And by "Google Phone" we don't simply mean another Android handset. We're talking about Google-branded hardware running a version of Android we haven't yet seen.

Over the next few weeks, Google Phones (most probably in early, prototype form) will flood the Mountain View campus. They'll don large LCDs while running a new version of Android—either Flan or the version of Android beyond it—which our source spotted running on Google's handset as well as a laptop. (Whatever the software was, it most certainly wasn't Chrome OS, we were assured.)

But maybe the most intriguing bit is what someone said to our source offhandedly, that the current Android, the we all know and love, is not the "real" Android. So what makes for a "real" version of Android?

Our best guess is an Android OS with Google Voice at its heart.

Just witness the position Apple is in with the New York Times. After we pointed out that Times editor had casually mentioned "the impending Apple slate" at an off-the-record confab, the newspaper's editor clammed up. When Peter Kafka of All Things D Keller asked him to elaborate, he got a stern quote via PR: "I ain't sayin'" anything about Apple's rumored device. But the horse was already out of the barn. One can only imagine what sort of conversation Keller might have had with Apple's famously caustic CEO Steve Jobs after that slip.

It's a clash of cultures: Keller specializes in publishing information as quickly as possible; Jobs in keeping in secret, for long stretches of time. It's also an unavoidable situation for Apple. To get beautiful content to show off the capabilities of the tablet and its (presumed) sharp color display, Apple has been meeting with magazines, newspapers and book publishers, who have lots of glossy, high-resolution content. There's no way Apple executives would talking to these guys about a forthcoming device if it didn't feel they absolutely had to.

It must be a painful situation for Apple. At least the company has lots of practice in manipulating the media. Just not usually from such an uncomfortably close distance.

TechCrunch has published financial forecasts assembled by Twitter Inc in February and obtained from management's personal files by a computer hacker. They project $400,000 in revenue this quarter, presumably from those adorable "concept definition" ads. Sales were projected to increase tenfold by the fourth quarter, ramping to $62 million by the fourth quarter of next year.

Twitter Inc., which doesn't like people talking about its hacked internal documents, told TechCrunch the numbers are stale and unofficial. But, specifics aside, they leave the unmistakable impression the microblogging service was serious about making money this year. That goal may have been intended only for company backers; now that it has gone public, there will be even more pressure on the company to make its creative approach to advertising pay off over the next five months.

(Top pic: Twitter CEO Evan Williams at Allen & Co.'s Sun Valley media summit July 10, 2009.)

The documents show fast-growing Twitter estimates it will have 25 million users at the end of this year, 100 million at the end of 2010 and 350 million at the end of 2011, estimates ambitious even by the standards of optimistic Silicon Valley startups to say nothing of a microblogging service that has had trouble serving just it's existing user base.

More revealing: A "wish list" from Twitter's employees, reprinted by the French website Korben. The company has raided top talent from Google's notoriously entitled ranks, so perhaps it should come as no shock that its staff are demanding a wine cellar:

Plans for new offices including a wish list from the employees who would like a nap room, a games room, plants, a chief cuisto, a meditation hall, garages to cycling, Adjustable offices, a gym, a meditation room, a washer / dryer, wifi, lockers, wine cellar, an aquarium and so on ... They have imagination.

Documents revealed by the hacker:

Twitter email account

Evan Williams' Facebook profile

Twitter floor plan

Plans for Twitter reality show

Plans for Twitter reality show, part 2

Plans for Twitter apparel

List of high-profile Twitter users

Twitter's domain name control panel

Thiel's Clarium Capital was gutted during the financial meltdown last year. This year has been slightly kinder; Clarium fell just 1.7 percent January through May as the S&P 500 gained as much. Last month, Clarium fell 1.4 percent even as the S&P rallied, rising 4 percent. (See fund report below.)

No gain means no money for Clarium; the fund reportedly derives its fees only from earnings, rather than as a percentage of assets.

That might explain Thiel's sour comments at a recent Wall Street conference, where minutes (left) reveal the Facebook investor declared major research "to be fraud" and described the "tech boom of the late 1990s as fraud." Does this mean Thiel will refund the fortune he made selling PayPal, which made its name during said boom?

Thiel also apparently "discussed large-cap tech names in a pejorative manor [sic], stating that betting on established technology companies like Cisco, Microsoft and Intel is a bet on no innovation."

"He thinks we should be looking for companies that are truly innovating, of which there are only a handful."

Presumably, only Thiel knows who the truly innovative companies are. Too bad he's not been able to translate that knowledge into cash lately.

(Top pic: Steve Maller for TechCrunch 50)

The photo you have on your site is fake. I just took these photos.

Please update your article to indicate that Apple's subcontractors know how to spell 'bump' when Steve Jobs is on leave.

Look closely at the photo he sent in, though. Why is the area around the "U" discolored? Could it be evidence that contractors hastily fixed the error (or obscure Star Trek joke? Or is this a Photoshop? You can see the pixels, after all).

