Romance novelist Melanie Craft has been Mrs. Larry Ellison since December 2003.

Wendi Deng (that's 邓文迪 to you) isn't just Mrs. Rupert Murdoch. She's chief strategist for MySpace China.

(Photos by Patrick McMullen, WENN, Daniel Deme/WENN)

Yang himself touched on those personal feelings when he told the Wall Street Journal: "I think that the destabilizing by Microsoft has become more and more intentional. I am not happy about it."

Somebody clue Yang in. Everyone who isn't a Yahoo shareholder is happy to "intentionally" hurt Yahoo for their own personal gain, if that's what it takes. Everyone including Murdoch — who is probably hoping his comments might help keep Yahoo shares low enough for Yang to reconsider his pricey offer to tuck MySpace into Yahoo(Photo by AP/Pizac)

Relative to social network rival Facebook, MySpace's popularity is fading, and its not hard to see why. The site is a design nightmare — not just in a fussy aesthetic sense, but in lacking a basic ability to go from page to page and perform functions — and it has a history of antagonism toward third-party widgetmakers who could improve its features. More importantly, MySpace has disappointed financially. Sure, News Corp. chairman Rupert Murdoch and company successfully pawned off its search-ads business to Google for $900 million in 2006, butGoogle CEO Eric Schmidt always jumps at the chance to tell reporters exactly how awful that deal has been for Google so far.

When it comes to selling Digg, it seems Rose is the one who can't seal the deal and is left pining for what might have been. Rose on Diller:

He is so well connected. He basically walked into the room with this amazing, badass suit on and just sat down and was like, 'Oh, Digg. Yeah. Love it.'

Look for Digg's acquisition abstinence to end soon, with Google's Marissa Mayer — infamously known to be looking for "random play" — as the one to pop Digg and Rose's sellout cherry.

Jeff Bezos talked about Amazon.com's Kindle e-book; Activision's Bobby Kotick showed off a videogame; Sony's Howard Stringer unveiled a television. Barry Diller charmed everyone with his brilliance long enough that they forgot he really hasn't accomplished what he set out to on the Net. Michael Dell, Jerry Yang, and Jeff Bewkes simply seemed clueless to the realities of their business predicaments. Mark Zuckerberg proved terminally incapable of sharing. Only the last speaker of Wednesday night, Rupert Murdoch, showed any real spark.

Murdoch's one new idea of late — buying a newspaper, the very newspaper that produced the very conference series at which he appeared — was so old media, as one says dismissively in San Francisco coffeeshops. So last century. So over. One couldn't conceive of a bigger raised middle finger to the Valley's innovators. Yet Murdoch argued that he bought the Wall Street Journal because he was attached to news, not newspapers, and talked of delivering customized wireless alerts — just the sort of thing a mogul says at these conferences to seem passably clever, but he pulled it off.

What he is not attached to is journalism as it is practiced today. Today's reporters have brains overflowing with rules and rubrics, archaic practices that isolate them from the notion of writing interesting stories. Write for readers, not the Pulitzer Prize committee, Murdoch said.

How simple! How brilliant. How rather unlike Bill Gates. Perhaps it's not just the Microsoft founder's brain that needs a good working-through. Perhaps it's the entire media-technology complex that needs reformatting. Murdoch's iconoclasm is a good start. But only that. Do you want to defragment your industry? Click "yes" to continue.

(Photo by Asa Mathat/AllThingsD.com)

Today, for example, MySpace will announce a self-service tool advertisers can use to manage their branded profile pages on the social network. Last fall, Facebook announced a similar feature to allow brands to promote "Facebook Pages." We expect the cloning to continue. At Ad:tech last week, MySpace's top U.S. sales guy, Bryce Emo, told us that advertisers have seen a "backlash" from users who are sick of seeing ads in Facebook's news feed. "But there's always going to be some backlash," Emo said. "It's something we might do later, too." In other words, MySpace plans to copy Facebook's mistakes, too.

During a panel held yesterday at Ad:tech San Francisco, Emo, told the audience that Fox Interactive still isn't sure how it will target ads on partners' sites. "It's still in the works," Emo said. "We're probably going to use every piece of data we have to provide as well rounded and robust of a solution as possible." We love the sweet stench of such claptrap, but why didn't Emo just say "I dunno" and move on? That seems truthier.

News Corp. made a deal with Digg.com at the end of last year. Users who click through to a WSJ.com story from Digg get to bypass the pay wall entirely. Similarly, when users click through from sites like Google News and Drudge Report, the pay wall is skipped.

Why do this? By making it easier for casual readers to find Journal articles, Murdoch gets more readers. If they like what they see, they can get all the WSJ content they want for a modest fee — and it's likely cheaper than all the direct-mail come-ons the Journal's circulation department is used to mailing. Murdoch gets to have his cake and eat it too. The Financial Times did something similar last year when it allowed readers to get 30 articles a month free before forcing them to cough up some dough.

The scheme falls apart, though, if people just read WSJ.com for free because they can. Courtesy of Manjoo, here's how:

• Search for the headline of the story you want in Google News. Frequently the story will already be there and clicking the search result will get you to the full story.

• If you're using Firefox, download the refspoof add-on. It allows you to fake out the WSJ into thinking you've clicked a link on Google News or Digg. Last year, Digg and the Wall Street Journal formed a partnership where any WSJ story that gets linked on Digg bypasses the pay-wall. By spoofing WSJ's servers, you can access any story for free.

