VentureBeat

Silicon Valley’s most entertaining parlour game right now is the maneuvering around who will help govern Yahoo.

The latest intrigue centers around former AOL chief executive Jonathan Miller, who was supposed to get a proxy board seat from activist shareholder Carl Icahn. However, that’s apparently not materializing.

AOL, which still has a non-compete clause with Miller, now says Miller can’t be eligible for the seat, numerous reports say. Some argue that this is reversal by AOL, but AOL denies it gave him approval in the first place.

Meantime, Yahoo’s board meeting wasn’t especially entertaining today. Activist shareholder Carl Icahn decided not to attend, nor cause trouble, and he’ll likely be voted onto the board shortly.

Back to Miller. I spoke with Miller earlier this week, ostensibly about his venture firm’s recent investment in Clickability. But of course I had to throw in a question about his Yahoo board seat — assuming his board seat was a done deal — and he made it clear to me it wasn’t.

No decisions have to be made about Yahoo’s board seats until August 15. Maybe Miller will yet get in. Speculation otherwise suggests that he could be the one to engineer an AOL purchase by Yahoo. AOL has reportedly been shopping itself around.

Miller is so much in the mix of things, these days, he’s also been named as a possible candidate to lead Microsoft’s online media efforts — a job he’s reportedly turned down.

In the meantime, here’s a look at what else Miller is up to. He has made numerous investments in online media and advertising companies since leaving AOL, through his new venture firm called Velocity Interactive group. He formed Velocity last fall together with former News Corp executive Ross Levinsohn and parts of erstwhile ComVentures. Velocity, notably, is advised by boutique investment bank Allen & Co that itself helps many Silicon Valley media-focused tech companies raise late-stage funding rounds or sell.

Speaking of board seats and shareholder activism, Velocity and a number of other venture and private equity firms tried to do a hostile takeover of CNET earlier this year, before the online media company was sold to CBS. Miller was one of the activists’ candidates for CNET board seats.

I talked to a Miller representative today, who confirmed that he’s on a lot of boards, but wouldn’t tell me how many or which ones. In lieu of the full list, here’s a certainly-partial one of Miller’s various board seats and investments, based on our previous coverage.

Board seats through Velocity

Crowd Fusion — web publishing platform in stealth mode

Clickable –search ad optimization company

(Note: Both of the above fundings were announced this week)

Publish2 — news aggregator for journalists

Next New Networks — thematic video channels

Broadband Enterprises –online video production and distribution

Angel investments

Launchbox Digital — digital media startup incubator

Lookery — online advertising with a focus on social networks

Miller stays limber through tai chi, and in his younger days racked up humbler experiences doing things like bartending at rock clubs, according to a recent Los Angeles Times article. Given how much his name came up this week, I’m half-expecting to go out to a bar tonight and have him turn around and serve me a beer.

[Miller beer image via Gasoline Alley Antiques; Jon Miller photo via Answers.com]

Ross Levinsohn, the former News Corp. deal-maker who led the acquisition of MySpace, has merged his firm with a controversial Silicon Valley firm to focus on media investments.

We first reported rumors that Levinsohn would team up with the ComVentures in October, and this evening Levinsohn confirmed that news. The merger will be called Velocity Interactive Group.

Levinsohn left News Corp. earlier this year to launch a new firm, Velocity, and his stated goal at the time was to buy up media properties and merge them together in larger entities that were more competitive.

Levinsohn started Velocity with Jonathan Miller, a former chief executive of AOL. The two will team up with three partners at ComVentures: David Britts, Keyur Patel and Roland Van der Meer. There’s no mention of other ComVenture partners, including David Rolnick. If you’ll recall from our story from October, there was a disagreement between Levinsohn and ComVentures’ Rolnick about the nature of the partnership when we asked them about it. At the time, Levinsohn had downplayed the partnership.

While ComVentures had struggled with some of its investments in communications and other sectors, it has focused more lately on media investments. By joining up with Levinsohn, and having offices beyond Silicon Valley — including in Los Angeles, New York and India — it gets to try out a new start.

In a statement this evening, Levinsohn, Miller and the three from ComVentures said they have worked together on a series of investments. The have backed NDTV Networks, a producer of current affairs and entertainment online and TV content , as well as IndiaTV, a Hindi media company featuring nightly news, current affairs and other content. In the U.S., the two sides have invested in Fabrik, an online digital media storage company, Doppelganger, a virtual world company, and Mixercast, a secretive media distribution company.

It’s not clear how much money the merger has on hand. ComVentures has raised several funds previously, and says it has $1.5 billion in assets, however, most of that money is already invested. The team plans to raise more funds in 2008.

An earlier stated partnership between Velocity and General Atlantic didn’t really go anywhere.

Ross Levinsohn (left), the former News Corp. exec who masterminded the early acquisition of popular social networking company MySpace, has formed a new firm that will invest in Internet businesses.

Levinsohn is reportedly being joined by Jonathan Miller (below), former chief executive of America Online.

It is called Velocity Investment Group, according to the WSJ, and sounds very much like the plan Levinsohn was rumored to be making last November. According to that rumor, he was caught raising an Internet “roll-up” fund while still employed at News Corp., and was forced to leave. Levinsohn has never commented on those reports

A roll-up fund is one that “rolls up” multiple properties in a single industry to make a more efficient behemoth. Velocity will purchase start-ups in related content areas and boost their online ad revenue by selling across multiple properties, according to the WSJ report. Velocity is also considering buying out companies that broker ads for other Web sites. It is being advised by the investment bank Allen & Co.

Both men have also become advisers to a large private equity firm, General Atlantic, and will work with that firm’s investments in media and consumer companies. GA issued a press release today about their role, but it’s expected that GA is backing Velocity in some way.

GA has invested $1.3 billion in more than 20 companies in the digital media and consumer sector since 1995, including AKQA, Dice, Network Solutions and NDTV.