Update: Mystery solved! We're calling this one: yesterday's photo was real and Apple quickly made the fix. A neutral and very trusted source just went by the parking lot to investigate. His assessment: "Yeah, this was obviously scraped clean very recently and repainted. Can you see the outline of the old lettering? Sorry about the crappy iPhone photo. Nice coverup, Apple." He sends photographic evidence:

Even more update: Another tipster caught Apple contractors in the act of resurfacing the misspelled "BMUP" sign:

Morgenstern runs Valor Equity Partners, which led a $40 million investment in Tesla in February 2008 and controls a seat on the board. The badly mismanaged electric-car startup quickly blew through Valor's money; by October, it was down to $9 million in cash. Despite raising more money from investors, Tesla is running on fumes, and collecting deposits for its Model S electric sedan, a car which exists only as a barely drivable quasi-prototype. Tesla requires hundreds of millions of dollars more than it has to make the Model S a reality — which is why Morgenstern's talk of new money is so interesting.

Morgenstern is briefly visible in the video, apparently recorded by an unknown Tesla fan who hopped in with Morgenstern when offered a test drive, and his face matches another published photo. A Mexican restaurant in Highland Park, a suburb north of Chicago, briefly appears in the shot. According to public records, Morgenstern's family foundation is based in Highland Park. The car is one of Tesla's Founders Series, the first built, and Morgenstern has been reported as one of the buyers in that series. He did not return a message left for him at Valor.

As he pulls away from the restaurant, Morgenstern takes a call and mentions that he's driving around Highwood, a nearby suburban district. During the ride, Morgenstern took a call and discussed Tesla's finances, including rumors previously reported in Valleywag that Tesla was about to take money from a strategic investor. Morgenstern expressed confidence that the deal would be announced Monday or Tuesday. Other sources Valleywag spoke to are less sanguine. Tesla CEO Elon Musk is loathe to surrender control of the company to someone — and yet a new investor would be understandably reluctant to invest if Musk's replacement as CEO weren't a condition of the deal.

So here's the question: Is the video a genuine scoop — or a hoax staged by Tesla?

It does seem curious that Morgenstern's phone just happened to ring seconds after he starts cruising down the street. But if it's a hoax, it's a very foolish one. For one thing, investors don't like their deals getting leaked before the ink is dry. A leak like this, if intentional, may well scuttle the deal, or weaken Tesla's negotiating stance.

And then there's this: Morgenstern uttered something particularly damning on the phone. He said the investment will "make people believers that the sedan will be produced."

Not, mind you, actually allow Tesla to produce its new Model S. It will merely make people believe that it will. That could be read as encouraging optimism among potential buyers. Or it could be read as an intent to deceive people into handing over deposit money for a car that Tesla currently cannot build. Would he really have said that if he knew he was being taped?

Unlike with Sarah Palin's emails, there's not really a public-spirited reason to post the screenshots the hackers took, except, of course, pure voyeurism. The detail-by-detail, appointment-by-appointment depiction of the lifestyle of a rich and famous actress is all engrossing stuff for the masses (and for us). And yet it feels oddly unsatisfying — the same drip, drip, drip of minutiae that the Internet famous overshare on blogs and Twitter.

Screenshots of the shayek@mac.com email account, released by habitués of the online bulletin board 4chan, appear to be authentic. Breaking into the account was a simple matter of knowing Hayek's birthday — September 2 — and guessing at her security word (they claim it was the name of her best known movie role) to reset the account's password. Public-records searches show that the 323-area-code phone number Hayek listed in a sent email belongs to the actress. A spokeswoman for Hayek has not returned a call requesting comment.

The glimpses into Hayek's life revealed by her inbox are fascinating, even if mundane: The stranger-suckling actress has been invited to America Ferreira's 25th birthday party. She downloads a bunch of iPhone applications from the iTunes App Store — and she gets spam from Apple, just like the rest of us. As for the perks of being famous, a driver was scheduled to meet her flight arriving in Abu Dhabi. American Express has given her a new Gold card. (What, she doesn't rate the exclusive black Centurion Card?) Balenciaga and Stella McCartney deliver designer clothes to her apartment. She schedules "Japanese face massages." And she gets scans of stories about her in the celebrity weeklies.

Sara Winge, a vice president at O'Reilly Media, posted a message asking her boss to confirm his plans to speak at a Stanford event in June for a fee of $25,000. (It's since been deleted, but it's still archived in Twitter's search engine.) Since she'd posted about getting a drink earlier in the day, we're thinking that she might have forgotten to use Twitter's direct-messaging feature.

The subject, the "future of manufacturing," hardly seems like an area to which O'Reilly, who helped popularize the term "Web 2.0," might lend his expertise, but hey, times are tough and money is money. On an O'Reilly website, Winge is described as the "maestro of the O'Reilly media message." And yes, the message is clear: O'Reilly is a mid-tier blowhard for hire.

