• President Sue Decker, who has mostly instigated management upheaval to her Machiavellian advantage, is being paid in the "upper quartile" of comparable executives at Adobe, Apple, eBay, HP, IBM, Microsoft, Motorola, Network Appliance, Oracle, and Time Warner.
• Raises handed out to Decker, CFO Blake Jorgensen, general counsel Michael Callahan, and top accountant Michael Murray:

  In connection with her promotion to the position of President, Ms. Decker's annual base salary was increased from $500,000 to $815,000, effective July 1, 2007. Mr. Jorgensen's annual base salary was set at $450,000 upon his joining the Company in June 2007. Mr. Callahan's annual base salary was increased effective April 1, 2007 from $325,000 to $360,000, and Mr. Murray's annual base salary was increased effective July 1, 2007 from $340,000 to $360,000. On March 3, 2008, the Compensation Committee increased the 2008 annual base salary levels of Messrs. Jorgensen, Callahan and Murray to $500,000, $420,000, and $375,000, respectively.

• Decker received 90 percent of her target bonus, or $1.1 million. Jorgensen received the same percentage for a bonus of $405,000, even though he hadn't worked at Yahoo a full year in 2007. (Jorgensen, though not previously CFO of a public company, did have this unique qualfication for his job: He was the best man at Decker's wedding. Decker is now divorcing.)
• Decker made a total of $14.8 million, including stock-based compensation, in 2007.

I'd long thought that Battelle's flip-the-bird photo, used here, was a reflection of his charmingly combative personality. As a founding editor of Wired, which set the tech world on fire in the '90s and helped inflate the bubble, Battelle failed to stack up the tall dollars. He founded The Industry Standard, which sold more pages of advertising than any other magazine in American in 2000 and then went bankrupt in 2001. Battelle, in short, has been adept at chronicling booms, but not profiting from them. Until now.

Battelle is just the latest entrepreneur to cash out before his company goes public, a practice once frowned upon in Silicon Valley. But Federated Media turned profitable last fall, we're told. Being cash-flow positive means never having to say you're sorry. And it also gives entrepreneurs leverage with investors that they never had in the '90s, when building Web companies was much more expensive.

So at last he's earned what they call in the Valley "fuck-you money" — enough money to simply walk away, should a job turn unpleasant. In fact, we hear that's what Battelle is planning to do, albeit temporarily. He's told investors in Federated that he plans to take a leave from the business to work on his next book, The Conversation.

Where Battelle's profane wealth may get him in trouble is with the bloggers he represents. Unlike him, most of them have yet to cash out, or even turn a profit. Federated Media's take of their advertising — typically 40 percent — strikes many as too high, though most have yet to try their hands at hiring and managing their own salespeople.

But they shouldn't worry. Having enriched himself, Battelle is now thinking of them. After hearing rumors that one of Federated's blogs was in merger talks, he approached the blogger and encouraged him to come talk to Federated first before taking an offer.

In other words, Battelle is now contemplating a blog rollup. Rather than see his customers picked off one by one, with their ad inventory walking out the door, Battelle may use some of the money he's raised to buy blogs himself. It only makes sense. He knows his customers' businesses well, since he organizes conferences, orchestrates redesigns, and performs other services besides for them, in addition to the mundanities of selling advertising.

Battelle likes to think of himself as more than just a business partner to his bloggers. He's their buddy. He's their pal! This bubble has everyone frothy, and the valuations may be making some of the bloggers under his care unduly giddy. While Battelle may enjoy a tipple now and then, friends don't let friends sell drunk.

The problem with running a network is that you don't own the pageviews, and websites can always bolt, or be sold. It's hard to imagine AOL won't switch that inventory over to its Platform-A ad network as soon as it can. Not all pageviews are created equal. Sphere's blog-search inventory likely garnered less revenue than some of the high-prestige tech blogs Battelle represents. Still, this is the kind of thing one is happier to have investors learn about after they've committed their money, not before.

Blodget's costs, too, are off base. He estimates per-employee labor costs at $125,000, reasoning that founder Craig Newmark and CEO Jim Buckmaster run things "like a nonprofit." Try "like a prison camp," Hank; Newmark and Buckmaster pay ludicrously low salaries and don't offer any equity, having learned from their (highly profitable) mistake in issuing shares to an early employee. True labor costs are more likely in the range of $4 million to $5 million. A commenter on Blodget's post revises his estimate of bandwidth and server costs down from $50 million a year to a more realistic $7.5 million. That gives you a business with something like 90 percent profit margins. Where does the money go? Not to the Craigslist Foundation, by and large. Mostly straight into Newmark and Buckmaster's pockets, from what we understand.

Blodget then goes on to suggest ways Craigslist could be making more money. Why not start charging for erotic services ads, since people like Connecticut attorney general Richard Blumenthal are already inclined to believe Google profits from prostitution? That seems easier.

In January, he started hounding us to cover the story, by then seven months old, of Bharosa's sale. At one point, he emailed us his bio, which was very informative about Fisher's college extracurriculars.

Jon was a freshman starter on the Vassar College basketball team but opted to discontinue his Division III career in favor of starting his first company in Silicon Valley.

One is former COO Owen Van Natta, who won the right to sell shares as part of his departure from the company. The others, we're told, are a handful of "hardship cases." Zuckerberg has said an IPO won't come until 2009 at the earliest; in the meantime, he's resisting efforts to create a free market in its still-private shares. To my mind, the persistent rumors — apparently untrue — that Zuckerberg himself has sold shares just show how eager his underlings are to cash out.

