This was mentioned to me earlier this week as fact, but until someone confirms this deal, the details are sketchy. If you know more, e-mail tips@valleywag.com.

Guaranteed

• Bill Demas, Senior Vice President & General Manager, Yahoo Publishing Network
• Will Johnson, VP & general manager of the Yahoo Publishing Network

One can hope

• Chief Technology Officer Farzad Nazem [already "not all there," knowwhatimean?]
• Chief Information Officer Lars Rabbe [if it's broke, he don't fix it]
• Senior VP of platform and product engineering Phu Hoang [what does this man do?]
• Chief Product Officer Ash Patel [doesn't get it]
• Senior VP of Connected Life Marco Boerries [the anti-Midas]
• Senior Product Manager for Yahoo Publisher Network Cody Simms [scenester here for the ride]
• Senior Product Manager in Corporate Development Ian Kennedy [here for another ride (maybe the tilt-a-whirl)]

One suspects is imminent

• Marc Davis, founder of Yahoo! Research Berkeley [tossed out months ago]

Likely? Hell Yeah

• CEO Terry Semel (pictured)

PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE

• Whoever invited Deepak Chopra to visit Yahoo

Have more details? Know whether CEO Terry Semel is safe or if Yahoo Media Group head Lloyd Braun is finally out on his ass? Email tips@valleywag.com. Your identity will, of course, be protected at all costs.

By Megan McCarthy

The major shareholders were Calacanis and partners Brian Alvey and Gordon Gould.

Gould was with Calacanis at the Silicon Alley Reporter, a 90s dot-com news outlet. He wanted Calacanis to sell the company; Calacanis waited too long and ended up having to sell for much less; Gould lost potential millions.

Then Gould bought into Weblogs, Inc., with most of his share in Blogsmith. So when WIN sold most every asset but Blogsmith, it looked like he'd get screwed again — especially if WIN opened up the Blogsmith platform as Calacanis kept hinting. But with this sale, the man can finally pocket some money — even if it's only a mil or two. And it looks like he did get screwed — Gould's share hadn't fully vested, so he didn't make much at all from this sale. Maybe next time, dude.

A live TV report from last night is available at KRON 4. If you have any information, photos, or first-hand accounts, e-mail tips@valleywag.com. A reader sends the following IM conversation they had with an eBay employee in the building.

My friend was working late at eBay tonight when there was a large explosion within the building.

Here's the breaking news story:
Firefighters Respond to Explosions within eBay Building

And here's the IM thread of them telling me a few minutes ago.

friend-at-ebay: http://www.nbc11.com/news/10205869/detail.html

me: wft?
you there?

friend: Crazy shit! A bunch of us were there working late and all of a sudden BOOOOOOM!!!!
I ran outside looking for a plane crash.
But is from inside the building. Some are saying it was a transformer.
Windows were blown out.

me: top floor? basement? or somewhere in between?

friend: Bottom floor hallways were filled with smoke. I had to run through the buildings and yell for people to evacuate because....get this...
There were no fricking fire alarms to pull.

More after the jump.

me: no fire alarms?

friend: The bomb squad and hazmat are on site searching the buildings.

friend: Yeah. Crazy. Couldn't find one anywhere. And I looked high and low.

me: everybody OK afauk?

friend: Yeah...no injuries.
Just a lot of rattled nerves.

=== 45 minutes later ==

friend: Whoa. It was a bomb.
http://cbs5.com/local/local_story_305004735.html
Man, I never even considered that. I ran over there straight past the location of the bomb and was just thinking about making sure everyone was okay.

me: wonder if it was Halloween punk kids. office near anything residential?
friend: Dude...it was a huge explosion.
friend: Rattled all the buildings on campus.

Here's the entire e-mail. For more on the story, read the Romenesko article at Poynter Online.

To: Time Inc. Staff
From: John Huey
Re: Staff Announcement

I am pleased to announce the appointment of Andy Serwer as managing editor of FORTUNE.

We all know that the world of business journalism has increasingly become a multi-media proposition, involving not only the magazine but its brand representations on the internet, on television and radio, wherever the reader wants his or her information. And no one is more qualified to lead FORTUNE on those multiple fields of battle than Andy.

He joined FORTUNE in 1985 as an intern from the Columbia Journalism School, and went on to become one of its most insightful, popular and productive writers. His work has ranged from his provocative column in every issue to major cover stories on everything from the young Michael Dell to Michael Price ("The Toughest S.O.B. on Wall Street") to the business of the Rolling Stones to the first look inside the financial and philanthropic workings of America's richest family, the Waltons.