(Photo by kubina)

The email, which questioned why anyone who wasn't "orthodox" might take Good Friday off, is now circulating online, with this preface:

This is an email from one of the MD's in the Healthcare Group at Thomas Weisel Partners where I used to work. He is one of the most unpleasant people I've ever worked with.

Soden's email:
Always amusing to have someone with a "III" after their name lecture employees about the importance of hard work. According to Soden's profile on Thomas Weisel's website, he's not exactly keeping busy doing deals himself. Soden is providing endless entertainment for his workers, though, in the form of a fake Twitter account one prankster set up:

Here's a memo he sent to all staff at Mansueto, which also publishes Inc., the magazine Koten used to edit, last night:

From: John Koten
Sent: Thu 4/9/2009 11:49 PM
To: ALL MANSUETO
Subject: Thought for the day

I realize few of you want a life identical to mine. However, it does kind of amaze me that in the entire time we've been at 7 world trade center, not a single employee has ever directly asked me....how did you succeed in our business. How did you do it.

This surprises me for several reasons: one, because I think I could give an interesting answer. Two, because it's the subject matter we are supposed to be presenting our readers. Three, because it would impress me and show some respect.

It's a question I constantly asked people when I was young, including all of my bosses and every ceo I interviewed. I asked richard petty, I asked michael jackson, I aslked joe mansueto, I asked john delorean. I asked peter kann, I asked norman pearlstine. I asked john huey. It's a pretty easy question to remember.

And that's at least one tip you can have without ever even bothering to ask me.

Earlier in the day, Koten announced that employees' children visiting for Take Our Daughters/Sons to Work Day "are all going over to see the ceos [sic] boat." And then he sent this email:

From: John Koten
Sent: Thu 4/9/2009 6:56 PM
To: ALL MANSUETO
Subject: Sailing

One of my crew on panet claire is the best sailing instructor in New York. He will be happy to teach anyone sailing ir just take you out on my boat this summer. He also gives private lessons, can help you join the manhattan sailing club (free lessons). 800 bucks plus unlimited access to boats a few blocks from our office. Check it out at msc.org.

A tipster tells us Koten bought a boat last year and spent most of summer working on it.

The tipster adds that Koten suggested employees spend $800 on sailing lessons after two rounds of layoffs in September and January, and a move two weeks ago to force everyone to take two unpaid weeks of vacation, effectively cutting salaries by 5 percent. As for how Koten is "succeeding in our business"? Joe Mansueto, the owner of the company, the tipster says, writes a $2 million check every month to keep his magazines afloat.

Update: We heard from Koten!

That was a hilarious article today. I have no personal objection to any of it. However, joe mansueto wrote me from vacation to ask me to tell you that your loss numbers are way off and uninformed.

You are welcome to come over and chat with me, see our place, see my boat, etc.—any time.

I'll have some news you could break whenever you choose to come.

The style of this email confirms the authenticity of our tipster's leaked memo. It's interesting how Koten manages to reach the shift key to capitalize "I," but doesn't manage it on proper names, even his boss's. (Or he's just an iPhone or BlackBerry user who's grown overreliant on his phone's autocapitalization feature.) We also note that Mansueto didn't specify if our source's estimate of losses was high or low, just "way off."

A tipster shares this theory about the timing of Koten's email: booze. Koten is reportedly a Rangers fan, and gets drunk at games. The Rangers played last night. Ergo, drunken email. Koten says: "Yes, the Rangers made the playoffs last night, so I was pretty happy."

A Mansueto tipster confirms that Koten often shows up at the office at noon. One staffer notes that one of the rare occasions when Koten appeared at the office in the morning was when he announced the unpaid time off — after which he promptly left for a vacation in Jamaica.

(Photo by rexhammock)

"People are talking about some senior level offsites happening this weekend to discuss an upcoming round of major layoffs," our source tells us. Googlers have been expecting substantial job cuts for some time, beyond the hundreds of recruiters, marketers, and salespeople laid off earlier this year.

One reason for a sudden, panicked push to slash jobs: Google CEO Eric Schmidt spent most of last fall blithely ignoring the economic carnage. When Google started to feel an impact, it tried to limit cuts to its vast ranks of contractors. (Google has never confirmed the numbers, but some in the Valley believe it fired as many as 10,000 contract workers.)

The company still has 20,000-plus employees, and continues to hire, even though Wall Street analysts think the company could carry on without a hiccup at half that size. The question is when Google's engineers, a powerful clan which effectively rules the company, will start feeling management's knives.

In her haste to get the scoop, AllThingsD blogger Kara Swisher posted a version of Zuckerberg's memo which had a repeated paragraph. She's since eliminated the repeat, but we captured it:

Catch the differences? One says "will report," the other says "will be reporting." One uses treasurer Cipora Herman's last name, the other omits it. One says "we are fortunate," while the other uses the contracted form "we're." And one says Peter Currie will be "an advisor," while the other says only "advisor."