• Omid Kordestani, SVP, Global Business & Sales: The big winner, receiving 25,000 shares of stock valued at $11.2 million and 50,000 options valued at $6.3 million — though the company's shares are currently trading just a few points above the $448 strike price. Kordestani exercised 60,000 shares worth of options last year, worth $32.7 million.
• Jonathan Rosenberg, SVP, Product Management: $5.8 million in cash and $14 million in stock and options.
• Alan Eustace, SVP, Engineering: $5.2 million in cash and $14 million in stock and options.
• George Reyes, retiring CFO: A distant fourth at $5.1 million in cash and $10.5 million in stock and options.

This year, expect more of the same: The company will not change executive compensation programs, after comparing them to market peers. It increased pay and stock packages last year.

The one number that jumped out to me was the amount of bad debt the company wrote down. Doubtful accounts amounted to $46 million, of which the company wrote down $30 million as bad debt, which nearly doubled from 2006. That's less than 1 percent of net profit, but can't be a good trend for a company with a lot of small accounts in a recessionary economy. Google's shareholders are hurting, as are its customers. But its executives? Doing just fine, thank you.

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Specifically, Mullenweg's money. Automattic recently raised $29.5 million in venture capital — bringing its total raised past Six Apart. The Automattic deal was unusual: Some of the money went directly to Mullenweg, and a handful of other employees, instead of to his company. Automattic's investors, in other words, partially bought him out. A failed bidder for Automattic has been going around saying that Mullenweg's personal take was around $20 million.

Why buy Mullenweg out? VCs normally like to keep founders' incentives in line with their own, so everyone's shooting for a big payday. One might think showering a founder with cash ahead of an IPO or acquisition might be a sign that he's valued. Actually, it's the opposite: Making Mullenweg rich before eveyrone else is his investors' way of saying they don't care if he takes a hike.

Mullenweg surely realizes this. As satisfying as it might be to check his bank account, it has to be frustrating to realize he's not deemed relevant to Automattic's future. And that, more than anything, is what must prompt him to lash out at his chief rival.

The mag notes that "some analysts — and even a few Facebook investors — suggest the company's value is far lower." Even with that proviso, Zuck still ranks as the youngest billionaire in the world and "possibly the youngest self-made billionaire ever." Damn. I can't wait for the call from my mother — "Mark Zuckerberg is worth a billion dollars. What are you doing with your life?" Thanks a lot, Mark. You're making us all look bad.

Now the $678 million doesn't take into account the basis of the options grants but even if the average basis was 90% of what the stock was sold for the payoff for the insiders would still be greater than the actual amount of profits they have generated. Does this seem fair? This is absolutely outrageous but NOBODY is highlighting or talking about it.

Who knew EA had so much money to spare for a chap who owns $37 million worth of EA stock, including options? EA continues to bleed cash, lay off workers, and shut down studios. And yet it can take care of Riccitiello.

(Photo by AP/Paul Sakuma)

I have a great lifestyle because the dollars come in the same whether I work or not. So I only work when I see opportunity. My most productive time is in the morning from about 5:30 a.m. to 9:30 a.m. with a break just for breakfast. Then off to a nice lunch. Then usually some type of leisure activity. Then a couple of hours to relax. Then dinner. Then watch some nightly TV and off to bed.

On January 4, he wrote in a Twitter, "Heading out to bank to initiate purchase, beginning of a life change." What kind of a purchase requires a bank visit? Usually one involving a wire transfer. I'm thinking a house, a very expensive car, perhaps an extravagant rock to put on longtime girlfriend Glenda Bautista's finger. One thing's for sure: Mullenweg looks very good in fancy suits. (Photo by Scott Beale/Laughing Squid)

Good morning from the HIGH SEAS. I am on the 8th day of a 9-day cruise. Most cabins on a ship are about 200 sq. ft. The cabin I am in is 5,300 sq. ft. Complete with private swimming pool, sauna and jacuzzi. The butler brings breakfast at 8:30 and the concierge takes care of all the daily arrangements. This is the 2nd time in the last 12 months I have taken the same cruise and same suite. It just doesn't get much better. I like this lifestyle and I will do what I can do to protect it.

But Zuckerberg's most important backer, Peter Thiel, does not work on Sand Hill Road. From his offices in San Francisco's Presidio, he's set about changing the rules of how startups get funding and how founders make their fortunes. Through his Founders Fund, he has begun issuing "Series FF" shares to the entrepreneurs he backs, giving them the right to sell shares alongside their companies to new investors. Thiel, who felt unjustly treated as the cofounder of PayPal, wants to let his protégés build companies without worrying about how to make rent.

Old lions like angel investor Ron Conway will probably view this development with outrage. They feel entrepreneurs, with no capital at risk, should not become rich until well after their already wealthy backers get paid, Today's startup generation begs to differ. The IPO market is still a shadow of its former self, and sales to large companies are an unreliable route to wealth — and a sure way to lose control of one's company. Meanwhile, vast pools of private money are waiting to be tapped.

Zuckerberg still owns nearly a third of Facebook . If the rumors are true, even if Facebook flops, the 23 year old would be set for life.

Update: An unimpeachable source says the sale didn't happen. Was I played? Perhaps so. Read my followup on why I think this rumor spread — and what its purveyors may have hoped to accomplish.