tesla's Menlo Park showroom with a "twentysomething actress," one attendee said. How he managed to pursue an affair while meddling in the affairs of Tesla and his other company, space-exploration startup SpaceX can only speak to Musk's off-the-charts time-management skills.

His decision to fire Tesla's CEO and take over the job himself just means more time away from his family. Only Elon and Justine know all the reasons why they are divorcing. And which came first — did Elon decide to throw himself into his work after realizing his marriage was a failure, or did his obstinate workaholism jeopardize his marriage?

Either way, it beggars belief to think the divorce wasn't a factor in the uproar at Tesla. That will be no comfort to the employees who will soon be laid off by a CEO going through a midlife crisis.

Oh, right — because he's not doing any of his jobs well. Sue Gardner, the executive director of Wikipedia's nonprofit parent, the Wikimedia Foundation, has made it clear she's running the show there. And Wikia? Its search engine, the project on which Wales has said he's focusing his energies, has 0.000079 percent of the market.

The common thread: Wales is incapable of sustained attention on anything, or anyone. He once signaled his coupledom by tweeting thanks to an admirer from "Andrea and I." Weckerle has left a coded retort for Wales with this quote from Roy Disney: "It's not hard to make decisions when you know what your values are."

Not as rough a farewell as Rachel Marsden, the conservative Canadian pundit. She auctioned Wales's clothes on eBay after he posted a note on Wikipedia stating that they were no longer an item. Too much trouble, too much effort, for Wales to repeat that kind of drama with Weckerle, we guess.

Breaking up on Twitter? Far more suited to Jimmy's attention span. The only question: When are Wales's backers at Wikia — Bessemer Venture Partners and Amazon.com among them — going to lose interest in him, too?

At one stage, the friend added, both Courtenay and Samantha were separately visiting Lindsay at a rehab unit called Promises.

The pal went on: “By now Lindsay was sending ‘I love you’ notes to Samantha and signing them ‘Lindsay Ronson’ but telling Courtenay she loved her too."

By October, Courtenay appeared to have the upper hand. She and Lindsay moved into a rented house in Beverly Hills. “But still Lindsay brought men back,” the pal added. “Courtenay would throw fits of rage, writing her hundreds of angry e-mails from another room in the house.

“The sexual attraction between them was electric though and they’d still kiss and make up."

Eventually, Semel moved out and Lohan ended up with with Ronson. In this light, Semel's makeout with Tequila could be seen as kind of a sad attempt to get attention from her long-rumored ex.

The truly sad part of the tabloid report, though, is its assertion that Lohan devolved into drug addiction amid her relationship with Semel because she didn't know how to cope with her lesbianism. Her father Michael, from whom she is estranged, is a devout Christian and skittish about homosexuality, which might have left Lohan without a support network. Against this backdrop, Lohan's recent defacto coming out looks both genuine and necessary for her health.

[News Of The World]

Kordestani's new love, as is widely known within Google, is Gisel Hiscock, a New York-based finance director for the company.

Before you commenters say it, allow me: Yes, her last name is singularly unfortunate. But since Hiscock joined Google in 2003, before its lucrative IPO, it's unlikely that she's after Kordestani for his money. One imagines she might be more interested in obtaining a new surname.

But back to business. One tipster describes Hiscock's role as "sales finance," a group that now reports to Google's CFO, not Kordestani. Hiscock, however, has been at Google since 2003, and at one point sales finance reported to Kordestani. It's not clear when the affair began, but it's possible that Hiscock was Kordestani's employee at the time. And Kordestani, given his importance to the company, holds unspoken authority within Google that reaches beyond his direct line of command.

Even then, Google's published code of conduct is silent on the propriety of romantic relationships between employees, even when there's a reporting relationship. So it's possible Kordestani and Hiscock did absolutely nothing against the rules. Except for this part:

One way to consider whether a given action, relationship, gift, etc. constitutes a conflict of interest is to imagine you are at a company meeting. Could you justify your actions in front of your peers?

Why, cuddly, adorable Flickr, Yahoo's photo site, surely deserves a few billion dollars of its own. Likewise Web 2.0 properties Jumpcut and Upcoming, judging by the way South of Market hipsters won't shut up about them. And if TechCrunch is worth $100 million, shouldn't we assign the same valuation to Yahoo's in-house blog, Yodel Anecdotal? Lastly, there's CEO Jerry Yang's awkward charm, and president Sue Decker's Machiavellian, company-destroying will to power. Those? Those are priceless.