That's not the only oddity about the email. "Several versions I got of this memo had different punctuation in various places," Swisher notes in an update.

Why bother sending employees individual copies of a mass email with subtle changes throughout? There's only one reason to bother: Using the changes as tell-tale clues to identify whose copy got forwarded. That's what Tesla Motors CEO Elon Musk did recently in an attempt to find leakers. Each of those changes can, in theory, serve as an identifier; assemble a series of unique identifiers, and it's possible to trace a particular version of an email to a particular employee.

If Zuckerberg is really wasting time on games like this, it means that he has completely failed as a leader. It's a humbling admission that he no longer enjoys his employees' trust and confidence. And it's an insult, too — that he thinks his employees aren't smart enough to figure out what he's doing. Of course they are. It's just one more reason for him to resign immediately, before he does more damage to the company he started.

Tesla Motors is an icon of the new Silicon Valley, which is placing its bets on clean, green technology. Its $109,000 Tesla Roadster runs wholly on electricity and accelerates from 0 to 60 miles per hour in less than four seconds. But the company is in deep financial trouble, and is betting its future on government loans that may not materialize. Musk, the company's lead investor, took over as CEO last fall. But his reign has been marked by constant and, as Musk himself had admitted, deadly accurate disclosures of Tesla's parlous condition.

A tipster writes:

Life for the employees at Tesla Motors has got more depressing over the last few months. Elon Musk is now spying on everyone.

The inquisition began after an engineer named Peng Zhou revealed the company's perilously low $9 million cash balance to Valleywag last October. Musk ordered a heavy-handed investigation. He hired an outside IT contractor go through the company's email and instant messages, and then had an investigator take fingerprints off a printout discarded near a copier used to leak the email. The investigation implicated Zhou. Musk ordered Zhou to confess and apologize to the entire company, and then fired him.

In his latest witch hunt, which our tipster says took place recently, Musk set out to entrap potential leakers by sending each employee a slightly altered version of an email which he expected would get sent to the media. Musk began the memo, "I'm a big believer in trusting employees."

By altering phrases scattered throughout the email — changing "I'm" to "I am," for example — a Tesla IT employee created individualized memos which would have a detectable "fingerprint" in the text. In the memo, Musk asked everyone to sign a new, stricter nondisclosure agreement. The agreement wasn't the point of the email — it was just a ruse to catch the company's leakers.

Musk did not even let his executives in on the plan. That's where the scheme went hilariously wrong.

Hapless general counsel Craig Harding, who's overseen several legal setbacks for the company, forwarded his own personalized copy along with the agreement. As a result, everyone at Tesla had a copy of Harding's version to compare to their own, making Musk's scheme plain to see — and giving them a version that was safe to leak.

"What was surprising was that Elon failed to mention the entrapment to his executive team," says our tipster. "When they learned of the scheme, unhappiness ensued. Isn't trust a great thing?"

Can you guess what happened next? That's right — the memo made its way to Valleywag. We don't make a habit of disclosing our sources, but it's safe to say this leak came courtesy of Tesla's top lawyer. Thanks, Craig!

Here's Musk's memo — one version of it, anyway:

I'm a big believer in trusting employees and sharing information widely within the company, rather than confining it to a narrow set of senior execs and giving everyone else the mushroom treatment. Providing people with an understanding of what problems need to be overcome helps them align and prioritize their actions in pursuit of the greater good. It also ensures that all employees feel included and part of the same team.

This is why I'm so concerned about the continuing leaks to media. It really hurts free communication when even minor issues are leaked and blown way out of proportion. It is nutty that a company like Tesla, which is doing really well right now (how many companies can say that they're sold out through October?) should suffer from misleading articles on blog sites that would have no credibility, but for a purported inside leak. The leaks often aren't even accurate!

This kills trust and creates a negative atmosphere within Tesla. It has to stop.

Today, the legal department will circulate a declaration form to all employees and contractors within the Bay Area. People will be asked to provide their word of honor and signature that they haven't knowingly leaked any Tesla confidential information to the media. They'll be reminded in clearly written language of the substantial liability they would incur for disclosure of confidential information in willful violation of the confidentiality agreement they signed with Tesla. If someone does not tell the full truth here, please take my word that you will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.

Alternatively, people will be given the option of listing every leak they have made, whether published or not. If you fully disclose any leak you have done, the consequences will be precisely nothing. You will be completely forgiven and, unlike Peng, won't be asked to publicly apologize to the company.

The actions of any one person can't be allowed to hurt the vast majority of people at Tesla who are working incredibly hard to make a difference in the world.

