Though it's garnered $25 million in venture investment, HuffPo in January was making about one fourth the revenue of content competitor Salon.com, valued at just $700,000 by the public markets. This might explain why Eric Hippeau, the investor CEO recently installed to fix HuffPo's finances, has hired former Yahoo ad chief Greg Coleman as president and chief revenue officer, as reported by Kara Swisher of All Things . Coleman shoves aside, then, current Chief Revenue Office James Smith, who has been at HuffPo for nearly three years after stints at AOL and IAC.

We can't say that's a terrible move, given Smith's track record, but it's by no means a given that Coleman can go much further selling HuffPo's notoriously sketchy pageviews. But then he, too, has worked at AOL, known as much for its dodgy accounting and traffic-goosing as for its wholesome oxfords-and-khaki corporate uniform (Coleman remains a fan). So there's some hope.

Business Insider hears Coleman netted $3 million severance for his 10 weeks work for the company. That's about $60,000 per workday, assuming he didn't come in on weekends.

Maybe that sounds like yet another example of outrageous executive compensation. But we don't begrudge Coleman his money: He fell victim to a similar palace coup at Yahoo when yet another of his bosses was replaced. Kudos to Coleman for being smart enough to hedge his bets this time around with a severance deal, which he presumably insisted on up front.

As George W. Bush famously said, "Fool me once... shame on... shame on you... Fool me — You can't get fooled again."

Jerry Yang, CEO He'll be a large Microsoft shareholder after the deal goes through, so it's likely he'll get a board seat. And perhaps he'll get to keep the "Chief Yahoo" title.

David Filo, cofounder Might be named a Microsoft Fellow, working in datacenter operations — as he prefers.

Sue Decker, President Gone. There's no position Microsoft can give her that will suit her ambitions. Not to mention the hash she's made of things at Yahoo.

Blake Jorgensen. CFO Gone. Microsoft doesn't need another CFO, and he's a close Decker ally.

Ari Balogh, CTO Bad timing: Balogh just left VeriSign for Yahoo this week. If he'll settle for a title below CTO, Microsoft might grudgingly make room for him.

Marco Boerries, EVP, Connected Life Gone. He's widely disliked within Yahoo, and Microsoft already has plenty of mobile dealmakers.

Michael Callahan, General Counsel Gone. First, we fire all the lawyers.

Gregory Coleman, EVP, Global Sales Already announced his "retirement." Even more gone than he already was.

Usama Fayyad, Chief Data Officer A keeper. Microsoft needs better data analysis.

Qi Lu, EVP, Engineering Search A keeper.

Michael Murray, Chief Accounting Officer Gone.

Jill Nash, Chief Communications Officer Could stay. Microsoft desperately needs better PR in the Valley.

Ash Patel, EVP, Platforms and Infrastructure Division Gone. He's already checked out, insiders say, but it will take a takeout to dislodge him from his desk.

Libby Sartain, Chief People Yahoo Already rumored to be out.

Hilary Schneider, EVP, Global Partner Solutions Could stay, though she's a Decker ally. Microsoft lacks credibility with newspapers, Schneider's strong suit.

Jeff Weiner, EVP, Network Division Gone. Weiner, a Semel guy, has managed to hold onto his job against the odds. But he's not respected in Redmond.

Update on President Organization — CONFIDENTIAL and PLEASE DO NOT FORWARD.

Fellow Yahoo!s,

Over the past two months, Jerry and I and the rest of the management team have been taking a close look at our business - from top to bottom - and have been working hard to refine Yahoo!'s strategy and longer-term objectives. With that in mind, today I would like to tell you about a number of organizational changes that will help us achieve our goals to better serve our customers, accelerate the speed of making fast, smart decisions, and create cleaner lines of accountability across key leaders.

Building on the success that we have had in aligning our sales and distribution organizations around customers, rather than around advertising products like search and display, the two major changes we are announcing today are designed to take this to a higher level. They will also better align our resources and priorities focused on building key audiences.

First, we are placing responsibility for all of our "partners" - advertisers, agencies, resellers, publishers, ad networks, developers, or others — in a new division called, Global Partner Solutions (GPS), under the leadership of Hilary Schneider. This new group will be charged with creating, delivering and coordinating global best practices for solutions to all of our partners. Furthermore, this unit will have direct responsibility for our U.S. go-to-market efforts (i.e., sales, marketing and business development) across:

all ad formats, including search, display, video, mobile, listings, etc.
all online marketing objectives, including brand, performance, promotional, and
all customer types and sizes, including large enterprises, small online businesses, and local brick and mortar companies

Business development deals for Mobile and content the will continue to be led by Connected Life and the Yahoo! Network Division, respectively, and will work in close coordination with GPS.