Andy became one of our first internet stars nine years ago with his popular Street Life column. And in his spare time, Andy has also been the very successful business anchor of CNN's American Morning news show. He will continue to have an on air presence on CNN. No matter what project Andy takes on, he handles it with intelligence, wit and energy.

It is also safe to say that no journalist knows today's business story better than Andy Serwer. I am confident that he will bring his knowledge of both the story and the multimedia landscape to the helm of FORTUNE in exciting ways that will work to its great advantage in the future.

Andy is lucky to succeed Eric Pooley, who came to FORTUNE because of his very strong journalistic skills and storytelling abilities. He has delivered on those strengths in ways that have greatly enhanced the magazine and positioned it well for the future. He has made excellent hires, sharpened the magazine's coverage, updated its design, created new departments and lively new franchise issues, and shepherded great investigative tales, including the current cover story on the high drama behind Milberg Weiss's legal nightmare.

Eric, who previously edited Time Europe and before that was Chief Political Correspondent and Nation Editor of Time, is leaving FORTUNE and will be working with me and Jim Kelly on an assignment that plays to his strengths in investigative journalism.

Please join me in wishing both Eric and Andy well.

J. H.

From: Slattery, Kathleen Sent: Fri 10/20/2006 1:14 PM Subject: WARN notice- Guild

October 20, 2006
Dear Colleagues:

As your Division Vice President shared with you earlier today, we plan on eliminating 101 positions by December 19th.

The rest of the e-mail is after the jump.

You are receiving this email because under California law, if an employer lays off fifty or more employees within a thirty day period, it is required to provide the affected employees with a sixty day advance notice of the layoff. This is known as a "WARN notice."

Not every potentially affected employee receiving the notice will ultimately be subject to layoff. But in order to meet compliance requirements, notice will be given to a larger number than 101 employees.

Attached is the 60-day WARN notice as well as a Q&A on benefits, severance and final pay, which are also being mailed to the most current address you
have provided us.

Please let me know if you have further questions.

-Kathleen

Kathleen Slattery
VP HR and Labor Relations, San Jose Mercury News

Part of the Q&A attachment reads:

Q: If I am laid off what will be my last day of employment? A: December 19, 2006, but you may be notified earlier.

Q: If an employee resigns, will that count against the required number of layoffs?
A: It could, if it were in a department that did not need to fill the position.

Q: How many positions are being eliminated?
A: 101.

Word is that Arrington's hiring an outside blogger for this new music blog. Judging by Arrington's existing blogs, TuneCrunch will write awkward but thorough reviews of music for white guys.

WHOIS information for: tunecrunch.com [Whois; photo from Business 2.0]

Also, a separate source says Lacy definitely took six figures (probably $100-200k, says the source) for the book.

Finally, someone at BusinessWeek mentioned that the bubblicious article was Lacy's first cover story, theorizing that she got it thanks to co-writer Jessi Hempel, a more seasoned writer with some covers under her belt.

Granted, Jessi is the one who went around the blogosphere defending the story, then passing the buck for the story's most egregious exaggerations (especially the $200 million valuation of Digg) to Lacy and BusinessWeek's editors. If that's how a seasoned writer acts, maybe giving this green one a book deal is so crazy it might work.

Earlier: Scoop: BusinessWeek bubble blower gets book deal [Valleywag]

The BW story scandalized those afraid of the ludicrous business valuations that Silicon Valley mostly avoided after the dot-com bomb, and it sent Digg's management scrambling to explain that no, they didn't tell Lacy and co-writer Jessi Hempel that their company was worth $200 million, and no, they really aren't a bubble company.

Lacy shies away from the same accusation — Her book is "not a bubble book," she tells me, and she denies rumors that Penguin, her publisher, advanced her $500k (another ludicrous fake valuation, of course).

Lacy says she'll cover "the rise of Web 2.0 out of the bust, following key characters who are/were notable
stakeholders in both, with analysis on what is the same and what's different." Not a promising premise — sounds like every other story in Business 2.0, Forbes, and Fast Company — but just how bad (or, who knows, good) the book turns out depends on which "key characters" Lacy decides to follow. (It's a safe bet her friends at web startup Yelp — pictured left — will make the cut.)

Earlier, on Lacy's BW story: Why BusinessWeek said Kevin Rose is worth $60 million [Valleywag]

The launch is part of a busy week for Google, which launched a literacy portal today, an experimental search site a few days ago, and a new version of Google Groups this week, and is about to open Google Gadgets to outside developers.

According to a journalist, Google's new product will launch already larger than the two main source code search engines, Koders and Krugle.