Elon

For the record: Tesla is not "doing really well right now." It is losing money on every car it sells, and plans to take deposits from customers for cars which it has no means to build. But this would not be the first time that Musk has invented fictions about the condition of his company.

Kapur has good timing — or at least a sense of realism. Despite a series of moves spearheaded by Kapur to copy Facebook feature for feature, the News Corp.-owned site has steadily lost traffic to the rival social network.

From: Chris Dewolfe
Sent: Tuesday, March 03, 2009 3:46 PM
To: FIM MySpace All
Subject: IMPORTANT MESSAGE FROM CHRIS DEWOLFE

Hi everyone,

I want to notify you of some changes occurring to the senior executive team at MySpace.

Amit Kapur, our Chief Operating Officer, will be leaving the company to start a new venture. Many of us who have been lucky enough to work with Amit can attest to his tenacity, passion, and creativity as a leader within MySpace and the larger industry.

Jim Benedetto, SVP of Engineering and Steve Pearman, SVP of Product Strategy will join Amit in this new chapter. Personally, I'm incredibly excited to see what this team creates together and wish them the best of luck as they transition from helping run a company to building a new one. Most importantly, Amit, Jim, and Steve depart as great friends of MySpace and of our senior executive team. They will remain on board for the next few weeks to ensure a smooth transition company-wide.

We recently celebrated the five year anniversary of the launch of MySpace-it's a major milestone and everyone should be extremely proud of the global business that we have created in such a short amount of time. At its inception, MySpace was a product of the new social Web and in the last few years we've developed the most robust and diverse business in the marketplace.

MySpace is a social portal that empowers its global community to interact with people, content, and culture by giving individuals a personal, portable, and secure social experience. Originally, Yahoo gave consumers an organized way of navigating the Internet. Then, Google made searching the Internet extremely easy. Now, MySpace is making it simple for users to organize what's important to them through a personal and social lens.

Despite what the market tells us, 2009 will be a big year for our business. This year we will mature our existing market leading advertising technologies such as MyAds and HyperTargeting, as well as continue to innovate new ways for companies big and small to best leverage the MySpace platform. We are effectively monetizing the stickiest sections of our site such as Music and Video by coupling the world's richest content offering with creative ad programming online and off. What will always differentiate MySpace from others in the industry is our commitment to balancing revenue and relevancy.

On the product side, this past year was full of innovation including a site-wide global redesign, the impressive growth of our mobile initiatives, and the beginnings of our Open Platform product suite including MySpaceID. We're at the tip of the iceberg with the Open Platform and in the coming year we expect major new launches including payments and virtual goods. Also in 2009, MySpace Music will deliver the next round of product development such its international rollout, and new functionality including charts, ticketing, and merchandise. Most important, we will remain committed to executing on our product vision in a manner that engages our users in the process and considers their feedback every step of the way.

Tom and I want to reiterate how passionate we are about MySpace-we love the people, the product, and we believe in the future of the company. MySpace has a dedicated team of senior executives and I'd like to take the opportunity to spotlight some of these individuals. I encourage everyone to get to know our executive team as they are an enormously capable group of professionals from successful media and Internet powerhouses such as eBay, Yahoo!, MTV, and Symantec that will lead our company into its next phase.

MySpace Executive Team:
· Tom Anderson-President and Co-Founder
· Aber Whitcomb-Chief Technology Officer
· Travis Katz-GM and SVP of MySpace International
· Courtney Holt-President of MySpace Music
· Jeff Berman-President of Sales and Marketing
· Lin Cherry-General Counsel
· Tom Andrus-SVP of Product
· Manu Thapar-SVP of Engineering Operations
· Allen Hurff-SVP of Engineering
· Tish Whitcraft-SVP of Customer Care
· Jason Oberfest-SVP of Business Development
· Angela Courtin-SVP of Marketing
· Abe Thomas-VP of Online Marketing
· Dani Dudeck-VP of Global Corporate Communications

In a tough economy, we're continuing to prove to the industry that we're a serious business defining a new social portal category for a Web that's more personal, portable, and collaborative than ever before. Thanks everyone for a record breaking year 2008-the coming year will be even more important for the company and our 130 million global users worldwide.

Best,
Chris

There's much to the good in this org chart. Ash Patel, a famously lazy old-time Yahoo mostly regarded for his time in the job, is nowhere to be seen in Yahoo's executive ranks, replaced by CTO Ari Balogh. He's still at Yahoo, but his new job is unclear. Hopefully he'll be out the door entirely soon. And CFO Blake Jorgensen, an ineffective hire made by former Yahoo president Sue Decker (he was her best man at her wedding), is also gone.

But there are too many holdovers. Michael Callahan, a general counsel who got founder Jerry Yang hauled in front of Congress and labeled a "moral pygmy" over Yahoo's outing of a Chinese dissident, whose own department generated a labor lawsuit by Yahoo's first black, female lawyer, and who blithely expressed optimism about a lucrative advertising deal with Google that antitrust cops end up shooting down, should not be holding his job. HR chief David Windley's faults are less public, but Yahoo insiders say they loathe him.

