Yahoo's fate is now all about the rewards for activist investors like Carl Icahn, the risks for Microsoft and the chaotic state of shifting valuations. A proposed Yahoo deal of some kind has become the poster child for the tumultuous forces shaping a tenuous deal market.

The television networks want it all as they walk the delicate line between their faltering living-room domination and a grab for online video's critical mass. At least for now, they are stemming major financial losses even as their traditional base weakens. Wall Street is wondering how long the balancing act is sustainable.

Social networking, content and interactive advertising are mutual allies. The exchange of personal data, recommendations, video and routine banter is core to the interactive experience. No matter what you are doing or selling on the Internet, there is a likely social element that can be valuable as an advertising or commerce component.

For more than a decade, Barry Diller implored InterActive Corp. shareholders to blindly support his vision. Now, he concedes, it was his curiosity about the power of interactivity--rather than a business plan--that bound the Web empire he is dismantling. Diller remains with IAC, but his legacy rides on the new bets he's underwriting.

Devising meaningful measurements that can be monetized across the media spectrum will value the new digital connections between content producers, advertisers and consumers. That struggle arguably cannot be resolved until all media--most notably television--becomes interactive. Until then, billions of ad commitments will hinge on guestimates.

The Big 4 broadcast networks' probable loss of substantial upfront ad dollars raises pressing a question: Where will as much as an estimated $1.5 billion in spending go? The broadcast networks' most formidable challenge is no longer prime-time supremacy. It is adequately pricing and recouping the ad dollars and licensing fees in the digital media spectrum.

Newspapers and the substantive journalism that has long been their hallmark are fighting for survival -- and they might just be able to help each other. Newspapers can reinforce their own value online by reinventing more of the contextual analysis and in-depth reporting that's all too scarce in the slapdash interactive marketplace.

The reconstruction of the news media in a digital interactive world is starting to look more like the destruction of journalism; the death of intellectual substance in an age of snippets.

The race to monetize and leverage the power of social networks is turning into a stampede, as evidenced by Microsoft's recently renewed efforts to acquire Facebook in the wake of its failed bid for Yahoo.

Everyone loves an underdog-makes-good story, which seems tailor-made for the new digital entertainment marketplace. Marvel Entertainment's "Iron Man" is the latest example of hit filmmaking outside the studio norm.