Why is it important? Because Arrington's web network (The blogs TechCrunch, CrunchGear, MobileCrunch, and TechCrunch UK</>; the TalkCrunch podcast; and the CrunchBoard job board) may pull just 100-150k views a day, but that's an audience of startuppers and wannabe "Web 2.0" know-it-alls. In other words, Arrington is an accidental Moses for a nation of entrepreneurs.

Or Head Lemming. Your call.

That's part of Apple's plan to break into online advertising. In a deal that should bring in several hundred million dollars off the bat, the company will run ads, most notably on its iTunes store.

To handle all this, Apple's secretly hunting for an ad sales director. Industry stars, polish your resum s.

——-Original Message——-
From: [redacted]
To: [redacted]
Subject: The Death (again) of Webmonkey
Date: Fri, 14 Jul 2006 17:00:22 -0700

i could just say "SSAI" but allow me to elaborate. as you may have
heard, Conde Nast (owners of Wired Magazine) have purchased Wired News
and the wired.com domain. here's the news bit:

http://www.wired.com/news/technology/internet/0,71366-0.html

now, i'm an employee of wired news, which means that i work on conde
nast properties (wired news) as of this week. webmonkey, being a lycos
property, is off of my desk now. i've asked around about the details,
and i just got word that lycos is mothballing webmonkey. no new
content, no new employees. they say it's "just for now", but
considering that they were never willing to spend a dime to provide me
with any resources for anything relating to site maintenance or
improvement, i can't imagine they'd start doing so now.

chances are, lycos will do a completely new site at the domain and
take all of the old stuff offline. this sounds like a really bad idea,
but they've already done the same with Cocktail, RGB Gallery,
HotWired, Netizen, Suck.com, and Animation Express. so, it's not that
big of a jump to consider that they'll eventually do the same to
Webmonkey. this is the third time webmonkey has "died" (1999, 2004,
2006) and i have a feeling the third time's a charm. one month short
of its tenth birthday!

i advise you all to make PDFs of everything that you've written for
webmonkey. it may still be online in six months, but it just as likely
may not. if you take the article and run it on your site or your blog,
lycos might send you a cease and desist letter. but quite frankly, i
really don't think they have anyone that will be checking. i've been
handling the policing of all of the content thieves for the past
couple of years, and i know that nobody else was doing it. just please
don't say i gave you permission to run your webmonkey article
somewhere... because (for the record) i never said that.

the gravy train has run off the tracks and the conductor has fled into
the woods. if you're currently working on an article, please lift up
your pens and stop writing for Webmonkey right now. the budget is
frozen and there's nobody at lycos who will be able to handle posting
the articles. i hang my head in shame as i write this, because i
really didn't want to have to tell assigned authors that their
assignments won't be running. but those is the breaks, as they say.

please let me know if you have any questions about any of this. also,
i'll still be working at wired news doing web dev news, but we haven't
decided if i'll be reporting on news, editing how-tos, doing software
and book reviews... it's still all up in the air. the blog will live
on, but it probably won't be called Monkey Bites as of august.

if you're interested in writing for wired news, let me know, give me
story ideas. i probably won't be fully folded in to the wired news
process/CMS/etc for a little while yet, but i'll still take pitches.
why not, right?

i wish you all the best.
so, send me questions if you have them! talk to you all soon.

-[redacted]

PS: i apologize for the form letter. please tell all of your friends
and co-workers who are former monkeys about this... emailing every
single author is going to take a really, really long time.

RIP Webmonkey 1996-2006

A reader follows up on an earlier tip to report that Feedburner will soon announce that it's buying Nooked, another player in the RSS marketing space. Nooked will get both cash and stock in the deal.

Nooked is based out of Ireland and mostly does business in Europe, bringing Feedburner some international reach. The companies foresee no trouble meshing their technologies, says the source.

Earlier: Feedburner's buying someone. But who?

[Update: Digg, meet AOL's Digg killer.]

Digg already soared past Slashdot as the most influential tech-centered news portal. The "Digg effect" can bring down the servers of sites linked from the homepage and drive a frenzy of blogging and news coverage — or spread rumors like nobody's business. That's why Yahoo reportedly offered $40 million for the company (to which founder Kevin Rose says, "I wish!")

But Digg is destined for bigger things than tech news. The above screenshot of Digg version 3 (not showing? wait for it), leaked from a beta tester a week before its launch, reveals categories for "Business" and "World News." This should give Digg a leg up on AOL's rumored general-interest Digg killer.

The tipster says, "I've counted 25+ new topics in this build of the beta, and there is a new design top-to-bottom."

Above, also note the Ajaxy message to the right. After the jump, see Digg's new sorting options.

Digg [Old version]