Finally, there's the new face Bartz has picked: Elisa Steele, Yahoo's latest chief marketing officer, who joines the company from NetApp. Like Bartz, Steele previously worked at Sun. For all the same reasons that people were dubious about Bartz's hire — she's a software and hardware saleswoman who's unfamiliar with Web products and online advertising — one might be skeptical of Steele's background. Instead of shoring up her weaknesses in those fields, Bartz has hired a clone.

For those who want to plow through Bartz's explanation of what that purple graphic means, here's her memo:

From: Carol Bartz
Reply-To: Carol Bartz
Date: Thu, 26 Feb 2009 09:02:49 -0800
To: "all-worldwide@yahoo-inc.com"
Subject: Our New Organization

Yahoos,

As I've gotten to know Yahoo! over the past several weeks, I've developed a
point of view on how our organization should be structured to set us up for
success.

Our goal is simple: to consistently deliver awesome consumer and advertiser
experiences, everywhere in the world we do business. Delivering great
customer experiences is everyone's job at Yahoo! – and each part of our
organization will have a clear role in making that happen every day.

The timing of this announcement is important. As soon as decisions were
made, I wanted you to know about them — even if that means we don't have
all the details nailed down yet. Yes, there's been a lot of speculation in
the media over the past few days … that's been a little frustrating, but I'm
not willing to speak publicly about decisions before they're final. Today,
they are — so I'll lay out our new organizational structure for you now.

I know you guys have reorg fatigue. Hang in there – our intention is to
leave this structure in place for two to four years. We'll continue to make
adjustments as needed, but we expect this core structure to stay put.

The structure outlined below will enable us to make big improvements in our
product quality and operational efficiency. Part of that is simplicity –
I'm frankly amazed at how complicated some things are here! We'll have much
clearer decision making and accountability. Product and regional teams will
share responsibility for revenue targets and expense management, but we'll
have one P&L, for which I'm accountable.

We will also be in a better position to really listen to and understand our
customers -both consumers and advertisers. I think we've gotten into the
habit of focusing internally too much and we sometimes forget who we're here
to serve. You'll notice that our management structure puts a renewed focus
on the customer, with stronger feedback loops across the company… and they
all come through me.

Also, as you know, no organizational structure is a substitute for
collaboration, communication and trust. We'll all need to evolve our
behavior a bit – as teams and as individuals – to make this structure work
the way it's designed.

So here's the overview, with the roles that will report directly to me. As
you'll see, some of our leaders are still to be determined. I know you'll
want more detail than what's below – you can learn more on Backyard:
http://backyard.yahoo.com/ourorg .

Products: We've combined Tech and Product groups under one roof, led by Ari
Balogh as EVP Products & CTO. Ari's charter is to deliver global products
that enable extraordinary consumer and advertiser experiences. Ari's direct
reports now include one leader for each product group – we've taken care of
the "two in a box" problem.

One important note: The Connected Life team has been integrated into various
parts of the new organization. Our mobile strategy remains a key part of
Yahoo!'s focus going forward and all of our product groups will own mobile
innovations. After leading Connected Life for four years, Marco Boerries has
resigned from the company to spend more time with his family in Europe. We
thank Marco for his important contributions at Yahoo!.

Regions: There are now two: North America and International. As I've said
before, international growth is critical for Yahoo!, which has become too
reliant on its U.S. business over the years.

The regions deliver Yahoo!'s products, programming and services to
consumers, partners and advertisers in local markets. They will partner
closely with the newly formed Regional Solutions & Products group in Ari's
organization to help drive a significant shift in how Yahoo! develops
products for different geographies. The goal is to have global platforms on
which regional product offerings are based.

The North American region — comprised of the U.S. and Canada – is led by
Hilary Schneider. The leader of our International region, to be hired soon,
will be responsible for a cohesive Yahoo! global strategy and seizing our
international growth opportunities. Until we determine who'll lead the
International region, Rose Tsou (Asia), Rich Riley (Europe) and Keith
Nilsson (Emerging Markets) will continue to report to me.

Marketing: Elisa Steele will be joining Yahoo! as our Chief Marketing
Officer (CMO), effective March 23. Elisa joins us from NetApp where she was
SVP, Corporate Marketing. Previous to NetApp, she held executive positions
in marketing at Sun Microsystems. Elisa will oversee our global marketing
strategy and provide direction for our marketing function. She'll bring
together the various Yahoo! marketing teams that have been spread across the
company. Reporting into Elisa will be Brand Marketing, Audience Marketing,
Corporate Communications, Insights, Policy & Privacy, Community Affairs and
related central teams. I'm delighted to have Elisa joining the team.