What about Salon.com, the outfit that pays Manjoo's salary? To read the deeper parts of Salon, readers must either pay a monthly fee or watch a brief full-page advertisement — known as an "interstitial" — every day. Everyone needs to make money, but it can be annoying to readers. Since Manjoo passed on telling readers how to bypass it, we'll oblige.

The quick and easy way: *bookmark this page. Hitting that link will give you a "SItePass" for the day, leaving you to browse Salon all you wish. Perfect! However you do it, there's one unanswered question: Why are you reading Salon in the first place?

*deleted:Immediately click "skip" in the top-right hand corner. You'll get a free day of Salon without dishing out anything except a few seconds of time. If even that annoys you, you can use the same techniques Manjoo recommends for the Journal's site: Search articles from Google News, or download a Firefox plugin.

It's tempting to cast this as the Murdochians defending a fellow right-winger against a California granola-cruncher. But Wales is no limousine liberal. A limo libertine, perhaps, and a limo libertarian, for sure. No, this is simply an irresistibly good story, the kind you can't make up. And one that draws readers. Above all, Murdoch believes in the politics of pageviews.

Yahoo's board must come up with a deal that makes Yahoo at least as valuable as Microsoft's bid. How does Murdoch get to $45 billion? By injecting $15 billion in capital into the company. That could come in the form of MySpace and the rest of News Corp.'s Fox Interactive Media division, valued at roughly $6 billion, and $9 billion in cash from News Corp. and perhaps some private-equity funds. They'd exchange that for $15 billion in freshly issued Yahoo shares. Yahoo's existing shareholders would own three-quarters of a $60 billion company, while News Corp. would own a quarter. Presto, instant value! As a bonus, News Corp. would become a large shareholder in Yahoo, capable of blocking another advance from Microsoft.

Murdoch is proud of having spent only $580 million for MySpace. Buying into Yahoo at such a dear price might not appeal. But if he can play with other people's money, and tweak Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer in the process, he might just do it.

• AT&T or Comcast buy Yahoo instead AT&T just signed a display-advertising deal with Yahoo. Last year, Yahoo inked a similar one with Comcast that Mark Cuban hailed as the "Deal of the Year." But neither one has the cash for a bidding war with Microsoft. AT&T executives have already said they encouraged Microsoft to make the bid.

• Yahoo sells the Yahoo Media Group to NBC Universal Sources tell us Yahoo is considering selling its media group — news, finance, sports, entertainment, and so on — to NBC Universal. A sale would let Yahoo double down on search and display advertising, essentially "throwing the kitchen sink" into beating Google. Won't happen. Shareholders lack the patience to let Yahoo carry out such a slow-moving recovery strategy. And the media operation gets most of its audience from Yahoo's big portals, like search, mail, and My Yahoo.

• Yahoo sells the Yahoo Media Group to NBC Universal and advertising businesses to FacebookThis is the most ludicrously elaborate scenario. TechCrunch reports former Yahoo COO Dan Rosensweig — yes, the guy Decker forced out — now of private equity firm Quadrangle Group, is working on a deal. His goal is to sell the Yahoo Media Group to NBC and combine the remaining search and advertising business with Facebook. In other news, Rosensweig thinks the New England Patriots should have traded for David Tyree during halftime last night.

• Apple to buy Yahoo One time, Apple CEO Steve Jobs spoke at a Yahoo event. Another time, Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang expressed admiration for Jobs. According to reports, these facts provide conclusive evidence that Apple is considering buying Yahoo. Right. This is as likely as a purple iPod.

• Rupert Murdoch is Jerry Yang's white knight Last summer, rumors circulated that News Corp. wanted to swap MySpace for a piece of Yahoo. This does not mean News Corp. will join in the bidding for Yahoo now. The company already told the New York Times it would not submit a bid. One reason why? With a $60 billion market cap and far less cash than Microsoft, it wouldn't be able to match Microsoft's half-stock, half-cash offer anyway.

The really special things will still be a subscription service, and, sorry to tell you, probably more expensive."

Roger Ailes, chairman of Fox Business, said he would not settle for "anything short of a revolution," given the vast resources and advertising Fox is able to deploy. At this rate, Fox Business Network shouldn't be aiming at CNBC; the network, with its bubbly and attractive correspondents, is competing with personal blogs with virtually no expenses. Maybe what Fox Business needs is more cleavage. Move the ticker to the top of the screen, Roger. (Photo from TVHeads.com)

In a typically overdetailed, needlessly insightful examination of Google's troubles with its social network Orkut, in Brazil — which we didn't actually read, due to its gleefully excessive length — the Journal's Antonio Regalado and Kevin Delaney had fun with a disclaimer:

News Corp. has agreed to acquire Dow Jones & Co., the publisher of The Wall Street Journal. In addition, News Corp. and Google have an agreement for Google to sell ads that appear on MySpace and share the ad revenue.

He joked that the disclaimer graph about News Corp, Google and Dow Jones is a funny/sad sign of the times. He said he suggested it just to be annoying.

Highlights of the first day of the conference: Having executives from Six Apart actually speak to me in civil tones; catching up with Loic Le Meur; oh, and getting my ear chewed off by former PodTech CEO John Furrier. See them all in the photo gallery.

(Photos by Randal Alan Smith for Valleywag)

For example, Greylock VC David Sze, who lead Greylock's $25 million investment round into Facebook last year. Missing from the party? Facebook head Mark Zuckerberg, rumored to be tied up with the funding deal he's so close to closing. Were you there? See anything else interesting? Please share.