Here it is, right in front of you, the opportunity of a lifetime for Yahoo! Inc. (NASDAQ: YHOO). With the Rivals.com deal now in hand, making Yahoo a larger internet sports media interest than ESPN, the iron is hot and ready to strike a working partnership between Yahoo! and ESPN. If the two entities can hammer something out that makes full use of each companies strengths, we would most probably witness the birth of an internet sports composite that Google (NASDAQ: GOOG) couldn't touch. Wouldn't it be nice to see Yahoo! as the undeniable leader in something? Admit it to yourself, Yahoo! deserves it.

I have no idea if there have been corporate discussions regarding such a working partnership, but you must consider that Yahoo! and ESPN are more than a little aware of each other, and if there's one thing that Yahoo! must be tired of right about now it would be the concept of vainly slugging it out with other large internet properties.

Let us watch carefully to see if some new strategies start seeping out of Yahoo! Perhaps Jerry Yang has secretly been waiting for Terry Semel to be dislodged before instigating some new ideas. If I held Yahoo! shares right now I'd be very hesitant to sell them, and I'd even consider adding a few. Yahoo! has been floundering, but it is far from being counted out. I repeat my conviction that if Yahoo! will just just try to forget about Google and begin to cut it's own swath, it will do far better in the long run than by continuing to beat its head against the "Great Wall of Google."

Will Yahoo!, Inc. (NASDAQ: YHOO) seek to acquire something or will Yahoo! look for a buyer for itself? Those are the two questions flying around . For me the answer is simple. At this time Yahoo! shouldn't be considering either move. Who needs to hear that Microsoft has purchased Yahoo!?

What Yahoo! needs right now is something new. Yahoo! needs a new direction. Yahoo! needs a new focus. Yahoo! needs new talent. Yahoo! needs to do new things. Did I mention Yahoo! needs something new?

Here's one of my ideas: Yahoo should align with ESPN and reawaken the "First Person Sport Cam". Do you remember the failed helmet cam concept they tried in the NFL? It was an excellent idea but unless you're completely immune to motion sickness you can't stand to watch the action from that perspective for more than a couple minutes. There is a way to make it work however. If a GPS sensor was put on a player's helmet which then sent directional cues to camera arrays around the perimeter of the field of play, then the helmet would relay the players field of view and the static cameras could provide clear, stable pictures of exactly what that player is looking at. The Yahoo! Helmet Cam Sport Arena could be born. The concept could work on baseball caps and batting helmets. Sensors could be put in soccer players head bands. Tiger Woods could have one in his golf hat.

The simple point to this blog post is that it's my opinion that now with Terry Semel moved aside it's the time for Yahoo! to do something drastically new. They should continue to work the boring old search realm as long as the revenue justifies that, but indications are that the search advertising game is bracing for upheaval from video sharing interests. Web users are becoming more and more entrenched in where they like to go and what they like to do. The dynamics of Internet advertising are changing and it's time for something Yah-new!

If you were eBay Inc. (NASDAQ: EBAY) you would have several good reasons for paying $75 million for StumbleUpon, right? I know that if I was eBay I myself would need significant justification for paying that amount of money for a social discovery site. Since May 30, 2007 when eBay announced that a deal had been reached for the purchase of StumbleUpon, more news from the company about that acquisition and any underlying reasons has been absent.

Everyone, from analysts to kids with frogs in their pockets, has been waiting for some manner of revelation regarding eBay's reason for buying StumbleUpon. Because there seem to be few concrete explanations about why this deal took place, I decided to throw my hat in. eBay bought bodies, that's it.

eBay bought a user base of about 2.5 million users to augment its own membership numbers. StumbleUpon came into the deal with nothing to offer eBay beyond user names. Although StumbleUpon is quite a fun place, it has nothing which will breath new life into an auction site. If eBay had interesting plans or a measurable strategy to make use of StumbleUpon in any tangible way, it would be trumpeting those facts everywhere, but from where I sit the silence is deafening.