Customer Advocacy: As I said, we can do much better in hearing the voice of
the customer across Yahoo!, and incorporating what we hear into all of our
work day-to-day. We have opened a search for a leader, who will oversee
Customer Care and Ad Operations globally with the goal of improving how we
support Yahoo!'s users and advertisers. In the interim, these teams will
continue to report to Hilary.

Service Engineering & Operations: This new team is responsible for
delivering common technology services at scale, including application
management and infrastructure. No matter how cool our products are, the
customer's experience won't be great unless our applications consistently
deliver. Note that we're bringing Service Engineering together as one group
because these engineers bring expertise that is best applied horizontally.
Leading this organization is David Dibble, who joined Yahoo! in December.
David's team also will be accountable for delivering more effective
corporate IT systems.

Corporate Functions: Blake Jorgensen will be leaving Yahoo! and I am
searching for a new CFO. Blake will remain through a transition with his
successor, and I want to thank Blake for all of his great contributions to
Yahoo! over the past two years. Mike Callahan will continue to lead our
Legal team, and David Windley leads our Human Resources function. Joel
Jones joins the team as my Chief of Staff.

So that's the high-level view. These changes are effective immediately, but
we've got more work to do in filling out the structure of each group. In
the short term, this transition will be challenging for many of our people.
My executive staff will be working with their organizations as quickly as
possible to create further clarity. For example, we'll need to recast
budgets and adjust work areas so we have the right people working
side-by-side.

I want to thank all of you who've shared your ideas and views with me since
I arrived. Several leaders across Yahoo! came together to design this new
structure – I've been very impressed with their dedication to the right
outcomes, particularly how they've embraced the need to eliminate the silos
that have been a drag on this organization for so long.

I think this organizational structure has the potential to solve many of the
issues you've helped me better understand. Of course, new issues will
emerge. But I know we'll be aligned and nimble in tackling them together.

This is a tremendous, proud company with a powerful brand, great products
and a bright future. Now's the time to get more focused than ever on
delighting our users and advertisers. Let's show them how great Yahoo! can
be.

Carol

I'm a Cisco employee, and at the company meeting going on right now, Frank Calderoni, CFO, just announced that as part of our expense reduction plans, they're going to get rid of the free drinks in breakrooms, replacing them with vending machines. He said it'll save like $12-13 million. A few slides later, the head of HR was bragging about Cisco being ranked the 6th best place to work by Fortune. I don't think they realized the logical disconnect.

Add this to Cisco's recently announced pay-to-play gym, and you wonder if Calderoni, Cisco's bean-counter-in-chief, isn't trying to turn employees into a profit center. Another in our series of corporate America's stupid cost-cutting tricks! Has your employer pinched pennies for no purpose? Send us your tales of perks and jerks.

And a quick one, too, without the troubles of figuring out how to make money off of Internet hipsters' self-indulgent ramblings. Karp has toyed with charging users for extra features, but it's not clear that adding fees would draw much revenue. Nevertheless, Tumblr was able to raise $4.5 million in December, an investment which reportedly valued the company at $15 million.

An incredible amount for such a young startup with such fuzzy hopes of making money. But it's a bargain compared to Twitter, a startup similarly unburdened by the depressing reality of actual revenues. Which is why Yahoo might, just might, be willing to part with as much as $50 million for it. (In a sad recognition of how late Yahoo is to the whole Twitter phenomenon, its PR department set up a Twitter account today.)

We hear the talks are serious, led by Tapan Bhat, a fast-rising executive in charge of Yahoo's homepage and other key properties — but as with any acquisition talks, they could fall apart. Fred Wilson, a partner at Tumblr investor Union Square Ventures and a Yahoo spokeswoman did not respond to inquiries about the talks. In a text message, Karp, confirming his reputation for adorably juvenile sarcasm, wrote, "You got it backwards."

What could kill the deal: Already, Yahoos are grumbling at the idea of spending tens of millions of dollars on a revenue-free startup. The company's spending spree on Web 2.0 startups like Del.icio.us and Flickr has yielded few visible financial results. Some grumble that has more to do with Yahoo's mismanagement of the acquisitions, but the point is the same: Why should Yahoo spend more on startups, having failed to profit from the ones it already bought?

And there's also new CEO Carol Bartz, who is waging a pointless jihad on leakers. She may be angry enough that word of the talks has escaped Sunnyvale that she may kill the deal for that reason alone.

Update: Awww, Karp is adorably denying the rumor of Yahoo's interest in his company! Then again, he also claimed Tumblr was buying Yahoo, so who knows what to make of anything that comes out of his so-cute-you-could-pinch-'em cheeks? His lead programmer, Marco Arment, is also perkily insinuating that he would quit if Yahoo bought the company:

I hope they let me work on some of the many exciting projects at Yahoo! Who needs a high rank at a small company in New York? I want to move to California and get stuck in traffic every day on the way to my midlevel engineering job where I sit in a cubicle all day and can't make any product decisions while working on something nobody will ever see to manage regional ad clickthrough stats tracking.