Global Partner Solutions will be responsible for segmenting the business needs of our partners into actionable groups, understanding the needs of these segments and our ability to meet these needs, developing holistic business strategies to delight and surprise these segments, and executing on these strategies.

This approach will help us achieve faster, smarter decision-making and improved execution in support of better serving our customers. For example, we will be able to much more quickly identify and secure the ad inventory that best meets our advertisers' objectives and partner with advertisers that best meet our publishing partners' objectives as well as provide the most compelling experience to the vast audiences we reach.

Hilary is a strong executive with a tremendous track record of success - most recently in building the Yahoo! Publishing Network and spearheading the Newspaper Consortium deal - and I believe she is ideally suited to lead this effort.

The organizational changes that will accompany this change are to move Global Sales, the Online Channel, the Yahoo! Publisher Network, Corporate Partnerships and Hot Jobs under the single umbrella of Global Partner Solutions. Reporting to Hilary will be David Karnstedt - SVP, North American Sales; Jacki Kelley - VP, Sales Strategy; Dan Foehner - VP, Worldwide Sales Operations; Mark Rabe - VP, Cross Border Sales; Rich Riley - SVP, Online Channel Division; Todd Teresi - SVP, Yahoo! Publisher Network; Jim Schinella - SVP, Corporate Partnerships; and Jeff Kinder - SVP/GM, Hot Jobs.

As many of you know, Greg Coleman has been actively engaged in leading the integration of Yahoo!'s search and display ad sales teams and communicating the benefits of our more integrated capabilities to our major clients, who have been very receptive to this holistic approach. This integration is now well underway, and his leadership and expertise have helped enormously to effect a smooth transition. He and I have discussed for some time the need to further integrate Yahoo!'s capabilities in order to better support the needs of our key customer groups.

Therefore, with the decision to create this new Global Partner Solutions unit under Hilary's leadership, we mutually agreed that Greg would leave Yahoo! to pursue other opportunities. We are fortunate that he will continue to assist us in this transition through February, closely advising the team. We deeply appreciate Greg's contributions to Yahoo! over the past six and a half years, a period in which our advertising revenues have increased from $600 million a year to more than $6 billion, with substantial growth not only in the U.S. but in Europe, Asia and key emerging markets around the world. We wish him the best of luck in the years ahead.

The second major organizational change we are announcing today is that we are moving the properties in the Local Markets and Commerce Division (LMC), excluding HotJobs, from Hilary's organization into the Yahoo! Network Division under Jeff Weiner's strong leadership."As a key member of the executive team, Jeff has held a number of pivotal roles at Yahoo! including SVP of Search and Marketplaces where he oversaw a number of these properties. As a result, the transition to Network should be seamless. Jen Dulski will continue to lead Shopping, Travel, Auto, Real Estate and Local under Jeff and Anna Zornosa will continue to lead Personals. This move will drive further organizational alignment around our key audience properties and result in clearer accountability and faster, smarter decision-making and better integration overall. In addition, the engineering function will also moved to align with the product team and will report into Venkat Panchapakesan.

Also, in an effort to create better alignment with the core business units, we are moving Cammie Dunaway, CMO, and her Customer Experience organization to report to me.

As a result of these changes, my direct reports now include Hilary Schneider — EVP of Global Partner Solutions; Jeff Weiner - EVP of the Yahoo! Network Division; Marco Boerries - EVP, Connected Life; Toby Coppel - Head of Yahoo! Europe; Keith Nilsson - Head of Emerging Markets; Rose Tsou - Head of the Asia Region; a soon to be hired EVP — Marketing Products Division; Cammie Dunaway — CMO; Jeff McCombs - my Chief of Staff and VP, Business Management; and Greg Coleman (through February 2008).

I know there have been many changes at Yahoo! over the last few months, and I know that change is not always easy. But I greatly appreciate all of your patience, dedication and hard work. As we look to make Yahoo! the partner of choice for our customers and partners. I am confident that we are putting the right people in the right positions to focus on the right opportunities.

Congratulations to all.

Sue

The rumor makes sense. Coleman led Yahoo's big comeback in advertising in the early part of this decade. But equally, one could say, he's overseen the recent slowdown in banner-ad sales growth. He's been ridiculed recently for his comments about how digital marketers don't know how to reach teens — rather, some charge, Yahoo ad salespeople, under Coleman, don't know how to deliver teens to marketers.

Schneider, meanwhile, is a close ally of Yahoo president Sue Decker. Brought into Yahoo last September to oversee its listings businesses — a small area of operating responsibility given to Decker when she was still CFO — Schneider's authority has expanded alongside Decker's. She doesn't have a traditional ad-sales background, but perhaps Yahoo, by promoting her to run all of Yahoo's sales, CEO Jerry Yang and Decker are saying that a traditional approach isn't what's needed now.