These should be heady times for Thiel, whose Clarium hedge fund sparked glowing press coverage (and more than a little envy). His strategy was different from most of the private pools of cash run out of places like Greenwich: Using relatively little debt, he sought to profit in times when governments meddle with markets. That should be now, right? Instead, he has been as hard hit by the credit crisis as most other hedge funds. He is down a mere 4.5 percent for the year — but that includes his phenomenal 58 percent rise from $4 billion in January 2008 to $7 billion six months later.

From July to December, Clarium's assets cratered. According to performance data obtained by Valleywag, Clarium's main fund returned negative 39 percent. Put simply, an investor who put in the fund's minimum of $1 million would have ended six months later with $600,00.

By the numbers, most did not wait around that long. Thiel's fund ended the year with only $2 billion under management, which suggests that investors took out another $2 billion, in addition to Clarium's $3 billion in investment losses. (Click to see the full document.)

No surprise there: Risk-averse investors have been pulling out of hedge funds everywhere. Thiel was right about the mortgage bubble, and right about the rising role of governments in markets. But was he right about how to make money off these developments? So far, the answer's no. And to investors, that's the only kind of vision that matters.

The first message from organizer Elliott Bisnow, a self-aggrandizing publisher of email newsletters who compares himself to Rupert Murdoch:

From: "Elliott Bisnow"
Subject: Aspen 2009

Hey

You knew the announcement was coming...It's time for Summit III.

We're taking over the St. Regis Hotel in Aspen from Thursday, April 2nd to Sunday April 5th and we'll have 125 of the most influential people in America under 35 years old. 

GQ will be co-hosting the event.

Here's a link to the official invitation: aspen09.com/attendees

At the end of the invitation, you need to enter the following code to purchase a ticket and attend the event:

XXXXXX

If you are receiving this email, your name is in the system and you will be allowed to book a ticket. 

We are not releasing a list of people who are booking or have booked do to the high profile of attendees on the trip.

There are 3 rules for Aspen 09

1. Don't tell anyone about Aspen 09
2. There are no comped tickets
3. Don't tell anyone about Aspen 09

We would like everyone to book their ticket by next Thursday, January 22nd at 5pm EST (That is the date we need to finalize hotel rooms we are booking).

On January 22nd, the rooms will go up 20% and until that date I will be emailing you every day to book.  

A couple of trip details:
We are staying at the top ski hotel in North America (St. Regis Aspen)
Co-hosting the event with GQ, Calvin Klein, Marquis Jet and others
I would advise people to go with the Mogul Single Room or Robber Baron Double Room. 

Hopefully most of you can book tickets this weekend

Feel free to email me with any questions. See ya in Aspen!

-Bisnow

— 
Elliott Bisnow

Co-Founder & 
Co-Chief Operating Officer
Bisnow Media Corp

Founder
The Summit Series 

www.Bisnow.com
www.Thesummitseries.com

Bisnow quickly sent another email explaining why he was charging $3,000 for an event that was formerly free:

From: Elliott Bisnow
Subject: Quick follow up

From: The Summit Team

To: People who came on our last trip (free), we want them to come on this next trip (not free), and they haven't booked a ticket yet because they probably can't believe we are making them pay!

Our goal is to create the world's coolest retreat for people under 35 years old.  Imagine if in 18 months there is an event where every cool young person (company founders, entertainers, philanthropists, athletes, etc) in the world attends. This is what we want to create.

When we did our first trip one year ago, it was because I wanted to meet other (really young) like minded company founders.  When we did our trip to Mexico, it was because we wanted to meet even more amazing people. We were able to make both trips free because sponsors could cover the costs of 65 people. 

As we grow the trip (125 people on this trip) bring on a Summit staff/team (9 people on board) make it even more fun (staying at the St. Regis in Aspen) and try to raise even more money (we're supporting a handful of philanthropic causes) sponsors can no longer cover the costs. 

Our hope is that the value we can offer you from attending (new friends, business deals and an amazing 4 days) is worth the roughly $3,000 price tag to attend (ticket cost + airfare).

If you're getting this email, it's because you came on the last trip and haven't yet booked a ticket to this trip.  If you want to come on this trip, you should book your ticket today or tomorrow, as rooms are running out and ticket prices will rise at 5pm tomorrow. 

I can promise you that this will be the best $3,000 you ever spend.  Most people think I'm crazy before I do something...All I can say is trust the vision, and always think bigger.

Very excited for you to come to Aspen.

The login to buy a ticket is:
http://aspen09.eventbrite.com/

The password is:
XXXXXX

-Elliott

— 
Elliott Bisnow

Co-Founder & 
Co-Chief Operating Officer
Bisnow Media Corp

Founder
The Summit Series 

www.Bisnow.com
www.Thesummitseries.com